The Akamai Blog

Do you remember the first time you made an online purchase? Me neither. I?ve made so many online purchases over the years, and I?ve probably made more in the past 18 months than in the past 5 years combined.

Anyone running a business is likely familiar with the phrase ?building the plane as you?re flying it.? And through the craziness of the past 19 months, many of us lived the phrase, becoming pilots and engineers of our new realities overnight.

Here?s what I know: My personal email has been ?pwned? or stolen at least 18 times. Here?s what I don?t know: if any of the times I have been unable to log in to one of my OTT subscription services was due to my kids sharing our credentials or because of an account takeover ? that kill chain that starts with harvesting stolen username/password combinations and then testing them via a credential stuffing attack.

It?s an exciting time to be starting a career in digital ? but even more so when it?s at a company like Akamai. An organization driven by a commitment to developing talent within the industry, Akamai is an intellectually rigorous, demanding, and rewarding environment to be in at any level. But for new starters, programs like the summer internship can provide a 10- to 12-week opportunity to meet people and learn new skills ? with real-world experiences, close working relationships, and access to subject matter experts.

Media giant RTL Nederland offers a weather app that gives users the ability to get a comprehensive overview of the weather in their location at the click of a button. Akamai is delighted that this exciting media brand has chosen us to deliver a rich and engaging web experience for its viewers while providing a sustainable infrastructure via our Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform.

Fast Flux is a DNS technique used by botnets to hide various types of malicious activities, such as phishing, web proxying, malware delivery, and malware communication, behind an ever-changing network of compromised hosts acting as proxies. The Fast Flux network concept was first introduced in 2006, with the emergence of Storm Worm malware variants. The Fast Flux network is typically used to make the communication between malware and its command and control (C2) server more resistant to discovery. Akamai?s research team has analyzed sophisticated botnet infrastructure that leverages Fast Flux techniques including domains, nameservers, and IP address changes. Figure 1 shows an overview of such a network, which can also be referred to as a form of bulletproof hosting, that hosts various malicious services. These networks empower threat actors to execute attack campaigns by utilizing network capabilities to host malware binaries, proxy communication to C2 servers, phishing websites, or proxy attacks on websites across the internet.

In our update to Guardicore Hunt see how you can enhance your ransomware protections as well as Zero Trust.

The increased use of smart devices, improved connectivity, and today?s hyper demanding customers are driving the need for digital transformation in the finance sector. Emerging technologies like open banking are creating new opportunities for both incumbent banks and fintechs.

The first-ever Akamai EdgeWorkers Coding Challenge gave participants the opportunity to harness the power and potential of serverless computing using the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform. Winning developer teams built functions using Akamai EdgeWorkers and EdgeKV products that ranged from DNS acceleration and cost-reducing traffic efficiencies to personalized experiences for news and cloud gaming.

During the pandemic, organizations became more geographically dispersed, even if that only means people working from home instead of the office. As businesses begin to open up again, the trend is leaning toward mobility as a means to support a hybrid working environment, in which employees have more flexibility to work wherever it suits them best. The remote user, who was once the exception, has become the norm.

Over the past five years, we?ve grown Akamai?s security portfolio from point solutions into a comprehensive platform that provides defense in depth to address our customers? biggest threats. The unique breadth of our defenses is important to our customers who want the most effective security capabilities, and more of them from fewer vendors.

?Wellness? is something that many employers are racing to embrace. Good for both their organizations and their people, wellness is an investment in creating a happier and more engaged workforce, as well as reducing the effects of stress and burnout. It has the potential to increase productivity, foster ideas, and reconnect to a sense of purpose ? for both individuals and the business.

National Hispanic American Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15) is a time to recognize the achievements and contributions of trailblazing Hispanic Americans whose legacies have inspired the world. Akamai stands with our American colleagues whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America in celebrating those achievements. And with groups like the Ohana ERG, we?re able to use this month to share insights that help make our company a better place to be.

One of the greatest signs of the success of the internet as a technology is how little the average person thinks about it. I?m not talking about the content itself. The streaming videos, online shopping sites, news and educational content, workplace productivity tools, and many other pieces of content we view and interact with online garner a great deal of attention. I?m instead talking about what?s involved in getting that content delivered reliably, quickly, and securely to a device.

Building incredible digital experiences often involves leveraging serverless edge computing, microservices-based architectures, IaaS environments, client-side functionality, and APIs. These modern development practices, while designed to produce highly personalized, fast, and always-on user experiences, also inextricably introduce new vulnerabilities and risks.

With Wednesday?s sweeping cybersecurity mandates issued by the Biden administration, patching Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) are top of mind ? for both federal and private-sector companies alike ? to help prevent damaging intrusions. Intensifying the pressure surrounding the latest round of mandates, federal agencies are required to address high-risk vulnerabilities discovered in 2021 within two weeks. However, for the vast majority of organizations and their security teams, addressing every critical vulnerability at the software or infrastructure level quickly is not feasible. Instead, many enterprise defenders look to virtual patching via solutions like WAF policy updates and rule changes as a quick fix to help reduce immediate risk, while longer-term software updates are issued.

Ransomware attacks increased by over 150% in 2020. As criminals find new ways to attack networks and systems, protect work-from-home employees with Akamai.

November is here. Now it?s crunch time. Hopefully, implementing the solutions in parts one through three of this series has kept you busy over the last few months. In those articles, we covered security, flash crowd management, disaster recovery, and performance optimization checklists. If you are not in a code freeze yet, work with your Akamai account team to review the content to determine what features you still have time to enable.

During the pandemic, it was reassuring to see businesses demonstrating resilience and enabling remote working for their employees ? in some cases, practically overnight. As businesses slowly reopen their doors, it is clear that many things have changed, key amongst them the increasing risks to the enterprise network as more work is carried out from mobile devices.

For decades, Akamai has been focused on solving tough problems for our customers. We started by addressing the challenges of the ?World Wide Wait,? and quickly started to leverage our edge network?s scale, proximity to users, and expert operations staff to mitigate security threats for our customers. Today, Akamai has category-leading solutions including DDoS, web app and API protection, bot management, and Zero Trust Network Access. Given the incredible surge in ransomware attacks, we are excited to be adding Zero Trust segmentation to our portfolio through the acquisition of Guardicore.