Akamai Buys Startup CyberFend To Battle Bots In The Cloud And Online

Cloud and content platform firm Akamai has acquired Cyberfend to bring the Californian cyber security startup’s bot and automation detection software into its online services.

The acquisition will see Akamai strengthen its own Bot Manager software, which is used by its customers running online businesses to detect fake customers and hackers from genuine customers, as well as limit the ability for cyber attackers to avoid detection.

Akamai acquisition

Such bot-powered attacks often result in credentials of genuine customers being compromised, pilfered and sold on the cyber black market; this creates a problem for both an online company and its customers.

So, detecting and mitigating these attacks before they can compromise valuable data is a means to actively protect against such hacker vectors of attack.

Cyberfend’s machine-learning real-time detection capabilities help keep an eye out for such attacks on some of the world’s most heavily trafficked web properties.

Akamis said the use of Cyberfend’s tech in its own Bot Manager software will help boost its capabilities and add more differentiation to the software from that of its rivals.

“The addition of Cyberfend’s technology is intended to give our customers a better way to spot and stop credential abuse on their sites – benefitting both the online business and its users,” said Stuart Scholly, senior vice president and general manager of web security at Akamai.

For Cyberfend, being bought by Akamai will expand the reach of the startups technology to a wider customer base. “Adding the scale and reach of Akamai’s platform to Cyberfend’s technology, and complementing Akamai’s Bot Manager solution with Cyberfend’s capabilities, creates an exciting value proposition for customers worldwide,” said Sreenath Kurupati, co-founder and CEO, Cyberfend.

The acquisition was a cash deal, though the amount that exchanged hands was not disclosed.

Using machine-learning for cyber security is becoming an increasingly popular way to defend against attacks; Darktrace is one such firm putting machine learning to work to detect unusual activity on IT networks that traditional security software would struggle to do.

And the introduction of tech like deep learning neural networks is potentially set to put smart software front and centre in detecting and tackling hack attacks.

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