The well-known company has in its portfolio a number of solutions that ensure uninterrupted transmission of customers ' data over the Internet and protect their Web resources.
Back in the days when Covid-19 was just beginning to spread around the world and Ukraine, all companies, organizations and government agencies started digitalization and began the process of setting up the work of their own employees using remote work and providing services using web technologies.
With the beginning of a full-scale Russian invasion, the question arose of protecting the web resources of companies that were developed or improved during the quarantine.
Since February 2022, Ukrainian companies have been under significant pressure from the special services of the aggressor country and are daily exposed to numerous cyber attacks aimed at disrupting the stability of business and affecting the functioning of the country's economy. That is why now for all companies, regardless of size, one of the key issues is to ensure the safe and uninterrupted functioning of web resources, because today all users who are on the Internet need protection.
What business needs does the chosen solution address?
In connection with the events described above, the Seeton Cyber Security team searched the market for solutions that ensure uninterrupted delivery of web content and protection of web resources of private firms, organizations and government agencies, and settled on the following products: Akamai Technologies. This vendor has been recognized by Gartner as a leader in the Web Application Firewall segment for six consecutive years. Akamai has a fairly substantial selection of solutions, but we will cover the following in more detail.
Akamai Content Delivery Network (CDN) - this is a solution used to ensure fast and high-quality content delivery between the client and server. Given that the CDN network is globally branched, clients will have minimal delays in receiving content regardless of where they are located. This will allow them to work quickly with web applications and avoid delays, for example, in financial transactions. It is Akamai that is the inventor of CDN technology in the familiar form that is popular in most countries of the world (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Akamai CDN operation diagram
Akamai Web Application & API Protector (WAAP) - this is a solution for protecting customers ' web resources from web attacks. It includes such modules as protection against web attacks, protection against DoS/DDoS attacks, protection against malicious bots, detection of abnormal user activity and prevention of its activity, detection of malicious files, etc. (Figure 2).
2. Akamai WAAP and its composition
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation - this is a solution for monitoring various networks: cloud, deployed on customer resources, branch networks, etc., which allows network segmentation, detecting abnormal activity and malicious software, monitoring networks in real time, and effectively protecting against the lateral promotion of malicious programs (malware) by internal networks of companies (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Akamai Linode - this solution belongs to the Cloud Computing class and allows clients to use the purchased virtual machines (VPS/VDS) for deployment of corporate systems or solutions without use of the ground equipment.
Today, Akamai's CDN and Linode servers collectively transmit more than 1 Pbit of traffic per second, making the company one of the key players in the global information technology cloud market. Also, each client has the opportunity to use the Linode Calculator https://www.linode.com/estimator/ and calculate the optimal use case for Linode resources yourself.
Termination of cooperation with aggressor countries
It is worth noting that Akamai at the beginning of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, completely completed its sales in Russia and Belarus, stopped its own Enhanced TLS network, and complies with legal norms and sanctions established around the world. Akamai also volunteered to help identify and prevent attacks on the resources of Ukrainian companies.
More detailed: https://www.akamai.com/blog/news/ukraine-statement
It is worth noting that among all CDN providers, Akamai historically has the largest number of points of presence of Cash servers for media content delivery in Ukraine.
What else is rich in the vendor's portfolio of solutions?
In addition to the solutions discussed above, Akamai has other solutions in its portfolio, including:
- Akamai Edge DNS - Configuring and protecting DNS;
- Akamai MFA-Multi-factor authorization for corporate pages;
- Akamai Enterprise Application Access-Providing zero-trust access services to enterprise applications (ZTNA);
- Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery-delivery of media content;
- Akamai Brand Protector - protection against brand forgery;
- Akamai Global Traffic Management-load balancing between servers.
Multitenant, or how large companies or holdings can save money
Akamai has a simple and comprehensive dashboard that allows customers to manage all their purchased solutions from a single point of view, without having to switch to another dashboard. This solves the problem faced by administrators, namely, a lot of open management consoles for various solutions, as well as various contracts and companies — a phenomenon known as Multitenant. This product may be of interest to holding companies, parent companies, and groups of companies, as it has the following advantages::
- configuring a unified approach and policies for protecting web applications for all group companies;
- reduce the cost of purchasing and retaining a solution by connecting multiple companies to the same management console;
- ability for the global administrator of the parent company or holding company to view events recorded on protected applications.
Distribution of Akamai among business areas
Akamai has been a leader in the international Gartner and Forrester ratings for more than 5 years, which allows the company to set a trend in technologies for managing and protecting customers ' web resources. Thanks to the above, Akamai products — on the territory of Ukraine and not only-are successfully used
in various business areas, namely: banks, software development, media, crypto exchanges, online games, telecommunications, holding companies, etc.
It is worth noting that Akamai's solutions are universal and are not designed for one business area, so they can easily be implemented in any type of company, regardless of its size or field of activity.
Seeton Company it has been a partner of Akamai since the end of 2022, and during this time we were able to raise our partner status to the level of Select - the highest in Ukraine. This became possible due to the growth of professional knowledge and experience of engineers in the field Cyber Securityas well as implementing complex projects for Enterprise-level customers. Currently, the most interesting areas in the Ukrainian market are CDN, WAF, DDoS Protection and Bot Protection, all of which are really relevant in terms of optimizing and protecting company websites.
Evgeny PEDCHENKO,
Head of Information Security Systems at Seeton
If you are interested in Akamai solutions and would like to try them out on your own web applications, please send us an email cs@seeton.pro, and the command Cyber Security Seeton will help you test and implement these solutions.