Securing the Industrial Edge

The collaboration addresses a persistent bottleneck in operational technology: the inability of older equipment to run modern security software. In environments like water treatment plants and power stations, installing additional software often risks system crashes or production downtime. By offloading security processes to the Nvidia BlueField DPU, the companies claim they can provide observability and micro-segmentation without placing a burden on the host system’s primary CPU.

"By offloading segmentation and observability to the DPU, we're giving organizations a way to stop attacks in their tracks while maximizing CPU power," stated Ofer Wolf, Akamai’s Senior Vice President of Enterprise Security. This hardware-based approach allows for real-time threat mitigation while ensuring that the industrial equipment's core processing remains uninterrupted.

The new offering also positions both companies to help industrial operators comply with tightening global regulatory standards for infrastructure security. Akamai and Nvidia expect the joint solution to be available for deployment starting in the second quarter of 2024.