Akamai unveils Firewall for AI to secure applications against advanced threats

Akamai’s Firewall for AI is a purpose-built security solution that protects AI applications, LLMs, and APIs by securing inbound queries and outbound responses, addressing growing cyberthreats targeting sensitive data within AI models

Akamai Technologies has introduced Firewall for AI, a new security solution designed to deliver multilayered protection for AI applications, safeguarding them from unauthorized access, adversarial prompts, and large-scale data scraping attacks.

As AI rapidly transforms industries, organizations are quickly deploying large language models (LLMs), agentic AI, and other emerging tools. However, these innovations introduce new security vulnerabilities, including adversarial attacks, model extraction, API abuse, and large-scale data scraping — threats that existing web application firewalls (WAFs) are not designed to mitigate. Combined with other new enhancements such as API LLM Discovery, Akamai Firewall for AI provides customers with a holistic set of AI-driven capabilities.

“Traditional security solutions do not stop AI threats,” said Rupesh Chokshi, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Application Security, Akamai. “As enterprises embrace the AI era to unlock new levels of productivity, AI security must be a key enabler. Firewall for AI is a game changer for any enterprise adopting AI. Securing AI applications isn’t just about blocking attacks, it’s about enabling innovation without compromising security or performance. With Firewall for AI, enterprise models, data, and intellectual property are protected from evolving threats.”

Introducing Firewall for AI: Defending AI models from emerging threats

AI models contain valuable proprietary knowledge and sensitive datasets, making them prime targets for attackers. Akamai Firewall for AI addresses this as a purpose-built security solution designed to protect AI-powered applications, LLMs, and AI-driven APIs from emerging cyberthreats. By securing inbound AI queries and outbound AI responses, the firewall closes security gaps that generative AI technologies introduce. 

Key features of Firewall for AI include:

·       Multilayered protection: Blocks adversarial inputs, unauthorized queries, and large-scale data scraping to prevent model manipulation and data exfiltration.

·       Real-time AI threat detection: Uses adaptive security rules to dynamically respond to evolving AI-based attacks, including prompt injection and model exploitation.

·       Compliance and data protection: Helps ensure AI-generated outputs remain safe and align with regulatory and industry standards.

·       Flexible deployment options: Deploys via Akamai edge, REST API, or reverse proxy, enabling seamless integration into existing security frameworks.

·       Proactive risk mitigation: Filters AI outputs to prevent toxic content, hallucinations, and unauthorized data leaks.

Expanding AI-driven security capabilities

To further protect customer AI deployments and empower secure AI adoption, Akamai is also announcing API LLM Discovery, an enhancement to the Akamai API Security platform, that automatically discovers GenAI and LLM API endpoints, categorizes them, and continuously updates security policies to prevent unauthorized access and abuse.