Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
Akamai wants to win more cybersecurity contracts in Korea
Lee Kyung-joon, country manager of Akamai Technologies Korea, speaks during a press conference at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas hotel, Wednesday. / Courtesy of Akamai Technologies Korea
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Akamai Technologies, a U.S.-based content delivery and cloud service provider, is trying to secure more Korean companies in the cybersecurity sector, strengthening sales and marketing efforts here, the company said Wednesday.
Established in 1998, Akamai is known for providing content delivery network (CDN) services, which involves distributing and relaying connections between data centers and end users to facilitate data transmission and avoid network congestion.
The U.S. tech company has expanded its business portfolio into the cybersecurity segment, releasing cybersecurity measures for enterprise customers. To promote its cybersecurity service, it held an Akamai Security Summit in Seoul.
Lee Kyung-joon, country manager of Akamai Korea, explained that the word Akamai means smart or intelligent in Hawaiian, adding that the tech company has grown up with the development of the internet.
“Akamai has grown up with the development of internet technologies. We have offered the CDN service throughout the world and we have been expanding our business portfolio into the cybersecurity market,” Lee told reporters during a press conference at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas hotel.
Lee said Akamai has been focusing more on the cybersecurity sector because more and more companies that have adopted cloud computing for their corporate management systems feel their cybersecurity defense systems are vulnerable to cyberattacks.
“In the era of cloud computing, concerns about cybersecurity have been increased because of cloud computing, which enables employees to access the internal data of the companies from outside,” Lee said.
Korean companies spent 2 trillion won on cybersecurity in 2018, which was a 4 percent increase from the previous year, according to research firm Gartner. It is expected to grow to 2.2 trillion won in 2019.
Lee admitted that not many Korean companies are using its security product but Akamai's Korean branch has been beefing up sales and marketing efforts to secure more customer companies here.
“Currently, Yuanta Securities has been strengthening its cybersecurity capabilities by using our enterprise threat protector. We have been intensifying sales and marketing efforts for Korean companies since October 2018,” Lee said.
Under its “zero trust” cybersecurity strategy, which is based on the philosophy that “trust nothing, verify everything and maintain consistent controls,” Akamai said its customer companies can maximize their cybersecurity performance.
Ohad Parush, vice president of the firm, said its cybersecurity service has been proven safe and effective as “37.4 million malicious application-level attacks are denied per hour” by its cybersecurity system.
“Akamai has had the strongest and broadest security measures. As we have so much power and our edge platform is so big, we have developed security products for the past years. Now we are the most intelligent security platform in the world,” the vice president said.