Akamai Identified as a Leader in DDoS Mitigation by Forrester

This week, Akamai was again recognized as a Leader in the latest The Forrester Wave™: DDoS Mitigation Solutions, Q1 2021. Akamai has also been recognized by Forrester as a Leader in its most recent The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q3 2020, The Forrester New Wave™: Bot Management, Q1 2020, and The Forrester Wave™: Web Application Firewalls, Q1 2020.

We believe these recognitions underscore how Akamai helps customers expand beyond DDoS protection via an integrated web application and API protection portfolio. The Forrester Wave™: DDoS Mitigation Solutions, Q1 2021 is, in our opinion, evidence of the efficacy of Akamai's architectural approach of building leading global platforms that are designed to mitigate the largest, most complex DDoS attacks at scale, then leverage and expand to related high-value customer challenges over time. All of our DDoS defense solutions reduce the risk associated with DDoS attacks through fast and effective protection whether applications are deployed in the data center, public cloud infrastructure, or colocation facility.

In the report, Forrester evaluated Akamai Prolexic and noted:

"Large enterprise clients that want an experienced, trusted vendor to make their DDoS problem go away should look to Akamai."

While Prolexic was the evaluated product, Forrester pointed to the fact that Akamai offers DDoS mitigation with 175+ Tbps of network capacity across three cloud-delivered solutions -- Kona Site Defender, Edge DNS, and Prolexic. At Akamai, we have architected our purpose-built DDoS solutions to ensure multiple levels of resilience with mitigation fine-tuned to the specific requirements of customers' web and/or internet-facing applications and services.

Our 98% retention rate for customers consuming Akamai DDoS protection solutions speaks for itself, as does the ~50% of cloud scrubbing customers that also leverage the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform for DDoS mitigation to protect web-based assets.

Forrester gave Prolexic the highest possible scores (5/5) across the following criteria:

Volumetric Scrubbing

Performance

Security Operations Centers

Threat Intelligence

Service Delivery

Service Agreements

Development and Support

Pricing Models

Current Revenue

In its vendor profile, Forrester states: "Akamai has more scrubbing centers than its non-CSP competitors, and therefore, impressive capacity -- more than 175 Tbps of total network capacity." For Prolexic cloud scrubbing specifically, more than 8.2 Tbps of dedicated DDoS fighting capacity is available to stop attackers and deliver clean traffic to customer origins on our platform. We believe our global scrubbing center infrastructure and attack mitigation and detection capabilities are reflected in our 5/5 score in the Volumetric Scrubbing criterion. Unlike others in the Forrester Wave report that might lead with a higher "mitigation capacity" number, this total is inclusive of their CDN and does not indicate mitigation resources available to combat volumetric DDoS assaults. These providers fail to identify how much capacity is dedicated to stopping attacks, and how many network and system resources are available to deliver clean traffic. We encourage organizations looking for DDoS defense to dig deeper into differences between a provider's total network capacity and platform stability, capacity available for attack mitigation, and clean traffic delivery utilization.

For our 5/5 rating in the Security Operations Centers criterion, one Prolexic customer reference stated that Akamai's "assistance in a DDoS attack is outstanding. They [Akamai SOCCs] are there to support your needs at any time and provide notice of other attacks that may be occurring [in] your business vertical." We believe this attests to the expertise and support of Akamai's 200+ frontline tactical SOCC responders who are available 24/7 across six global locations to assist customers anytime, anywhere. Additionally, this sentiment is frequently validated by existing customers, feedback from the dozens of emergency integrations over the past six months, and a proven history of mitigating the largest, most complex DDoS attacks throughout 2020.

The Akamai SOCC also highlights our recommendation for striking a balance between automation of attack detection and mitigation with highly skilled human experts. While automation is an important part of our DDoS defense capabilities, it is also critical to be able to immediately reach a highly skilled security architect to review DDoS events, tune the platform to an organization's specific needs, and/or address exceptions. In short, taking a "one size fits all" approach via automation does not address situations like zero-day attacks, hence the highly available and skilled human component of our fully managed Prolexic mitigation service offered via frontline Akamai SOCC responders.

Another criterion in which Akamai Prolexic received the highest scores possible was Service Delivery. As organizations seek security solutions that help reduce friction, Prolexic DDoS defense is offered through a variety of different deployment and consumption models with flexible delivery options based on the customer's requirements. Prolexic DDoS protection can support hybrid environments and provide a cohesive security experience across both private and public back-end infrastructure. This is important as customers look to reduce complexity as they migrate applications and workloads to the cloud.

To read more about Akamai Prolexic DDoS protection, a complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave™: DDoS Mitigation Solutions, Q1 2021 is available for download here.

If you are currently under DDoS attack or threat of extortion, reach out to the Akamai DDoS hotline, 1-877-425-2624, for immediate assistance, or register for a custom threat briefing.

Other Akamai DDoS Resources:

9 Myths About DDoS Defense

DDoS Defense in a Hybrid Cloud World

Can DDoS Attacks Be Stopped in Zero Seconds?