Akamai introduces edge platform enhancements
New features from Akamai protect content, apps, and APIs, accelerate web and mobile experiences, and help make development teams more agile as they move to the cloud.
“Eighty-five percent of companies today have a hybrid cloud strategy, but many have begun to realise that the cloud brings significant challenges to security, operations, and cost management,” said Rick McConnell, president and general manager of Akamai’s Web Division. “Cloud migration introduces complexity that can slow app deployments, cause cost overruns, and expose businesses to previously unknown security risks. With enhancements to our platform, Akamai surrounds and extends client infrastructures, leveraging the edge and advanced security to alleviate cloud challenges.”
Akamai has expanded its portfolio of adaptive security capabilities that are architected to enhance protections while enabling businesses to deliver excellent user experiences. New offerings can intelligently serve or block access to content with a fully integrated Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Domain Name System (DNS) proxy detection service.
Intelligence added to Akamai’s Token Authentication capabilities extends coverage for browsers and devices that do not support cookies and also makes it more difficult to play back stolen content. Finally, standard TLS addresses the need to deliver HTTPS at massive scale while providing a customer-branded SSL certificate, all of which are critical for large broadcasters and streaming TV distributors.
To fight the growing threat of increasingly sophisticated bots, Akamai has continued to develop technologies designed to improve visibility into malicious botnet activities on customer sites as well as those targeting other businesses. In addition to enhanced detections in the company’s bot management solution, Akamai has also improved self-serviceability, enabling customers to finetune their own settings for advanced bot detection and deploy agile defences against fast-evolving automated threats.
Organisations undergoing digital transformation are heavily leveraging APIs to power new customer experiences and create new revenue streams. Protecting APIs requires purpose-built solutions for governance, management, and security. Akamai now supports automated protections of API traffic, new attack groups across its web application firewalls, and advanced throttling capabilities in its API Gateway solution.
Akamai’s managed DDoS solution now includes improved traffic profiling and attack reporting along with the ability for security teams to better configure app-layer DDoS protection. Customers benefit from the value of an edge platform, with edge servers positioned to automatically block network-layer DDoS attacks and respond to application-layer DDoS attacks within seconds.
Akamai has also integrated its security and performance services with the Akamai Identity Cloud following the acquisition of Janrain, the industry-leading customer identity access management solution. This significantly improves the protection and performance of consumer login pages and is poised to deliver incremental value to customers in combating additional fraud use cases in 2019.