Akamai to strengthen security portfolio
Focus will be on areas such as zero trust products and fraud protection
Published Date - 2 June 2021, 12:10 AM
Hyderabad: US-based edge security, content delivery and cloud services provider Akamai Technologies, is keen to strengthen its security portfolio, which will include zero trust products that will help enterprises stay secure. The company will also focus on protection from fraud, by carrying out required analytics.
The company which does a lot of threat research also sees growth opportunities in threat hunting. The company observes, in the past, the cyber attackers have targeted all verticals that deal with money. Financial sector remains a largely targeted vertical. Travel and hospitality which are seeing moderation in the last 12-15 months in the number of attacks due to Covid lockdowns, may see an uptick soon once these sectors open up.
Dr Robert Blumofe, EVP and CTO, Akamai Technologies told Telangana Today, “Akamai has been focusing on cyber security over a decade now and as of today we are doing over a billion dollar of business annually focused on edge security. We have focused on innovation to provide scale, performance and reliability quality. We built capabilities in distributed denial-of-service (DDos) protection, web app firewall, bot management capability, access control, and zero trust products. India, which accounts for 25 per cent of the company, with 2,000 people, is playing a key role in security operations and other key functional areas.”
Platform capabilities
Akamai platform can create a good performance for users, provide security, block attacks, manage bots- all in one platform. The platform offers several programmability, which allows users to add programmable functions on to the company’s platform.
“We believe Akamai programmable edge platform plays a very important role in securing the enterprise and in creating great user experiences for our customers. The edge is part of the internet where you get to the last mile where users with their devices and bots connect into the internet. We have infrastructure as close to those touchpoints as possible. We are in over 4,000 locations, over 1,400 networks in almost 1,000 cities, to be closer to the users, applications, things, capacities and threats (to tackle them),” he added.
Digital transformation
He said, companies are going through digital transformation. For several years, companies were migrating to the cloud, utilising public cloud capabilities, software as a service (Saas), and everything is going digital and online. For the past one year, there has been consideration of remote workforce due the pandemic.
He observes, even after the pandemic, remote working is going to play a large role across the entire business landscape. It is important for enterprises to have a security stack to counter threats arising from remote working. Work devices are being used for personal activity and phishing is much more effective technique than before to potentially comprise these work devices now. A lot of phishing campaigns have been focused on Covid, which could target Covid vaccine accessibility, relief funds, and access to healthcare.
Zero trust approach
He further explained, “We have been advocating a zero trust approach where you don’t use a virtual private network (VPN), rather you use a set of highly distributed identity-aware proxy (IAP) to facilitate access, which is not only secure but highly scalable. Our edge platform offers all this. We can also manage distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks). Akamai has also offered protection over several ransomware attacks.” On the device protection front, he commented that 5G will make more and more devices connect.
Akamai Technologies acquired Asavie in October, whose global platform manages the security, performance and access policies for mobile and internet-connected devices. The company also acquired Montreal-based Inverse in February which will enhance its enterprise security capabilities and expand its portfolio of zero trust and secure access service edge solutions for internet of things.
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