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Akamai's Kona Site Defender to protect the power company's websites against online attacks and ensure better availability

Munich - December 09, 2013 - Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications, has announced that 50Hertz, the German energy company, is using Akamai's cloud security solutions to protect its websites against increasingly large and sophisticated web attacks. Kona Site Defender enables effective protection and continuous availability of 50Hertz' sites without the need to invest in any additional security infrastructure.

As one of Germany's four transmission system operators, 50Hertz operates, maintains, plans and develops the 380/220-Kilovolt transmission network in Northern and Eastern Germany. It is also responsible for the secure integration of about 40 percent of Germany's installed wind power capacity. Reliability is paramount for a power company that is responsible for critical infrastructure and for the provision of an uninterrupted power supply. Any kind of image damage that puts this reliability to question can therefore cause a major loss of consumer confidence. In this context the website becomes a critical touchpoint: If the website is down and fails to respond, the negative impact on the public perception can be significant.

In November 2012 50Hertz was confronted with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that caused traffic volumes of up to 20,000 requests per second. The firewalls in place could not cope with the attack and the website had to go offline for four days. The situation was very critical and 50Hertz needed to counteract the attack very fast. The company therefore turned to Akamai's Kona Site Defender solution, an integrated, scalable security solution, that extends security beyond the data center, delivering DDoS protection and maintaining site performance in the face of attack traffic.

"The Akamai team was fully committed to helping us build a wall of protection fast to successfully fight off the immediate threat," said Dominik Spannheimer, CIO at 50Hertz. "As a result, the attack could be repelled in a very short time and since implementing the Akamai solution, we have not been confronted with any further attacks."

Kona Site Defender is built on the distributed infrastructure of the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ of more than 141,000 servers worldwide and offers a full range of countermeasures. The cloud security solution now protects all 50Hertz websites, i.e. the news and information pages as well as the corporate portal, and ensures that they are always up and running and available. 50Hertz also has access to the Akamai customer portal Luna, which includes a security monitor that provides the company with comprehensive reports. As a result 50Hertz always has an overview of all events happening on its websites and can recognize attack traffic or unusual traffic spikes very quickly and reliably.

"Website-availability is crucial for any business - it plays an important part building a reliable image and creating trust for the brand," explained Michael Heuer, Regional Vice President and Country Manager Central Europe at Akamai. "The security solutions provided by Akamai support companies to optimally protect their websites against web attacks - without impacting site performance. What's more, the site is kept up and running for customers and partners with no additional investments in the IT- infrastructure."

Akamai provides more information and fast support on its DDoS-hotline.

About 50Hertz
With its almost 800 employees, 50Hertz takes care of the operation and the expansion of the transmission network. Furthermore, the company is responsible for the management of the overall electrical system throughout the German Länder of Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. As transmission system operator active in the Central European market, 50Hertz is responsible for the secure integration of renewable energies, the development of the European electricity market and for maintaining a high level of security of supply. Since 2010, Belgian grid operator Elia and Australian infrastructure fund IFM are shareholders of 50Hertz, holding stakes of 60% and 40% respectively. As a European transmission system operator, 50Hertz is part of the Elia Group and a member of ENTSO-E, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. For more information: http://www.50hertz.com

About Akamai
Akamai® is the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications. At the core of the Company's solutions is the Akamai Intelligent Platform™ providing extensive reach, coupled with first class reliability, security, visibility and expertise. Akamai removes the complexities of connecting the increasingly mobile world, supporting 24/7 consumer demand, and enabling enterprises to securely leverage the cloud. To learn more about how Akamai is accelerating the pace of innovation in a hyperconnected world, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

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