Enhancing Video Streaming Quality for Exoplayer -- Part 2: Buffering Strategy to Lower Startup Time and Video On-Demand Rebuffering

The first part of this blog series discussed about the quality of user experience QoE metrics and two strategies that heavily influence the QoE: the bitrate selection...

Tech That Makes a Difference: Sustainability

As the Internet grows, so does energy usage. As a result, all large tech organizations have a responsibility to monitor and improve their impact on the environment. At Akamai, we are well aware of the impact we can have, both...

Akamai Outlook: Optimizing Edge Delivery Performance and Monitoring

Written by: Ritesh Kalyanshetty and Sandeep Singh Pervasiveness of CDNs within the expanding Media and Entertainment Industry Media and entertainment companies, including content owners and over-the-top OTT service providers are living in an era symbolized by a dramatic increase in content...

All Resolvers Aren't Equal - Don't Worry, GTM is Aware

What is GTM Global Traffic Management, or GTM, is a DNS-based load balancing service that offers application owners a level of flexibility and insight that is unmatched by traditional on-prem solutions. Highly scalable and fault-resilient, GTM offers customers a layer of abstraction between...

A Peak at the Edge: Akamai Sets New Traffic Benchmark

Last week Akamai reached a significant milestone when traffic on our intelligent edge platform exceeded the threshold of 100 Tbps terabits per second for the first time in our history, peaking at 106 Tbps. To put that volume of traffic into context, delivering 106 terabits per second is roughly t...

Phishing Tool Analysis: Modlishka

Additional research and support provided by Danny Wasserman. Overview One of the goals of phishing sites is to lure individuals into providing sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details, and passwords, through the use of email, SMS, social media,...

Verify JWT With JSON Web Key Set (JWKS) in API Gateway

JSON Web Tokens JWT use digital signatures to establish the authenticity of the data they contain, as well as authenticating the identity of the signer. A valid signature check ensures that any party can rely on the contents and the signatory of the JWT. This is typically accomplished by using an...

Optimizing Video Streaming Performance with Origin-Assisted Prefetching

Online video streaming is everywhere today. It's available on the smallest hand-held devices to the largest of screens in our living rooms. Magically and for the most part, it works and provides a very captivating experience. However, if you step back to look at the overall architecture, media...

Introducing Serverless Computing at the Edge with Akamai EdgeWorkers

For the first time, Akamai is introducing an all-new serverless compute capability to help you customize web traffic, expanding the possibilities of personalized engagement with your customers while putting the flexibility and control in the hands of your developers. Developers can now manipulate...

Watermarking: A Content Owner's Mark to Prevent Piracy

Akamai Adds Edge Based Watermarking Support, Pre Integrated with leading 3rd Party Providers ... State of Online Piracy within Media and Entertainment Revenue losses and lost monetization opportunities by virtue of content theft and piracy continue to plague the media and entertainment industry...

How to Scale Addressable Advertising with Low Latency for Live Streaming

Written by: David Springfall, Founder and CTO of Yospace Under David's technical and strategic leadership, Yospace pioneered server-side ad insertion and established itself as the global leader in OTT stream monetisation. The Yospace technology supports full one-to-one personalisation and provide...

Pixel Perfect. Enhanced Optimizations Focused on Customer Experience

I remember the days when brands captivated users online with dancing aliens LowerMyBills.com and Elf Yourself advertising campaigns OfficeMax. In this new digital era, however, customers are smarter, more powerful, and dictate more than ever how and when they interact with brands. More important...

October 2019 - What's New in Security?

The October 2019 Release includes enhancements to Akamai security products with many new and updated capabilities. Highlights and capabilities that our customers have been particularly excited about include: The Bot Intelligence Console provides greater visibility into the bot landscape, allowing...

Access Revocation: A Content Provider's Tool to Block Pirates in Real time

Akamai Announces New Capability to Allows Content Providers to Shut Down Sources of Piracy ... The Growth of Global Online Video Consumption and Piracy Media and entertainment companies, including Content owners and Over-the-top OTT service providers are living in an era that provides them an...

Walk/Don't Walk: Secure, Intelligent Application Access with Enhanced Security Signals

Digital business transformation has meant a continued shift in the way organizations think about secure access. The focus on security has moved away from data centers and toward users. Workforce productivity, flexibility, and application performance are driving the demand to give users...

Quickly Extend Live Streams with VOD Clipping

Time is always of the essence to extend compelling video content such as sporting events and concerts and make the most of media rights windows. This is especially true for catch-up TV, highlight creation, time-shifting 24/7 simulcast streams, and social sharing. At Akamai, we are continually...

Real-Time Phishing Protections

In my previous blogs, I wrote about how phishing is no longer just an email problem, how the industrialization of phishing is being driven by the easy availability and low cost of phishing toolkits, and how current phishing defenses are being bypassed by attackers. In this post, I'm going to...

October 2019 - What's New in Web Performance?

Today, Akamai announced the October 2019 Release, which introduces new capabilities to the Performance product line with a focus on helping customers deliver superior experiences with the power of the Edge. Here are some highlights from the release with additional detail below. EdgeWorkers enable...

Quick Retry: Per Request Route Optimization to Reduce Video Rebuffer Rates

A slow response can wreck an otherwise perfect video playback experience. At least, that is what data shows when it comes to streaming high quality video content to any device, anywhere in the world. While there is no way to control when a slow response will happen, Akamai can offer an alternativ...

October 2019 - What's New in Media?

Today, Akamai announced the October 2019 Release, which introduces new capabilities to our Media product line with a focus on helping customers accelerate their cloud transformation using the power of the edge. Within Media, the new enhancements are highlighted by: Scalable forensic watermarking...

Faster On-Boarding for Performance and Security Products

As part of our October release, we are making our onboarding experience much faster and simpler. These benefits are extended to new customers looking to onboard and protect new hostnames on Akamai - as well as existing customers looking to spin up, test, and protect new functionality within their...

Akamai's Innovation and Collaboration In Renewable Energy

The energy footprint of the IT sector is estimated at 7% of global electricity consumption, according to Greenpeace International. And, although the data center and colocation industry is a small segment of the IT sector, it represents a large portion of its power consumption. By 2020, the power...

Faster JWT Key Rotation in API Gateway

JSON Web Tokens JWT use digital signatures to establish the authenticity of the data they contain, as well as authenticating the identity of the signer. A valid signature check ensures that any party can rely on the contents and the...

Data in the dark: Data protection

Hyperconnectivity is on the rise and, as a result, corporations' capacity to protect their own and their customers' data becomes more and more limited. Connection takes place over a network, so, as connection increases, that network increases in size...

Akamai's 3 Takeaways from the Gartner CIAM Solution Comparison

We have eagerly awaited Gartner's analysis of the growing CIAM industry. According to Gartner, in its August 2019 Solution Comparison for Customer Identity and Access Management Capabilities of 9 Vendors, "CIAM offerings are expanding and are now key business enablers for unifying customer...

Beware of Fall Phishing Season

A recent blog post by LinkedIn says there are more available job postings listed in October than any other month. Since 89% of the hiring managers who spoke to LinkedIn said it takes less than four weeks to fill those roles, there is a limited window of opportunity - for both job seekers and...

But We Have an Email Gateway...

In my previous phishing blogs, I wrote about the evolution of phishing and the industrialization of phishing that's being driven by the availability and low cost of toolkits. In this blog post, I'm going to provide more information about emerging phishing attack vectors and how cybercriminals are...

Maximizing Onboarding: Giving managers the skills for success

Managing teams come with challenges as well as rewards. Managers drive individual and team performance, and the best managers drive employee connection and engagement. Akamai believes that employees are our biggest asset; by effectively and efficiently integrating them into the...

From the Beginning: Internships With Akamai

At Akamai, our internships are both unique and meaningful. What do we mean by this? Well, we believe an internship should add real, significant value to an intern's skill-set. So, not only do they get to learn on the job...

The Phishing Industry

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, phishing attacks are now being created and executed on an industrial scale. Malicious actors are increasingly using highly sophisticated off-the-shelf phishing kits that allow them to deliver very targeted, short-lived attacks. These campaigns direct victi...

Device Hopping Shoppers Drive Up Bounce Rates Leading Into Holiday 2019

Executive Summary In 2018, Akamai reported for the first time that shoppers used mobile devices more than desktops for all the major peak traffic events we measured. Interestingly, they often don't complete their purchase on a mobile device. If the most recently concluded back-to-school shopping...

Client Side Threats & How Could Website Owners Mitigate Them?

Have you ever browsed a website with complete confidence that your data is protected? We tend to trust websites with some of our most valuable assets, such as personal information or credit card data. While owners of these websites might consider the protection of our data a top priority, we stil...

Akamai Partners with Supplier To Meet Sustainability Goals

Akamai strives to mitigate the impact of our operations while maximizing and enhancing the benefits of our sustainable business practices. We are working hard to hit our sustainability goals by: creating a more sustainable platform through reducing network energy intensity by way of engineering...

This Isn't the Phishing Your First Boss Knew

Phishing has been around for nearly as long as email has, and the perception that phishing tactics have not evolved persists. Many people believe we are still in the era of the easy-to-spot "Nigerian prince" emails, shown below. Underneath that, we see a highly creative, yet not any more...

The Massive Propagation Of The Smominru Botnet

In this post, Guardicore Labs provides an in-depth analysis of the attack campaign, focusing on victim analysis and attack infrastructure...

New DDoS Vector Observed in the Wild: WSD Attacks Hitting 35/Gbps

Additional research and support provided by Chad Seaman. Introduction Members of Akamai's Security Intelligence Response Team have been investigating a new DDoS vector that leverages a UDP Amplification technique known as WS-Discovery WSD. The situation surrounding WSD was recently made...

Understanding CCPA: It's Time to Action a Plan for Compliance

Notice to all procrastinators: The final countdown to the California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA has begun. On January 1, 2020, companies or organizations that do business in California will be required to comply with the state's strict new privacy legislation that establishes a legal and enforceab...

Akamai y Exceda: Maximizar en conjunto el valor de clientes y socios de América Latina

Hoy, Akamai anunció un acuerdo para adquirir Exceda, nuestro socio de canal más grande de América Latina. Quiero compartir lo que esta adquisición implica para nuestros clientes y socios, y el motivo por el que me emociona enormemente el potencial que esto representa para todos nosotros. Exceda,...

Akamai e Exceda: maximizando juntas o valor do cliente e do parceiro na América Latina

A Akamai anunciou hoje um acordo de compra da Exceda, nossa maior parceira de canal na América Latina. Quero compartilhar o que essa aquisição significa para nossos clientes e parceiros e por que estou tão empolgado com o potencial disso para todos nós. A partir de sua parceria inicial em 2002, a...

Akamai and Exceda - Maximizing Customer and Partner Value in Latin America Together

Today, Akamai announced an agreement to acquire Exceda, our largest channel partner in Latin America. I want to share what this acquisition means for our customers and partners, and why I am so excited about the potential that this represents for us all. Initially becoming a channel partner in...

DNS Protection: A "Must" in Security Solutions for any Company

Domain name system DNS services are often a point of vulnerability for businesses, so DNS security has become a growing concern for many of them. DNS is a critical element for all companies because it turns domain names into internet protocol IP addresses. Cyber criminals have been digging into D...

How Can Akamai Identity Cloud Help With Regulatory Compliance?

Regulatory compliance related to personal identifiable information PII is continuously being enacted around the world as the amount of breaches and data abuse continues to grow. Understanding the variances between the many different privacy and data protection laws can be challenging for companie...

XMR Cryptomining Targeting x86/i686 Systems

I have been playing close attention to Internet of Things IoT malware targeting systems with Telnet enabled, while also collecting samples targeting systems with SSH enabled on port 22. I've collected over 650 samples landing in my honeypot within the...

Increasing Female Leadership in Technology

The lack of women in technology is a well-documented issue. In the United States, women account for only about 25% of computer and mathematical occupations, and only about 16% of engineering jobs. Worse still, women hold only 5% of leadership positions in the tech industry. Clearly the industry h...

How to Provide Secure Access to AWS Workloads

In the last two posts, we covered the security fundamentals to migrate to the Cloud and the 10 best practices to secure workloads. In this third post, we will talk about securing access to your AWS workloads. To Live Happy, Live Hidden In a traditional model, you need to somehow open your cloud...

The Shady Secrets of Shadow Networks

Shadow networks are side channels to traditional networks, undetected and working quietly in the background alongside what the traditional network was designed to do. Command and Control sometimes referred to as C2 servers maintain links with compromised end points IoT, PCs, Printers etc within a...

In Conversation: The Women in Network Security

Why does network security matter? On average, there is a hacker attack every 39 seconds. If any of these attacks result in a data breach, they could cost over $150 million, with research suggesting that cyber-attacks could cost businesses over...

Fast DNS: Zone Apex Mapping & DNSSEC

Introduction Along with its DDoS resilience and impressive global footprint, Fast DNS affords zone administrators additional technical flexibility and implementation options. One example is Zone Apex Mapping ZAM -- a feature that enables apex domains to be mapped directly to an Akamai edge IP. Th...

Edge DNS: Zone Apex Mapping & DNSSEC

Along with its DDoS resilience and impressive global footprint, Akamai Edge DNS offers zone administrators additional technical flexibility and implementation options to improve performance and simplify DNS operations. One example is zone apex mapping ZAM, a feature that enables top level hostnam...

Alleviating Digital Transformation Performance and Security Concerns

Businesses across the world are migrating applications to the cloud to reduce IT cost and complexity, and accelerate the pace of innovation. But when you move applications and services to the cloud you lose visibility and control over your infrastructure, increasing risk and uncertainty. That's w...