Akamai Positioned in the "Challengers" Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai® Technologies, Inc. AKAM, the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications, today announced the company has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the "Challengers" quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls¹.

"Our customers are facing a rapidly and continually changing threat landscape and as such, require Internet security solutions that can help protect valuable online assets from malicious actors," explained Stuart Scholly, senior vice president and general manager, Security Business Unit, Akamai. "We believe that our inclusion as the only cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) in the Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls validates our approach of offering this technology as a cloud-based service."

Part of the Company's Cloud Security Solutions offerings, Kona Site Defender is a highly-scalable edge defense service architected to detect and mitigate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as well as potential application layer attacks such as SQL injection attacks  as they pass through Akamai's Intelligent Platform. Kona Site Defender is designed to scale instantly to preserve performance and filter attack traffic close to the source of the attack, protecting customer infrastructure and keeping web applications up and running.

Customers using Kona Site Defender's default Web Application Firewall rules configuration experienced, on average, 96 percent accuracy based on measurements that use the Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) scoring. The accuracy levels demonstrated by Akamai's out-of-the-box WAF configuration, represented by a reduction in reported false positives and false negatives, help customers better identify and block attacks while at the same time allowing legitimate traffic to pass.

The Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls is available for download at: http://www.prolexic.com/waf-magic-quadrant.

To learn more about how Akamai can protect organizations from Internet security threats, please visit the company at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit (Booth #245), taking place June 23-26, 2014 at the Gaylord National, National Harbor, MD.

About Akamai 
Akamai^® is the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications. At the core of the Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with unmatched reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

About the Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

1.Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls" by Jeremy D'Hoinne, Adam Hils, Greg Young, Joseph Feiman, June 17, 2014

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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.