With the advent of smart devices, users today consume a vast array of content ranging from sports and news to films on such devices. 

However, it is worth considering how these platforms ensure smooth delivery of this content to your devices. This is where Content Delivery Network (CDN)—which is a distributed network of servers or nodes that work together to deliver web content, such as videos, images, HTML pages, and other web assets, to end-users based on their geographic location—plays a crucial role.

‘Edgio’, which is a US-based company providing CDN services in India, is helping indigenous businesses such as the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and edtech platform Byju’s—for instance—improve their operations.

“Edgio helps the world’s most innovative companies develop and deliver online experiences faster, safer, and with more control with our platform,” Arjun Kallawar, Head of Solutions Engineering – India and Southeast Asia, Edgio, said.

In this exclusive interview with Analytics India Magazine, Arjun discusses Edgio’s web security solutions and how the company is helping its clients improve their operations.

AIM: How has Edgio’s web security solutions helped its clients in India improve their services? Can you share some use cases?

Arjun: In India, there is an immense potential for content, transactional and e-commerce applications in India and we want to support the growth by delivering fast and secure experiences to our customers.

Our superior network and application solutions have delivered significant improvements in the web page response and loading time for the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). We improved cache hit ratios, reduced traffic back to their origin, controlled infrastructure costs, and increased ROI by using detailed performance metrics and analytics information. 

By using dual Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), we reduced malicious traffic and further reduced the load on back-end infrastructure, which improved the efficiency of their operations. BSE recorded gains of more than 30% in certain underserved metro regions.

Similarly, for BYJU’s, we used Edgio’s private network backbone to deliver content, which made them completely bypass internet congestion in the middle-mile. With our dense architecture enabling very high caching efficiencies for content, BYJU’S has consistently experienced more than 99% caching efficiency. 

Bringing content closer to end users, reducing latency and very short video load times further resulted in better performance for student end users. BYJU also saved costs by greatly reducing egress charges on origin and by being able to move content to infrequent access storage solutions.

AIM: Can you talk a bit about your web security solutions?

Arjun: Edgio’s web security solutions run on a globally distributed edge network that protects businesses from vulnerabilities and mitigates attacks. Some of the special features of our web security solutions include:

DDoS Protection which automatically detects and mitigates DDoS attacks on our distributed network edge—before they impact your web infrastructure. Our software-defined, always-on DDoS protection is backed by a massive global network with 70x the capacity of the largest recorded attacks.

Advanced Bot Management which is powered by AI and ML to accurately determine, in real time, if an application request is from a fraudulent source and mitigate it.

Web Application and API Protection which speeds up response times to vulnerabilities and threats with comprehensive web application and API protection solutions, including a dual WAF mode to predict the impact of a patch before deployment.

Origin Shield which provides an intermediate caching layer reducing requests back to your origin, improving availability and helping you lower egress costs.

Transport Layer Security (TLS 1.2+) which encrypts web content to prevent data theft and other tampering.

AIM: What value proposition Edgio offers that sets it apart from its competitors?

Arjun: One thing that makes Edgio different is that we use a flat fee structure which means that charges for our services remain fixed, regardless of usage. Usually, companies in our space charge extra from their clients when they provide them with additional services in case of a cyberattack. But we don’t believe in the same, for us, client satisfaction is utmost and, hence, we charge a flat fee no matter how many attacks our client may face. 

AIM: How did the acquisition of Yahoo’s Edgecast impact Edgio’s operations? 

Arjun: For about two decades, legacy Limelight products and services focussed on streaming fast and downloading large files quicker. However, there was a gap around mitigating intelligent cyber-attacks at the edge of the internet. 

Today, about 40–50% of the web traffic is bot traffic and this number is going to go up further in future. Edgecast’s acquisition is helping Edgio enter new industry verticals that are seeking digital performance and need holistic cybersecurity—ecommerce, BFSI, fintech and more.

AIM: Share your thoughts on the web security solution market in India. 

Arjun: According to the latest report by Statista, the Cybersecurity market in India is projected to grow by 14.61% (2023–2027) resulting in a market volume of USD 4.09 billion in 2027. The market’s largest segment is Security Services with a projected market volume of USD 1.19 billion in 2023. 

A survey on Annual Global Digital Trust Insight by PwC’s also highlights that over 82% of business executives in India foresee an increase in the cybersecurity budget in 2023. The robust growth is driven by an increasing awareness of data risks and cyberattacks, where companies need to be agile in combating these threats. Organisations are actively strategising to increase their spending to tackle unanticipated cyberattacks.