Lelah Manz, senior vice president for web performance at Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq: AKAM), said edge computing complements cloud-based centralization that could help government agencies manage security risks and mitigate inefficiencies.
“Processing data locally at edge nodes can eliminate latency bottlenecks and open up opportunities to capitalize on user- and location-specific data that is available at the edge,” Manz wrote.
“That decentralized approach can also help minimize the need to transfer potentially sensitive data,” she added.
Manz discussed how an edge-based Web Application and API Protection platform works to help agencies protect data, applications, websites and application programming interfaces across any cloud strategy from data theft caused by distributed denial-of-service attacks.
“All network-layer DDoS attacks, including those by large IoT botnets, are instantly dropped at the edge because a WAAP functions as a reverse proxy and only accepts traffic via ports 80 and 443,” she noted. “Any application-layer DDoS or web attack will be automatically inspected and stopped at the edge without disrupting access for legitimate users.”
Manz called on agencies to look at edge computing as “an additional tool that is fairly easy to use and does not replace but instead complements existing systems and concepts” and identify use cases that could help them achieve cost savings.
