Trustwave, Akamai form alliance to protect businesses from online threats

Akamai Technologies Inc., a global leader in content delivery network services, and industry-leading managed security services firm Trustwave, formed a new strategic alliance designed to help businesses more effectively fight a wide range of malicious online activities through vulnerability assessment, denial of service prevention and incident response.

Through this partnership, Akamai and Trustwave plan to make available to their respective customers select technology solutions and security services from each company’s portfolio. The strategic relationship is intended to allow both companies to provide a broader set of cyber security protections to meet a wide range of customer requirements in a constantly changing cyber security threat landscape.

“Through this new alliance, Trustwave and Akamai will deliver more advanced threat and vulnerability management solutions to help businesses fight cybercrime, protect data and reduce risk,” said Robert J. McCullen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Trustwave. “We believe that augmenting the broad portfolio of security services we provide to businesses by adding distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack protection and cloud-based web application firewall services provided by an industry innovator like Akamai will greatly benefit our customers.”

Services and products included in the first phase of the strategic alliance include:

• Security scanning and testing: Akamai will offer Trustwave Managed Security Testing to better help businesses find and fix vulnerabilities across their database, network and application assets through the cloud-based Trustwave TrustKeeper® platform.
• Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack protection: Trustwave will offer Akamai’s managed DDoS protection services as part of the Trustwave portfolio of managed security services. Akamai’s industry-proven DDoS protection and mitigation capabilities are intended to keep web sites and applications available, even in the midst of today’s modern web attacks.
• Incident response and readiness: Akamai will offer Trustwave Incident Response and Readiness services delivered by Trustwave SpiderLabs, a team of more than 150 ethical hackers, forensic investigators and researchers who conduct hundreds of data breach investigations per year. The service includes on-call responders and results in an actionable, tested plan to detect, triage and contain a breach.
• Web application security: Trustwave will augment its existing web application firewall (WAF) portfolio, which currently includes both a managed WAF service and on-premises product, by offering Akamai’s cloud-based Kona Site Defender for businesses that prefer a cloud deployment option. Akamai and Trustwave intend to co-develop Trustwave managed service offerings for the Akamai Kona Site Defender and WAF products.

“Akamai has significant respect for the people, services and technology behind Trustwave,” explained Stuart Scholly, senior vice president and general manager, Security Business Unit, Akamai. “By working together, our customers can augment their security posture with proven solutions and expertise, providing an even greater level of preparation and protection backed by the global, industry-leading managed security services from Trustwave. We believe adding Trustwave solutions to our portfolio will be of great benefit to our customers.”

The collaboration between the two companies highlights the constantly evolving threat landscape illustrated by a number of security statistics:

• 96 percent of applications harbored one or more serious security vulnerabilities, according to the 2014 Trustwave Global Security Report. The finding demonstrates the need for more application security testing during the development, production and active phases, as well as deployments of web application firewalls for additional protection.
• According to Akamai’s Q1 2015 State of the Internet: Security Report, the first quarter of 2015 set a record for the number of DDoS attacks recorded on Akamai’s Prolexic network – more than double what was reported in Q1 2014. Malicious actors perform DDoS attacks to make computer systems and applications stop working for legitimate users, which can cause dramatic business disruption.
• At least 60 percent of enterprises will discover a breach of sensitive data in 2015, predicts Forrester Research in a recent report1  – underscoring the need for businesses to be running a mature incident response program.