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US-based cloud optimization services provider Akamai Technologies today launched cloud defense solutions to protect enterprise users from sophisticated Web attacks. 

A McAfee study found that cybercrime costs global businesses about one trillion dollars each year. Akamai's new cloud defense solutions are expected to help enterprises and cloud service providers fortify the perimeter defense around their network infrastructure for dynamic Web sites and mission-critical business applications.

"The Akamai network saw more distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against our customers' websites in the fourth quarter of 2010 than in the first three quarters of the year combined," said Tom Leighton, chief scientist and co-founder, Akamai.

"Companies understand the benefits of the cloud and continue to push business-critical data and operations there; however, the need to protect these assets from the growing frequency and sophistication of Web attacks increases dramatically as a result," he added.

A recent Forrester survey showed that 74% of surveyed companies experienced one or more DDoS attacks in the past year, with 31% of these attacks resulting in service disruption.

In December 2010, Akamai observed high volumes of coordinated attacks against five independent Internet Retailer Top 500 customers from 30 Nov through 2 Dec. The attacks caused several websites to experience up to 10,000 times their normal daily traffic, and were thwarted by the Akamai network. According to Akamai estimates, the attacks could have cost the retailers more than US$15 million dollars in lost revenue during the three-day period, had they not been protected.

 

To botnets attacks and other malicious clients and sources, companies are recommended to implement a multi-layered defense architecture to keep attacks away. With 85,000 servers already deployed, Akamai touts to operate "the world's largest distributed computing network," which has the ability to "absorb large-scale DDoS attacks and offer failover service."