Akamai Acquires Bloxx

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Nov 02, 2015, 06:00 ET

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) announced today that it has acquired Bloxx, a provider of Secure Web Gateway (SWG) technology for protecting enterprises and their employees from Internet threats, in a cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to complement Akamai's cloud security strategy for protecting businesses against Internet vulnerabilities.

As enterprises and their employees increasingly leverage the Internet and adopt SaaS and cloud-based applications to run their business, a growing percentage of corporate network traffic and transactions is now outside of the traditional enterprise zone of control. Faced with this transformation, enterprises must remain responsible for the security and compliance of their employees' expanding reliance on the Internet.

To help address this challenge, Akamai plans to extend its portfolio of cloud-based security services to focus on the enterprise. With the goal of detecting and blocking threats to enterprise users, wherever they are located, Akamai's enterprise security offerings are designed to help protect against phishing, malware, and data exfiltration attacks targeted at corporate networks. These solutions are expected to go beyond traditional blacklisting by providing real-time risk assessment and enabling customers to specify the actions Akamai will take based on the detected threat level. The company believes that Bloxx's SWG technology will be instrumental to Akamai's goal of bringing this new suite of offerings to market in 2016.

"Akamai's traditional business has been about making the Internet fast, reliable and secure for web sites and applications," said Willie M. Tejada, senior vice president & general manager, Cloud Networking division at Akamai. "As we look to the future, our strategy includes doing the same for the enterprise, helping to protect corporate end users from the exposure to unsuitable content, viruses, malware, and data leakage. By adding Bloxx's SWG technologies to our solutions, coupled with the security intelligence that we obtain from our global platform, we believe we are well-positioned to help protect enterprises and their employees from a growing threat landscape."

Bloxx, headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland and established in 1999, is a privately-funded company with 55 employees. The acquisition is not material to Akamai's financials.

About Akamai^®As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company's advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about expected benefits to Akamai from the acquisition. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, inability to successfully integrate the technology of Bloxx or to develop products based on the SWG technology and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.