Download City of Orlando Case Study
- Gained on-demand protection from malicious activity and unauthorized access
- Avoided Web infrastructure build-out
- Provided instant scalability to millions of potential end users
Orlando is one of the world’s fastest-growing cities and one of Florida’s major cities with the ninth busiest airport in the U.S. The city operates a number of Web sites to serve its citizens, local business owners, and visitors.
As a center for digital media and bio-medicine, cyber communications, awareness, and security have become a top priority for Orlando. In the summer of 2011, the city’s Web sites were targeted by a cyber-activist group. Upon launch of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, the sites were disabled for substantial periods of time. Although the City maintained a steady level of Internet security via a 24-hour vulnerability mitigation process, it could no longer continue to exhaust its resources. It decided to seek outside help.
The City of Orlando contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Akamai had helped the DHS protect against DDoS attacks and recommended that the City of Orlando reach out to Akamai. “We needed to immediately shore up our defense, and it wasn’t practical to do so by building out our own infrastructure,” explains Rosa Akhtarkhavari, Chief Information Office & Chief Security Officer for the City of Orlando.
“Using Akamai’s cloud-based solutions to maintain our online
presence fits with our strategy to right-size online delivery capabilities
via a cost-effective, resilient, and highly scalable solution.”
— Rosa Akhtarkhavari, Chief Information Officer & Chief Security Officer, City of Orlando
