UK Minister for Universities and Science meets senior Akamai representatives to discuss the UK Government strategy on cybersecurity

London, 20 June 2012 – Akamai Technologies Ltd, a leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere, today welcomed Rt Hon David Willetts, UK Minister for Universities and Science to its global headquarters in Massachusetts.

Mr Willetts, who is the minister responsible for cybersecurity in the UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, toured the firm’s state-of-the-art Network Operations Command Center (NOCC), which enables proactive monitoring and troubleshooting of all servers in the global Akamai Intelligent PlatformTM and is central to Akamai having the industry's best view of the real-time, global condition of the Internet.

Following the NOCC tour, Mr. Willetts met with senior representatives from Akamai’s public sector team, who shared best practices on how the company is helping other governments to manage cyber threats. In the US, for example, the country’s military and 13 out of 15 cabinet level agencies of federal government already trust Akamai for critical and sensitive online initiatives.

Mr. Willetts is overseeing the UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills strategy on cybersecurity, which includes the development of hubs to enable businesses to share information on cyber threats and a commitment to find new ways to bring businesses, academics and government together to exploit the latest security innovations.
 
Mr. Willetts said: “Cyberspace has revolutionised how we live and work and offers enormous economic and social opportunities. But it also presents significant security concerns. My visit to Akamai in Boston gave me a great insight on how the company is working with governments and other organisations worldwide to manage these risks.”

Tom Leighton, co-founder and chief scientist at Akamai, commented: “There is a growing dependence on the cloud and other online resources for delivering services and critical applications to both constituents and government employees. At the same time, this proliferation of public-facing Web sites opens new attack surfaces and can create new security concerns. Akamai is providing security solutions to governments and public sector organizations across the world, and we are delighted to host Mr. Willetts at our headquarters.”

Mr. Willetts and his team are visiting Boston to attend the 2012 BIO International conference.