Akamai

Overview

Akamai Technologies operates a suite of services designed for content delivery, cybersecurity, and secure access to enterprise applications. The company's global distributed platform, known as Akamai Connected Cloud, focuses on enhancing the performance, reliability, and security of online experiences. It achieves this by bringing content and applications closer to end-users, thereby reducing latency and improving load times, particularly for high-traffic web properties and rich media. The platform integrates various security capabilities to protect against a range of cyber threats.

Akamai’s offerings target developers, IT operations, and security teams within large enterprises that require robust infrastructure for global content distribution and advanced threat protection. Key use cases include accelerating e-commerce websites, streaming video content, securing APIs, and defending against volumetric DDoS attacks. The platform is engineered to handle large-scale traffic fluctuations and sophisticated attack vectors, leveraging its distributed architecture to absorb and mitigate threats at the network edge. This approach minimizes the impact on origin infrastructure and ensures continuous availability for critical online services.

For example, Akamai's App & API Protector combines WAF, bot mitigation, API security, and DDoS protection into a single solution. This integrated strategy aims to simplify security management while providing layered defense against OWASP Top 10 threats, advanced persistent bots, and API abuse. The platform's analytics capabilities provide visibility into traffic patterns and threat landscapes, enabling organizations to adapt their security posture proactively. Businesses focused on regulatory compliance, such as those subject to GDPR or HIPAA, often utilize Akamai’s services to meet data protection and privacy requirements through its certified infrastructure.

The company also emphasizes a zero trust security model through its Guardicore Segmentation product. This solution focuses on microsegmentation to limit lateral movement within data centers and cloud environments, reducing the attack surface by enforcing least-privilege access. This complements the edge security services by providing internal network defense, creating a comprehensive security posture from the edge to the core. Akamai's portfolio directly competes with other major content delivery and security providers such as Cloudflare and Fastly, differentiating itself through its scale, specialized threat intelligence, and a broad suite of integrated security products.

Key features

• Akamai Connected Cloud: A global distributed platform for content delivery, edge computing, and cloud services, designed to improve performance and reliability by bringing resources closer to users.
• Akamai CDN: Core content delivery network services that optimize web and application performance, reduce latency, and handle traffic spikes through caching and intelligent routing.
• App & API Protector: An integrated solution combining WAF (Web Application Firewall), API security, bot management, and DDoS protection to defend web applications and APIs from various threats.
• Bot Manager: A specialized tool to detect and mitigate malicious bot activity, distinguishing between legitimate and harmful bots to protect online assets and prevent fraud.
• Guardicore Segmentation: A zero trust solution for microsegmentation, enabling granular control over network traffic within data centers and cloud environments to limit lateral movement and enhance security.
• Prolexic DDoS Protection: A dedicated service providing always-on, proactive DDoS mitigation for critical infrastructure, designed to absorb and scrub large-scale, multi-vector attacks.
• Edge Compute: Capabilities to run serverless functions and containerized applications at the network edge, reducing latency and enabling distributed application architectures.
• Cloud Security Intelligence: Threat intelligence gathered from Akamai’s global network, used to inform and enhance the detection and mitigation capabilities of its security products.

Pricing

Akamai's pricing is primarily based on custom enterprise agreements, tailored to the specific needs and anticipated usage of each client. Factors influencing pricing often include bandwidth consumption, the specific security modules deployed, traffic volume for web applications and APIs, and the level of professional services required.

For detailed pricing inquiries, prospective customers are encouraged to contact Akamai directly for a customized quote based on their specific infrastructure and security requirements. More information can be found on the Akamai pricing page.

Common integrations

• Cloud Providers (AWS, Azure, GCP): Akamai services can be deployed in conjunction with public cloud infrastructure to extend security and CDN capabilities to cloud-hosted applications. Akamai offers integration guides for cloud platforms.
• SIEM Systems (Splunk, IBM QRadar): Security event data from Akamai's WAF and DDoS protection can be forwarded to SIEM platforms for centralized logging, correlation, and analysis. Akamai provides SIEM integration documentation.
• DevOps Toolchains (CI/CD pipelines): Configuration management and deployment automation can be integrated with Akamai via APIs to manage CDN rules, security policies, and edge logic as part of CI/CD workflows.
• Load Balancers & API Gateways: Akamai often sits in front of existing load balancers and API gateways, providing a layer of security and acceleration before traffic reaches internal infrastructure.
• Identity Providers (Okta, Azure AD): For secure application access, Akamai's Enterprise Application Access (EAA) can integrate with existing identity systems to enforce authentication and authorization policies.

Alternatives

• Cloudflare: Offers a wide range of CDN, security, and edge compute services, often catering to a broader market segment including small to medium businesses alongside enterprises.
• Fastly: Focuses on developer-centric CDN and edge cloud services with emphasis on real-time control and performance for dynamic content.
• Amazon CloudFront: Amazon Web Services' native content delivery network service, integrated with other AWS offerings, providing global content delivery and basic security features.
• Google Cloud CDN: Google Cloud's CDN service, leveraging Google's global network, designed for integrated use with Google Cloud infrastructure.
• Microsoft Azure Front Door: Microsoft's scalable and secure entry point for global web applications, combining CDN, WAF, and load balancing capabilities.

Getting started

Configuring Akamai services typically involves using the Akamai Control Center for UI-based management or leveraging their extensive API set for programmatic control. The following example demonstrates a basic API call to retrieve information about Akamai properties configured for a specific account, using Python and the Akamai OPEN API Client Toolkit. This assumes prior setup of API credentials.

import requests
from akamai.edgegrid import EdgeGridAuth, get_edgerc_credentials
import os

# Configure API client from .edgerc file
# Ensure your .edgerc file is correctly set up with client_token, client_secret, host, and access_token
# Example .edgerc content:
# [default]
# host = xxxxxxxxxxxxx.luna.akamaiapis.net
# client_token = akab-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# client_secret = xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# access_token = akab-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

# Try to get credentials from the default section of .edgerc
try:
    section = 'default'
    host, client_token, client_secret, access_token = get_edgerc_credentials(section)
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error loading .edgerc credentials: {e}")
    print("Please ensure your .edgerc file is correctly configured.")
    exit(1)

# Base URL for Akamai's Property Manager API
base_url = f"https://{host}"
api_endpoint = "/papi/v1/properties"

# Initialize EdgeGridAuth
session = requests.Session()
session.auth = EdgeGridAuth(
    client_token=client_token,
    client_secret=client_secret,
    access_token=access_token
)

print(f"Attempting to fetch properties from: {base_url}{api_endpoint}")

try:
    # Make the API request
    response = session.get(f"{base_url}{api_endpoint}")
    response.raise_for_status() # Raise an exception for HTTP errors

    # Parse JSON response
    properties_data = response.json()

    print("Successfully fetched properties:")
    # Iterate and print property names (or other relevant data)
    if 'properties' in properties_data and 'items' in properties_data['properties']:
        for prop in properties_data['properties']['items']:
            print(f"  Property Name: {prop.get('propertyName')}, Property ID: {prop.get('propertyId')}")
    else:
        print("No properties found or unexpected response format.")

except requests.exceptions.HTTPError as http_err:
    print(f"HTTP error occurred: {http_err} - {response.text}")
except requests.exceptions.RequestException as req_err:
    print(f"Request error occurred: {req_err}")
except Exception as err:
    print(f"An unexpected error occurred: {err}")

Before running this code, ensure you have installed the necessary Python libraries via pip: pip install akamai-edgegrid requests. Akamai's documentation on API authentication provides detailed instructions on generating and configuring API credentials in an .edgerc file, which is crucial for secure access to their APIs.