Akamai Named a 2022 Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM Leader for Cloud Web Application and API Protection

This week, Gartner® released its new 2022 Magic Quadrant_TM for Cloud Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) report, with Akamai being named a Leader. This is the sixth consecutive year Akamai was named a Leader in the Magic Quadrant_TM. The Magic Quadrant for Web Application and API Protection was previously published as Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls, 2017–2020.

The report analyzes the market of cloud web application and API security solutions, evaluating providers on two axes. Akamai is proud to serve customers with a holistic app and API security solution and is positioned highest for our Ability to Execute and positioned furthest for our Completeness of Vision in the 2022 report (Figure 1).
Akamai’s devotion to powering and protecting life online drives continuous innovation within its security solutions portfolio. Some of the advancements that Akamai demonstrated this year as evidence include:

• Our API discovery and client reputation scoring increases security users' visibility and reduces the time-intensive maintenance of traditional web application firewalls. This capability discovers new and updated APIs every 24 hours based on a scoring mechanism that takes into account response content type, path characteristics, and traffic patterns.
• The discovery and reporting of where personally identifiable information (PII), including email addresses or credit card information, is being handled with the ability to implement PII restrictions per location.
• For customers who require bot management capabilities, Bot Visibility Manager is now included in the App & API Protector product, along with several other free tier inclusions (EdgeWorkers, SIEM Connectors, Site Shield, mPulse Lite, and Image & Video Manager).
• In August, we announced the Malware Protection beta, highlighting its first-mover position and further improving its offering in the WAAP category.
• The developer community is getting more tied into Akamai’s security suite using existing and new Open APIs, Terraform, and CLI integrations into the DevOps workflow.
• The improved customer experience including increased accuracy, time-saving automation, enhanced training, ease of onboarding, and additional support offerings.

A critical differentiator of our leading WAAP technology continues to be Akamai’s Adaptive Security Engine (ASE). This core technology of our WAAP solution benefits customers with additional advancements in 2022, easing WAAP operation using advanced automation, machine learning, intelligence from threat experts, and a vast database of traffic insights to update policies. The time-saving outcome continuously improves detection accuracy while reducing false positives

Facing emerging — and known — threats

Cybersecurity professionals are faced with evolving and emerging threats, increasing the demands of the role. The recent Akamai Web Application and API Threat Report stated that web application attack attempts against customers grew by more than 300% year over year in H1. Akamai’s WAAP solutions continue to evolve with the focus of becoming both simple and effective as we scale to provide the most comprehensive set of features delivering robust protections across the changing threat landscape.

While our WAAP solution delivers protections to new and emerging threat vectors, we continue to expand our protections in known threats — including providing robust capabilities against DDoS attacks, which are steadily increasing in strength against APIs. In July, Akamai detected and mitigated the largest DDoS attack ever launched against a European customer.

We invest in continuous, improved security outcomes for our customers, and were recognized as a Customer’s Choice in the Gartner Peer Insights_TM“Voice of the Customer”: Web Application and API Protection, 22 March 2022. We’re honored to see our work in protecting customers succeed and be placed in the Leader quadrant of the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant_TM for Cloud Web Application and API Protection.

To read the complete 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant_TMfor Cloud Web Application and API Protection report, click here.

Read this report