Cloudflare and Akamai are both leaders in providing cloud security and network services for global enterprises. Each has their own nuances (or ‘flare’), and understanding these differences can help you make a better-informed decision. In summary, Cloudflare has always been security-first, while Akamai is an established leader in content delivery.
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A choice between these two leaders can be difficult because they are both great companies with cutting-edge technology and a lot of similar offerings.
Cloudflare was founded in 2009 and originally focused on providing security for internet properties through DDoS mitigation - which drove them to build massive network capacity on a global scale. Since then, their portfolio has quickly grown to expand security offerings and include network services (like application optimization and content delivery) that leverage the performance and reach of their global networks.
Akamai was founded in 1998 and originally focused on content delivery. Although content delivery serves a different purpose than DDoS mitigation, the result was the same - they built a really big and high-performing global network footprint. Their portfolio has grown to expand their application and content delivery offerings, as well as to include a wide selection of enterprise security offerings.
So, Cloudflare and Akamai both have fast networks on a huge scale with global reach. They both offer relatively complete portfolios of zero-trust enterprise security solutions, as well as application optimization and content delivery solutions. In many cases, offerings are so similar that decisions may have to come down to specific features in an individual product or service. Still, expect Cloudflare to continue bringing state-of-the-art security solutions like browser isolation to market on the earlier side, while you can expect Akamai’s solutions to incorporate a heavy focus on getting applications and content delivery traffic to customer endpoints as fast and efficiently as possible.
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Cloudflare isn’t a SIEM, but Cloudflare’s position on an organization’s network perimeter makes it an ideal log collector for SIEM ingestion and analysis. Cloudflare offers comprehensive logging features with standard log formats that can be ingested into SIEMs including Splunk and Sumologic, or they can be sent to 3rd party storage providers including Microsoft Azure blob storage, Amazon AWS S3 storage, DataDog, Google Cloud Storage, or almost anywhere else for other types of post-processing.
Like Cloudflare, Akamai’s position within an organization’s network infrastructure allows ideal access to useful log data for SIEM analysis. Akamai’s developer documentation describes SIEM integration with Splunk, as well as SIEM integration using CEF which is a standard logging format that can be ingested by most other SIEM platforms.
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Cloudflare isn’t an endpoint security solution, but integration with endpoint security software can be complementary. For example, Cloudflare may be able to provide additional context to endpoint security software for threat detection, or endpoint security software may be able to take response actions (like blocking IP addresses or DNS names, for example) in Cloudflare. Cloudflare advertises partnerships with leading endpoint security products including SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, VMWare Carbon Black, and Tanium.
Like Cloudflare, Akamai is not an endpoint security solution, although integration with endpoint security software could provide security benefits. Akamai documentation describes configurations for working with Symantec Endpoint Protection, CrowdStrike, and VMWare Carbon Black. Although it doesn’t appear that existing integrations are very deep or feature-rich, extensive APIs exist for development of endpoint security integrations to suit most requirements any given organization may have.
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Cloudflare’s web application firewall and secure web gateway products allow for file analysis which can include antivirus scanning or policy rules based on file contents.
Akamai’s Enterprise Threat Protector secure web gateway can enable file analysis for threat detection or policy rules based on file contents. Additionally, its advertised to leverage five different malware detection engines for more accurate file classification and enhanced zero-day detection.
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Cloud workload protection is another one of the primary problems that Cloudflare solves. Cloudflare’s portfolio includes a cloud access security broker (CASB) as well as Cloudflare Access, which can provide context-aware and identity-aware zero-trust access to cloud resources. Additionally, Cloudflare’s web application firewall and multi-cloud access control functionality enable the use of zero-trust network access policies to deliver segmentation between cloud workloads.
Although Akamai doesn’t advertise its Enterprise Application Access product as a CASB, it solves similar problems by protecting cloud-based resources through enforcement of zero-trust network access policies.
Additionally, Akamai’s ability to protect cloud workloads is dramatically enhanced by its acquisition of Guardicore, given that Guardicore is a purpose-built micro-segmentation solution for protecting multi-cloud environments.
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Cloudflare isn’t a vendor risk management tool, but its ability to provide zero-trust network access for any resource to anyone, anywhere on the internet makes it ideal for securing 3rd party access. Additionally, its logging capabilities allow it to provide evidence to support 3rd party vendor risk audit activities.
Like Cloudflare, Akamai isn’t a vendor risk management tool. Also like Cloudflare, products like Akamai Enterprise Application Access can help organizations enforce zero-trust network access policies when providing vendors with access to their IT assets, and reporting capabilities can support audit activities.
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Cloudflare’s solutions for zero-trust network access are designed to reduce insider risk by preventing insider threat activities such as lateral movement. Additionally, its secure web gateway’s ability to inspect traffic originating from internal assets can help organizations reduce risk of insider threats by detecting unusual or unauthorized insider behavior.
Like Cloudflare, Akamai’s secure web gateway supports insider risk management activities and insider threat detection by enabling traffic inspection for detection of potential insider threat activity.
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Cloudflare’s identity governance and access management features are extensive, and they are designed for integration with a variety of enterprise identity and access management systems and tools. This allows organizations to leverage their central identity provider of choice for providing Cloudflare services with identity-awareness and context-awareness while making decisions to allow or block traffic.
Akamai’s identity governance and access management features are also designed for use in the enterprise. They offer integrations with most identity providers and other identity and access management tools that an organization may have, and they also provide some of their own identity and access management functionality in their Akamai MFA product.
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Cloudflare’s web application firewall and their new API Shield product are ideal for securing IoT services that may need to secure automated API access from IoT devices anywhere on the internet. Additionally, Cloudflare’s TLS Client Authentication ensures a mutually secure connection between IoT devices and services.
Akamai’s Intelligent Edge Platform can enable IoT security by faciliting a secure edge to which IoT devices distributed across the internet can securely connect. Additionally, Akamai recently acquired Asavie, which is a security solution designed to deploy and enforce consistent IoT security policies.
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Cloudflare is not a vulnerability management solution, although their extensive APIs can enable development of integration for an organization with a use-case.
Like Cloudflare, Akamai is not a vulnerability management solution, but integration capabilities exist to enable complementary integration with a vulnerability management solution if a customer had a use-case.
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Cloudflare is designed to be a platform which is part of an organization’s foundation or infrastructure, which means that it’s not designed for anyone to spend a lot of time working within Cloudflare applications. As such, instant communications aren’t as important for Cloudflare as they would be in other network or security operations tools which are actively used by analysts.
Like Cloudflare, Akamai is designed to be an infrastructure platform which serves as a foundation for the applications which people use every day. Therefore, instant communications within Akamai applications would not serve any great benefit.
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Cloudflare advertises compliance with ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type 2, PCI DSS 3.2.1, and BSI Qualification for DDoS Mitigation. Additionally, it advertises compliance with privacy frameworks including GDPR and HIPAA.
Akamai boasts a very mature compliance program and advertises compliance with ISO 27001, ISO 27002, FedRAMP, PCI DSS, SOC 2 Type 2, NIST, Privacy Shield, MAS, PSD2, IRAP, and local privacy laws.
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(SD WAN rating : Cybersecurity rating)
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