Akamai App and API Protector Reviews

It's mostly used for hosting a website or a domain online and protecting them from the application layer attacks.

I would say that the solution has made connectivity a lot easier. Now, people can connect to websites very easily, and also, with the load balancing that the solution has introduced, one won't face that many DDoS attacks happening. Akamai Kona Site Defender has worked on the aforementioned areas since we used to face a lot of load on the original server earlier. Now after taking the service of Akamai Kona Site Defender, the load has decreased as it is mainly falling onto edge servers of Akamai. They have also put caching as a service, and so they also cache on their own. Hence, we don't have to take that much load on the servers. We can use the server load on the original servers.

Akamai has a very great history in the CDN market. Like, if we talk about the present, 40 percent of cases go through Akamai CDN only. If I talk about an area of improvement today, if we talk particularly about protecting against the application layer attacks data, CloudFlare is leading the market. So I would recommend Akamai also to move ahead in that segment. If they do it, then they won't be any competitors in that segment because they would be the best.

Right now, Akamai CDN is a leading tool in the market. So, no one can compete with the tool. If we talk about application layer attacks, including WAF, CloudFlare is leading. Akamai can focus a bit more on the application layer attacks and how to protect them. Akamai can be a real game changer in the market. Akamai should try to be better than CloudFlare.

I would not like to add anything. It's perfect till now, so it should remain like that.

I have been using Akamai Kona Site Defender for around a year. My company is a customer of the solution.

It's a stable product.

There are a lot of people using the solution in my company. In our company, around ten people use the tool, but globally it has a lot of users.

I have contacted the support team of Akamai. I rate the technical support an eight and a half out of ten. I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems.

Positive

The solution is deployed on Akamai's native cloud. The initial setup was easy, but you need to have good knowledge about application layer attacks, HTTP protocols, and everything. Also, about caching, one needs to have good knowledge, and only then will you be able to configure the domain and set it up. Also, if someone doesn't have any experience setting up won't be an issue, but they should know what they are doing. So, if they are not familiar with the protocols and the basic things, then it will be very tough for them to understand what is happening, what to do, and how to configure.

Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive.

My company chose the tool since the PoC provided was good and was sufficient enough for the company to decide to move ahead with the product.

I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it since it has an easy interface, so you can understand things easily. You can easily, through the interface, understand what is happening and how to do the monitoring and move forward with that.

Since the tool has proven a lot in securing our website a lot of times and reducing the latency or the speed-related issues, the customers were facing earlier. 

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We are a media company, and the news delivery has to be the fastest. Any live event, such as a cricket match or election results, has to be really fast. We cannot afford any downtime or any factor like that. We need immediate delivery. There are things like caching, so when we have a five-minute TTL, we have to reduce it or increase it immediately. Those are mostly the use cases we have. We use 301, 4xx, and 5xx redirections a lot. That is pretty much the day-to-day activity. The image optimizer and things like that also come in handy.

It gives us a report of traffic. It gives us a report of the day-to-day URL traffic, and it also gives an individual report. If we reach out to Akamai, they give us the IPs as well. There was a security issue recently, and Akamai helped us with that. They gave us the IPs that were accessing our page, that were not able to get the correct page, and that were not from our region.

It has not saved us time because it is a time-consuming process. Once we get stuck with something, we have to explore and try various versions in staging and production, so time is something we need to have in our hands.

The WAF functionality is also there with Akamai. Our security staff takes care of that. I do not manage that. We get the IP addresses from Akamai support, and then our cybersecurity team evaluates them. It helps with that. We have also implemented rate limiting, which is helpful when there are bot attacks. It handles that as well. 

The whole product is valuable. I cannot distribute it and choose one feature. It is very handy. It was easy to learn as well because I was a fresher, and I did not have much knowledge about DevOps, but within two to three weeks, I could learn what it is. It was easy.

There are some challenges. I have been interacting with their support about an issue. In terms of precedence of Akamai rules, the last one is implemented. That is the one that is operational. If two rules contradict, the last one is implemented. We had a clash, but it was really tough to find that out. I would like to have a rulebook because, in their architecture documentation, it is not mentioned anywhere that if two rules clash, the last one works, and if it does not work, then what to do. This is something we were debating today with their tech support. With AWS, we get documents for the issues so that they do not occur in the future. Akamai's support and knowledge base needs to be improved.

I have been in DevOps for a year. I am a fresher, and I have worked with Akamai for six or seven months. In our organization, I handle the redirection and the Akamai part. 

It is stable. There have not been many errors over the past year. 

It is scalable, but it is not an area that I work with.

We simultaneously use other solutions for different products we have, but I personally prefer Akamai, and I voted for it as well. Other vendors are more focused on money. They want more money from us instead of giving us more ease, whereas with Akamai, we get to use what we need on a daily basis. There are only some areas for which they want more money, such as for advanced rules, but the other vendors in the market are majorly focused on making money rather than finding solutions.

There are multiple products, and I was involved in some of them. We use various domains. This company is way back from the times of Mahatma Gandhi, but then the digital part came, and we are setting up and making more domains. I am a part of that. 

The setup process is pretty easy. With the proper guidance of my mentor, I am able to do that pretty easily.

Based on the billing discussions in the DevOps team, Akamai's cost does not seem to be a major thing. However, LOE is an issue. When it comes to support, we know that even all the competitors do this. For a 30-minute issue, they give us a LOE of one or two hours. That is a basic practice, but that is something we worry about. 

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I have been using Akamai's Content Delivery Network and WAF products. The Akamai App and API Protector product is new to us. We are still implementing it. 

We were facing some security issues. We faced some attacks in the past. That was the reason for implementing Akamai App and API Protector. We wanted to protect our website. That was the main reason.

The WAF features are valuable to us. When I see the WAF features, there are a lot of categories and subcategories. You can see what attacks are happening on the system. The dashboard is the most interesting feature of the Akamai portal where you can have a detailed analysis of all the attacks that are happening. You can drill down an issue and see exactly what is happening, who are the bad guys attacking your website, and how Akamai is protecting the website. That is the most valuable feature.

Akamai App and API Protector is very new to me, so I do not have any insights on improvement areas for the product. However, when we ask for some help, it can take some time. We understand that the job is done by professionals, but if that time can be reduced, it would be great.

We have recently onboarded Akamai App and API Protector.

Akamai as a SaaS product is very stable. I have not seen any downtime. 

We did not use any solution similar to Akamai App and API Protector, but we did use Akamai WAF.

The Akamai Tech team had a very professional approach. They analyzed the entire system. They saw all the logs, and they came up with their presentation and slides listing the areas that were there. They advised us on the areas where we needed to focus and the attacks that were happening. They highlighted all those areas. They built the configuration for us and asked us to review that configuration. After reviewing, they asked to implement it on staging and then make it live. It was a very professional approach that I saw from the Akamai tech team.

When you implement it, it is very smooth. The UI is very familiar. You can easily see all the components and features. They provide guidelines. There are forums where you can find a solution. All the help is there on the website to implement all the components.

Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose. 

We looked in the market and checked all the vendors that could provide this facility. We found that Akamai is on top. We reached out to Akamai and started using it.

When it comes to Akamai products, I have seen their three products. Akamai Security is one. Akamai Content Delivery Network is another one, and then there is also Akamai Cloud. We use two of them. We are not using Akamai Cloud. In terms of integration, WAF with Content Delivery Network works very well, but I do not have any idea about other products.

Overall, I would rate Akamai App and API Protector an eight out of ten.

We are using the product mainly for our content delivery network and e-commerce. When the users go to our site, they get redirected to Akamai, which acts as a firewall and gets information from the cache or our web servers.

The solution allows us to cache content for geographic availability. It allows us to filter out countries where we are not doing business.

The ability to filter unwanted IP addresses is valuable to us. I'm pretty satisfied with the solution. The product has a good user interface.

The product should provide a secure NTP. We would like Akamai to offer it rather than going to another vendor to buy it.

My organization has been using the solution since 2018.

We have had no issues with the product’s stability. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

The solution has strong scalability. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

The technical support has been prompt. I'm pretty happy with it.

It would be difficult to conduct the type of e-commerce that we have without the product, especially given the security requirements for an online retailer.

The product’s price is high.

It is a cloud-based solution, and we are using the latest version. We recently cut over our internal DNS to Akamai’s hosted DNS. Akamai provided us with quite a bit of support with it. The deployment process of Akamai’s DNS was pretty straightforward. 

If a company is planning to use the solution, they need to ensure that the people that are going to be involved with the product get trained appropriately. The learning process is not straightforward. We should take advantage of the training provided by Akamai. Overall, rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to access and protect web applications. We have over 150 customers who use the solution. 

It is very easy to set WAF rules and defend paths.

The solution easily identifies, delays, or allows business traffic. 

There are many integration options available in one platform. 

The solution could offer even more integrations. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The stability is pretty good. 

The scalability is very good. 

The technical support is good so is rated a ten out of ten. 

Positive

The setup is easy and straightforward. 

We implement the solution for customers and can onboard within four hours. 

The solution is not expensive. 

I recommend the solution because it is a self-tuning engine for WAF rules. 

I rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

We use Akamai Kona Site Defender because we need CDN. We have mobile apps, and we host them internally. Sometimes, we also deploy an IPA file for iPad. I think all the users from our distributor are going to download directly from our server. We use Akamai to distribute all the IPA files to our network provider without any significant latency for our distributor.

I like that the charges are all based on usage and labor costs. For the time that we spend onboarding almost 252020 FQDN, Akamai charges us only for the traffic usage, but it's only charging us for the labor costs for onboarding.

It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now.

Akamai Kona Site Defender has been stable so far.

Because our third-party partner has a good relationship with Akamai, I think they can call the Akamai to join the incident call when an incident is happening. I think they're quite good and responsive for that. There is also a lot of documentation online regarding troubleshooting.

The initial setup is quite easy because we mainly outsource it to another company.

We just ask the third-party provider to implement the solution or engage Akamai and make some changes.

There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage.

I would recommend this solution to potential users. I think if the FIC has a CDN, it's easier in terms of onboarding. In terms of the commercial part and charging, I think Akamai is more efficient. I think it's important to have a CDN feature inside.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Akamai Kona Site Defender a nine.

We used Akamai Web Application Protector for protection from layer seven attacks.

Akamai Web Application Protector is a good solution that provides basic web application protection. The solution is quite cheap compared to Kona.

It would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper.

I have worked with Akamai Web Application Protector for three to five years.

Akamai Web Application Protector is a stable product.

Akamai Web Application Protector is a scalable product.

The solution's technical support team will define its SLA and respond to you within the SLA. Even if they don't find any solution, they'll return and tell you they are still working on the issue. They're quite open, and they work within their SLA.

Positive

The solution's initial setup was easy because it provided support for the implementation.

Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product.

We used the solution on the Akamai cloud. The solution's integration with other tools is very easy. The solution's UI or user interface is good. The solution is user-friendly and easy to implement. It is also very easy to understand how to implement it. You can understand the features quickly if you want to use it.

Akamai Web Application Protector is a good product that fulfills the customer's requirements.

Users should use Akamai Web Application Protector if their budget allows them to use it because it is quite a mature and expensive product.

If any customer needs improvement in Akamai Web Application Protector, they should go for Kona.

Overall, I rate Akamai Web Application Protector an eight out of ten.

The product is used as a web application firewall for Layer 7, Layer 3, and Layer 4 DDoS protection. It is also used for caching, acceleration, and faster delivery.

The product has a good UI. It is an easy-to-use solution.

The solution should improve the monitoring tool a little bit. The performance of the cloud monitoring tool is low.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The product is stable.

More than 100 people are using the solution in my organization.

The solution is easy to implement because Akamai provides support.

The solution is expensive.

People should definitely use the product. Most of the time, it will fulfill our requirements. The tool has many customers. The tool requires a lot of tuning. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.