April 25, 2023 – Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Akamai) (NASDAQ: AKAM), a provider of cloud services that support and protect life on the web, announced the launch of the Prolexic Network Cloud Firewall. This is a new feature of Akamai Prolexic that allows customers to define and manage their own access control lists (ACLs), while giving customers greater flexibility in securing the network edge.

Prolexic, Akamai's cloud-based DDoS defense platform, stops attacks early before they impact applications, data centers, and Internet-facing infrastructure.

DDoS threats are on the rise again, and the rise is accelerating as more businesses and institutions rely on online services to safeguard operations. As DDoS tools and services become more readily available on the dark web, it becomes easier for attackers to launch such attacks. Additionally, the proliferation of connected devices and the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) have created a larger attack surface for cybercriminals. DDoS attacks are now increasingly being used by attackers as one of the threat vectors in triple extortion attacks, often in conjunction with ransomware and data breach attacks.

Today, nation-state attackers, hacktivists, and other similarly well-organized groups are increasingly incorporating DDoS into their attack mix, and their targets are diverse and growing in number. In all of these scenarios, DDoS is often used to distract the targeted target in order to cover other types of attacks such as data breaches or network penetration. Victims with insufficient DDoS defenses often spend all their resources defending against this type of attack, leaving little energy or bandwidth to deal with other concurrent threats.

Akamai Prolexic provides DDoS defense services to a variety of organizations including enterprises, governments, and non-profit organizations. Prolexic's current defense capability has reached 20 Tbps and is constantly improving, even in the face of large and complex threats, including the recent large-scale DDoS attacks in Asia and Europe, which peaked at a record-breaking 900 Gbps and above 700 Mpps.

Prolexic network cloud firewall can defend against DDoS attacks more efficiently and flexibly, and even extend Prolexic's protection capabilities beyond DDoS.

While Prolexic's overall service and defense stack remains unchanged, the new functionality enables customers to define and tune their own access control rules, as well as enable analysis of existing rules. Specific improvements include: customers can define proactive defenses to quickly block malicious traffic; reduce pressure on on-premises infrastructure by moving rules to the edge; and quickly adapt to network changes through a new user interface.

Sean Lyons, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Infrastructure Security at Akamai, said: "The most requested feature by Prolexic's customers is a network cloud firewall. We have expanded Prolexic's key DDoS defense capabilities to allow customers to take advantage of the global reach of the Prolexic platform , to quickly define access control and firewall rules for its entire network in a centralized manner. This is a powerful tool for emergencies, not only for DDoS attacks, but also for scenarios such as zero-day vulnerabilities, and can immediately cut off access in a targeted manner. Since we're enforcing the rules at the edge of the customer's network, customers don't have to worry about configuring all of their internal firewalls, which can take too long."

Data Center, Public Cloud, Colocation Facility No matter where the application is deployed, Akamai Prolexic can prevent attacks through the cloud DDoS mitigation platform to properly protect the application. It provides comprehensive protection against all types of DDoS attacks and defends against persistent high-bandwidth attacks as well as today's sophisticated multi-vector attacks that move between applications. Prolexic provides proactive defense controls tailored to network traffic to immediately stop attacks, backed by Akamai's global Security Operations Command Center (SOCC) that executes proactive defense measures 24/7. In addition, Prolexic offers customers an exclusive 100% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA).