Akamai Technologies boosts cloud security offering

Akamai Technologies has announced that its Cloud Security Intelligence offering has been enhanced in two ways:

 Kona Client Reputation: A rating system designed to give security professionals greater insight and flexibility in defining which clients to block and which to let through. 

Akamai's unprecedented view of web traffic gives the vendor access to more web client data than any other security provider. That data, combined with a proprietary query language and advanced heuristics and algorithms creates a reputation "score" for every IP address that crosses the platform. This score can change over time based on ongoing data analysis of IP address activity. Potentially hazardous traffic is classified as DDoS attackers, vulnerability scanners, web attackers or web scrapers are further rated according to the likelihood of danger associated with the client. 

Further, by injecting scores into request headers, Kona Client Reputation data can feed into back-end security systems. Internal testing of Kona Client Reputation shows the solution is able to stop an average of up to eight times as many malicious requests than using Kona Site Defender alone. Kona Client Reputation is deployed as an add-on option to Akamai Kona Site Defender.

 Improved Kona Rule Set: The new Kona Rule Set has been developed based on ongoing analysis of more than two petabytes of security-related data delivered by Akamai Cloud Security Intelligence and conducted by Akamai's threat research team. The resulting Kona Rule Set, which is available to all Kona Site Defender customers at no additional cost, has shown an approximately 30% decrease in reporting false positives and false negatives, helping security professionals ensure that more malicious traffic is being blocked while at the same time allowing more legitimate traffic to pass.

"Companies around the world have come to rely on Akamai's Cloud Security Solutions to keep their web sites and applications not only up and running, but also highly performant, in the face of attack," said John Summers, VP, Cloud Security, Akamai. "The Akamai Cloud Security Intelligence data analysis engine provides a solid foundation from which we're able to make our existing Akamai Cloud Security Solutions even smarter and provide a framework upon which new cloud security solutions can be built. The ultimate goal is to continue delivering technology designed to keep our customers’ online businesses protected in the face of an ever changing threat landscape."

Akamai also announced two new managed security service offerings available as part of its cloud security solutions, targeted at the organisations which simply do not have the time, resources, or expert staff necessary to provide the best possible security for their websites and web applications. 

Managed Kona Site Defender and Kona DDoS Defender are designed to protect websites and web applications from malicious activity, keeping them online and providing high performance, even in the midst of an attack. These services provide 24x7 monitoring and attack support through Akamai’s globally distributed Security Operations Center (SOC), staffed by more than 100 security experts at five locations worldwide.

Backed by Akamai’s threat research teams and Akamai Cloud Security Intelligence, the Akamai SOC provides a collective security model that can help organisations effectively respond to even the newest threats on the web. Akamai’s managed security services are designed to decrease response time and increase mitigation quality for all customers by institutionalising mitigation techniques and lessons learned beginning with the first time a single customer is attacked.

 Managed Kona Site Defender: An integrated web security service designed to augment an enterprise’s existing Kona Site Defender deployments with Akamai’s 24x7 SOC, resulting in more hands-on protection against the latest DDoS and web application attacks. Managed Kona Site Defender offers emergency incident response with 24x7 monitoring and attack support as well as ongoing management of customers’ security configurations and web application firewall (WAF) tuning, regular threat update reviews and security drill facilitation.

 Kona DDoS Defender: A managed DDoS protection service that combines the advanced DDoS mitigation technologies of the Kona product family with Akamai’s 24x7 SOC. Kona DDoS Defender provides automated protection for websites and web applications against today’s most common DDoS attacks as well as custom analysis and mitigation of the latest and most sophisticated attacks.

“Web attacks are increasing in frequency, scale and complexity, and a successful attack can result in denial of service, the theft of user data, or significant financial loss, all of which can create serious implications for the business,” said Summers. "To build robust, long-term security strategies, enterprises need to consider going beyond simply employing the right security technology. Access to experts who are able to keep up with the changing threat landscape and provide round the clock support to identify and thwart potential attacks is a critical element to that successful security strategy.”