IT Security Vendor Analysis: Casting Akamai, CloudFlare, Imperva, F5 and Distil Networks in Their Starring Roles

This report examines five major vendors – Akamai, Imperva, CloudFlare, F5 and DistilNetworks - and outlines how their products can coordinate to successfully secure web infrastructure and online data. Each company’s ‘Corporate DNA’ leads to a degree of specialization, and attendant limitations.

The potential threat of sophisticated new online attacks has vastly increased the burden on every category of security vendor. In this challenging new environment, CDNs struggle with dynamic content and enormous DDoS attacks, while WAFs contend with undocumented access requests. Many security appliances can’t assess and adapt to threats in real time, and potentially block legitimate traffic. Recent website breaches also demonstrate that traditional WAFs, CDNs, and DDoS mitigation solutions have failed to keep pace with the variety, volume and sophistication of today’s bot and botnet attacks. To address this security threat, bot detection and mitigation services must evolve beyond absorbing rare volumetric attacks into scrubbing centers, or simplistic IP – and user agent-based detection.