Akamai Leads the Way in API Security:  GigaOm Radar for API Security Report

At Akamai, we understand the critical importance of securing APIs across their entire lifecycle. Akamai API Security is designed to address the myriad challenges that come with API protection, from initial design to deployment and beyond. By integrating runtime protection with proactive testing and remediation, our solution aligns with current industry trends and sets a high standard for API security. 

While Akamai API Security scored high across most of the criteria that was assessed and was praised for its rapid innovation, the report explicitly highlights some of our key strengths, including:

• Our abilities to identify data leaks, tampering, policy violations, and suspicious behaviors and to provide robust protection against API security attacks
• Our runtime detection, attack confidence scoring, and full attacker profiling that offers easy-to-understand insights into potential threats
• The developer-friendly interface that provides detailed API risk scoring, compliance violation tracking, and step-by-step incident reproduction guides without requiring additional implementations
• The solution's ability to detect conflicting data egress and identify subtle attack patterns, such as header removal, to provide early warning of potential security breaches

GigaOm notes that in reviewing solutions, it’s important to keep in mind that there are no universal “best” or “worst” offerings. Each solution has aspects that might make it a better or worse fit for specific customer requirements. Notably, GigaOm points out that Akamai API Security is suitable for a broad range of organizations and is not limited to any particular industry.

The report also mentions that Akamai API Security is an option for customers with strict data governance needs because Akamai offers the flexibility to deploy its engine and management services within customers' on-premises environments. This is especially advantageous compared with  those competitors who require customers to connect to their centralized management cloud services.

Akamai also offers market-leading and differentiating capabilities to help customers protect their entire API environment and development processes with:

• Autonomous API behavior analysis
• Native connector
• API active testing
• Flexible deployment

One of the standout features of our platform is autonomous out-of-band API behavior analysis and validation. This capability allows our system to automatically learn and expect API responses and data formats, providing real-time, AI/ML-driven insights for automatic threat detection and response. This sophisticated approach helps eliminate performance impact while effectively identifying data leaks, tampering, policy violations, and suspicious behaviors that other solutions might miss.

With our native connector, customers can send Akamai traffic to API Security for real-time analysis with a single click. They can also block malicious IP addresses at the edge. Although other solutions can integrate with Akamai, only the integration of our native connector allows customers to start tracking APIs, detecting vulnerabilities, and responding to attacks in less than 20 minutes without incurring any extra costs.

The native connector works alongside our out-of-the-box integrations with more than 40 traffic sources, including other content delivery networks (CDNs), web application firewalls (WAFs), and cloud providers. Combined with our flexible software as a service (SaaS) deployment, this is the only solution in the industry that can provide comprehensive visibility into north-south traffic, with zero risk or operational overhead for the organization.

Akamai offers a purpose-built API security testing solution that provides comprehensive coverage of API-specific vulnerabilities, helping companies shift left and bake API security testing into every phase of development. Our solution provides actionable guidance on fixing application environments and API testing configurations to ensure that each API can be successfully executed and, therefore, comprehensively tested.

Akamai offers customers the utmost flexibility in deployment. Our solution operates entirely out of band, eliminating the need for network modifications. To cater to varied customer preferences, we support both agentless and agent-based approaches. Furthermore, our solution seamlessly operates in on-premises, hybrid, and SaaS environments, effectively addressing data residency and data ownership considerations.

Akamai's position as a Leader in the GigaOm Radar report is a testament to our innovative approach and unwavering commitment to providing cutting-edge, end-to-end API security solutions.

In addition to recognition from analysts, Akamai recently won the prestigious Publisher’s Choice award for 2024 from Cyber Defense Magazine, a leading electronic information security publication. This award follows Akamai's selection as the winner of CyberSecurity Breakthrough's 2024 API Security Platform of the Year award.

As the API security landscape continues to evolve, Akamai remains at the forefront, prepared to meet the growing demands with our advanced and comprehensive platform. Get a complimentary copy of the report and learn why you can trust Akamai with your API security strategy.