Akamai Named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Web Application Firewalls, Q3 2022
Forrester’s 2022 evaluation of web application firewalls ranks Akamai as a Leader with the top score among all evaluated vendors in the attack detection criterion. The Forrester Wave™: Web Application Firewalls, Q3 2022, evaluates 12 providers, scoring their technology solutions across current offering, strategy, and market presence categories. Principal Analyst Sandy Carielli authored this evaluative report, which provides insights into the strengths and weaknesses of individual vendors. We believe Akamai’s Leader rank and highest Current Offering score reflects the strength of Akamai App & API Protector as a modern-day, expansive security tool for organizations of all sizes. Akamai was also recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Bot Management, Q2 2022, report.
In Akamai’s vendor profile, the Forrester report states: “Akamai App & API Protector has leading attack detection. Akamai stands out in detection, with machine learning that looks at a range of application-based attacks, anti-evasion features, and a threat research team that numbers in the hundreds.
Reference customers had high praise for Akamai’s detection capabilities and the App & API Protector dashboards, noting how well dashboards ‘support us in the detection and analysis of an attack.’”
The importance of attack detections to your organization
Conversations with our customers elevate, somewhat obviously, the importance of the strength of attack detection. After all, it is why App & API Protector was built. We are proud to have delivered a solution to thousands of digital businesses that has been ranked highest in this ability. At Akamai, we are also devoted to making robust security easy to use. At the core of App & API Protector is the Adaptive Security Engine. This advancement in web application firewall (WAF) technology provides customers with modern protection at the intersection of machine learning, real-time security intelligence, cybersecurity experts, and advanced automation. The Adaptive Security Engine is unique because it:
Learns attack patterns unique to each customer — making protection adjustments specific to each customer
Analyzes the characteristics of every request in real time at the edge for faster detection
Uses that knowledge to intercept and adapt to future threats to ensure protections will stay high even as attacks evolve
Akamai customers benefit from automatic self-tuning that alleviates the burden of manual tuning (which can lead to outdated policies and human error) for an almost hands-off experience. Our extensive global network powers a 9 PB intelligence database and our team of more than 400 in-house attack inspectors work 24/7/365 to provide peace of mind.
A wide scope of effective protections
The report also notes that one of Akamai’s upcoming innovations is Malware Protection, which looks to protect customers from malicious files uploaded via web forms. Doing business remotely increasingly requires uploading files like financial documentation, customer photos, and medical information to web applications. This breaking advancement protects your organization from malicious files, scanning them at the edge so that malicious files never reach the origin. Today’s malware scanners only scan for malware in these types of file uploads once they are in the corporate system, which creates the risk that the malware can still detonate and spread. Malware Protection general availability releases in Q4 2022.
Forrester subscribers will have access to the full vendor summary spreadsheet. The Log4j incident was one of the most impactful and heavily discussed security events in the last year. Akamai received the strongest score possible for their mitigation, response, and educational communications. To learn more about this event and the efficacy of Akamai’s detection and mitigation, check out our blog posts on the topic. This score further demonstrates the Akamai security portfolio’s devotion to delivering our customers the most advanced protections in the market today.
Evaluating providers based on your organization’s needs
The Forrester Wave™ provides transparency to its scoring and ranking methods, across a number of capabilities and supporting characteristics (for example, Reseller or Channel program). This shown methodology allows you to customize your own scorecard based on the features and capabilities that are driving your organization's needs.
In a previous blog post, a colleague recommended a scale to customize Forrester’s findings. To determine which security solution is right for your organization, look at the criteria list and ask yourself which of them are:
Critical. If the provider doesn’t excel at these criteria, you’d put that provider out of consideration.
Important. The provider must be good at these criteria, but they balance against everything else you’re evaluating.
Nice to have. These are features or capabilities that might give a provider bonus points, but you wouldn’t pick a supplier because of anything in this category.
Not important at all. Even if a vendor is amazing at these criteria, it won’t matter to your evaluation. You can ignore these criteria when evaluating.
By leveraging Forrester’s insights and evaluations with your organization’s primary drivers, the result is a customized and in-depth analysis for vendor consideration that any executive would appreciate.
The future of WAF
Akamai has a long history of innovating technology to protect and power digital experiences. Our solution today powers businesses to operate swiftly without the burden of cumbersome, manual security processes. Our roadmap for tomorrow and beyond furthers our vision of building a hands-off WAF and web application and API protection (WAAP) that includes more protections, capabilities, and ease-of-use improvements. We believe this commitment is recognized by Forrester, which gave Akamai the highest score available, 5.0, in the Innovation criterion.
