Akamai, Gomez, OpSource and Kemp made news this week
The year is coming to a close, but WAN optimization and application acceleration players are still making news. This time around it’s Akamai, with a new defense system for blocking Web application attacks in the cloud; new partners Gomez and OpSource; and Kemp Technologies, which just slashed the price of its entry-level load balancer.
Akamai takes security to the cloudAkamai this week debuted a new cloud-based Web application firewall service that’s aimed at detecting and blocking malicious Web attacks before they get inside your network. The managed service is implemented on Akamai’s distributed computing platform, called EdgePlatform, and can protect against the most common types of attacks and exploitation techniques such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. There’s no hardware to maintain, and customers manage their own security rules through Akamai’s portal. The new service is based on the open source ModSecurity Core Rule Set supported by Breach Security. “The Akamai Web Application Firewall service is designed to secure enterprises at the HTTP application layer by enabling both instantaneous scaling of defenses as needed, as well as filtering of corrupt traffic as close to the attack source as possible,” said Andy Ellis, chief security architect at Akamai.Gomez and OpSource partnerGomez (acquired by Compuware) just announced a new partnership with OpSource, which provides managed cloud operations, infrastructure and services to software makers and enterprises. The deal will allow OpSource to resell Gomez’s Web performance monitoring technology. OpSource also plans to use the technology to validate and monitor its own cloud performance service level agreements. As enterprises consider moving their applications to the cloud, the issue of Web performance is critical. The Gomez tools can help track the kind of performance end users are experiencing. In addition, OpSource customers will be able to test application performance and cloud-bursting configurations prior to deployment and monitor them in production.Kemp’s yearend saleKemp Technologies has cut the cost of its LoadMaster 2000 load balancer from $2,490 to $1,590 through Dec. 31. The LM-2000 includes integrated SSL acceleration and Layer 7 content switching; has four GbE Ports; and delivers 300mbps throughput and 100 SSL transactions per second.
