Akamai to Buy Cybersecurity Firm Prolexic for $370 Million

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304854804579234091720329338

By BEN FOX RUBIN And DREW FITZGERALD
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 2, 2013

Akamai Technologies Inc. agreed to buy Prolexic Technologies Inc. for 
about $370 million in cash, expanding its cybersecurity offerings.

Prolexic specializes in technology that guards data centers against 
distributed denial of service attacks, an increasingly common threat that 
can shut down a website by flooding its address with fake information 
requests. Akamai Chief Executive Tom Leighton said such attacks often 
overwhelm otherwise strong technology because the onslaughts are becoming 
bigger and less predictable.

"Scale has really been a killer for the traditional ways of defending a 
website," Mr. Leighton said in an interview. "You need to stop the attack 
traffic close to where it's coming from before it even gets to the data 
center."

Rising demand for online content continues to drive revenue growth at 
Akamai, which runs a network of servers and other equipment that speed 
delivery of Internet content. Akamai has reported double-digit sales 
growth in recent years, and results in recent quarters often beat its own 
expectations as well as Wall Street estimates.

[...]



--
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