Content delivery network and cloud services provider Akamai Technologies Inc. today announced the Akamai Guardicore Platform, a new platform designed to assist businesses in meeting their zero-trust goals.

Claimed to be the first security platform that combines zero-trust network access and microsegregation, the Guardicore Platform helps security teams stop ransomware, meet compliance mandates and secure their hybrid workforce and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Akamai argues that as ransomware groups have become more aggressive in their methodology, including extortion and vulnerability exploitation, existing prescriptive security tools can’t keep up. The risks are real: A previous report from Akamai found that the rampant abuse of zero-day vulnerabilities, for which there’s not yet a patch, and one-day vulnerabilities, for which there’s a patch that hasn’t yet been applied, had seen a 143% year-over-year increase in victims in the first quarter of 2023.

“Security teams are under more pressure than ever as they face ransomware threats and manage stringent compliance standards, all while trying to consolidate vendors and manage budgets,” said Pavel Gurvich, senior vice president and general manager of Enterprise Security at Akamai. “As organizations are adopting zero trust, they are looking for simplified experiences that offer broad visibility and granular controls for all assets and access policies.”

The Guardicore Platform enables zero trust through an integrated combination of microsegmentation, ZTNA, multifactor authentication, DNS firewall and threat hunting. The microsegmentation component has been specifically designed with improvements that are aimed at streamlining workflows and enhancing security posture.

The service also offers multifactor segmentation that recognizes authentication checks as part of microsegmentation rules. The policy ability enables for quick implementation of researched and best practice-based policies and the integration of worksites to allow scoped delegation.

The integration between ZTNA and microsegmentation is offered through a single agent, console and vendor, streamlining the adoption of zero trust for more businesses. The platform ensures broad zero-trust coverage both on-premises and in the cloud, with additional support for remote and in-office workforces.

The platforms unified policy engine simplifies the enforcement of security policies for various forms of traffic without the need to switch syntax or consoles. Guardicore Platform can be rapidly deployed across enterprises with minimal impact on performance, delivering administrators extensive visibility and the ability to create and manage zero-trust policies.

Because it wouldn’t be a new service in 2024 without a dose of artificial intelligence, the platform uses AI to allow security professionals to ask natural language questions of their network instead of manually poring through logs. The platform also leverages AI to simplify the process of network labeling.

Image: Akamai