Akamai Technologies, Inc.

Andrew B Ellis

Charles E Gero

Andrew F Champagne

Ravi Sundaram

Hariharan Rahul

Michael M Afergan

Hariharan S Rahul

A traffic on-boarding method is operative at an acceleration server of an overlay network. It begins at the acceleration server when that server receives an assertion generated by an identity provider (IdP), the IdP having generated the assertion upon receiving an authentication request from a service provider (SP), the SP having generated the authentication request upon receiving from a client a request for a protected resource. The acceleration server receives the assertion and forwards it to the SP, which verifies the assertion and returns to the acceleration server a token, together with the protected resource. The acceleration server then returns a response to the requesting client that includes a version of the protected resource that points back to the acceleration server and not the SP. When the acceleration server then receives an additional request from the client, the acceleration server interacts with the service provider using an overlay network optimization.

Traffic on-boarding for acceleration through out-of-band security authenticators

The present invention addresses the known vulnerabilities of Web site infrastructure by making an origin server substantially inaccessible via Internet Protocol traffic. In particular, according to a preferred embodiment, the origin server is 'shielded' from the publicly-routable IP address space. Preferably, only given machines (acting as clients) can access the origin server, and then only under restricted, secure circumstances. In a preferred embodiment, these clients are the servers located in a 'parent' region of a content delivery network (CDN) tiered distribution hierarchy. The invention implements an origin server shield that protects a site against security breaches and the high cost of Web site downtime by ensuring that the only traffic sent to an enterprise's origin infrastructure preferably originates from CDN servers. The inventive &#x201c;shielding&#x201d; technique protects a site's Web servers (as well as backend infrastructure, such as application servers, databases, and mail servers) from unauthorized intrusion&#x2014;improving site uptime and in the process, customer loyalty.

Method and system for protecting web sites from public internet threats

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Medford, MA, United States of America

Andrew B Ellis