Akamai today announced a series of updates to its zero-trust security portfolio designed to help organizations bolster network security.

The improvements are based on technologies that Akamai gained via the $600 million acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity vendor Guardicore in 2021. Akamai Hunt is an evolution of the Guardicore product of the same name that provides threat-hunting capabilities to help organizations identify security risks and attackers that could be lurking within a network. Hunt now benefits from network telemetry and threat intelligence provided by the broader Akamai platform, which the company claims will improve the overall efficacy of risk mitigation.

The new Akamai Agentless Segmentation technology extends Guardicore's existing segmentation service for network isolation to be able to work in IoT and operational network (OT) deployments. Network segmentation is a foundational element of zero-trust architecture, isolating different pieces of a network in an attempt to reduce the potential attack surface.

"Akamai Hunt is part of Akamai’s overall zero trust suite of solutions," Uri Hershcovits, director of engineering at Akamai, told SDxCentral. "It combines with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, which enforces zero-trust policies within an organization’s internal networks, and utilizes the rich telemetry to help customers eliminate threats in their environments, apply patches to vulnerabilities, and improve overall security."

Hershcovits noted that the Hunt service started before Guardicore was acquired by Akamai. He said that the service has been improved significantly post-acquisition, mainly by integrating with the data sources and threat intelligence Akamai holds.

"Since Akamai’s acquisition of Guardicore, we have focused on scaling the service to meet broader demand from customers with larger environments," Hershcovits said.

The updated Hunt service now makes use of Akamai’s global domain name system (DNS), web application firewall (WAF), and distributed denial of service (DDoS) footprints to improve Hunt’s detection abilities. Additionally, Hershcovits said that the former Guardicore team has improved the engine on which Hunt is built, meaning it can run 100-times faster than before, leading to a significantly reduced time-to-detection.

Hershcovits explained that the Hunt detection engine consists of various detection methods and different algorithms. Some of them rely on trained machine learning (ML) models, some of them are based on baselines, and others are based on indicators of compromise (IOCs), threat intelligence, and known attack vectors.

Hershcovits said that Hunt paired with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provides a managed threat hunting service.

"Once suspicious activity is identified, dedicated security experts investigate and assist with incident response, working closely with the customer to remediate compromised assets," he said. "However, Hunt does more than only threat hunting as it gets the most security value out of the Akamai Guardicore Segmentation platform, detecting risks and helping customers to constantly improve their environment’s security posture."

The Akamai Guardicore Segmentation platform to date has been largely focused on typical IT networks and runs with the use of an agent software to operate. When dealing with IoT and OT it's not always possible to get a software agent installed that will enable segmentation. That's where the new Akamai Agentless Segmentation service announced today will fit.

"Akamai Agentless Segmentation allows organizations to protect workloads on IoT/OT environments in the same manner that they protect other workloads with zero-trust security policies," Hershcovits said. "Previously, in order to run on Guardicore, an agent was necessary."