Akamai Technologies extends protection to reduce attack surfaces

Akamai Technologies, the cloud company, has introduced the Akamai Hunt security service. The service is designed to enable customers to capitalise on the infrastructure of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Akamai's global attack visibility, and expert security researchers to Hunt and remediate the most evasive threats and risks in their environments.

Akamai also released Agentless Segmentation, helping Akamai Guardicore Segmentation customers extend the benefits of zero trust to connected IoT and OT devices that aren't capable of running host-based security software.

As organisations embrace digital transformation and workforces continue to evolve, ransomware and other advanced attacks are still a threat to business continuity and overall brand trust, costing more than $20 billion in 2021 alone, the company states.

To combat these threats, IT administrators must take new approaches to safeguard their networks, intellectual property and employees through the zero trust frameworks and microsegmentation to stop lateral movement within the network.

Pavel Gurvich, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Security at Akamai, says, "Microsegmentation is proven to defend against ransomware and other attacks by greatly reducing attack surfaces in complex and dynamic environments.

"These new offerings for Akamai Guardicore Segmentation customers will extend protection to devices that have historically been difficult to secure and will provide the extra visibility and analysis necessary to fend off the most evasive threats."

Akamai Hunt combines the infrastructure, telemetry and control of Akamai Guardicore Segmentation with the data that Akamai has by delivering much of the world's internet traffic. Now customers can eliminate threats in their environment, virtually patch vulnerabilities, and improve their IT hygiene.

Other benefits include the following:

• Unique dataset: Rich telemetry from the customer's environment correlated with priority global threat data enables Hunt to find evasive threats and risks.
• Big data analysis: Massive data is correlated and queried for suspicious and anomalous activity that other tools miss.
• Expert investigation: Dedicated security experts investigate detections to ensure teams are not bogged down by false positives.
• Alerts and monthly reports: Detailed alerts provide the information required for mitigation, while monthly reports provide an executive overview.
• Guided mitigation: Hunt experts assist in the remediation of threats, patching of vulnerabilities, and hardening of IT infrastructures. Securing IoT and OT devices has traditionally been a challenge for most organisations.

With Akamai Agentless Segmentation organisations are now able to reduce their attack surface, and enforce zero trust policies on devices that can't run host-based security software.

Other features include:

• Continuous device discovery: Automatically discover new network-connected devices and execute predefined device onboarding workflows.
• Integrated device fingerprinting: Identify, assess, and categorise all connected devices to ensure that appropriate security policies are applied.
• Visualisation of enterprise assets: View IoT and OT devices, traffic, and interactions with endpoints, servers, and cloud assets throughout the enterprise.
• Agentless zero trust segmentation: Enforce agentless least-privilege segmentation policies and quarantine suspicious devices through direct integration with network control points.
• Roaming device awareness: Maintain device visibility, context, and control as devices move between different areas of your wired and wireless network infrastructure.

Akamai Agentless Segmentation will be available for Akamai Guardicore Segmentation customers in Q2 2023.