Akamai CEO Apologizes for 2 Recent Service Disruptions

Akamai acknowledges the “unacceptable situation” two recent service disruptions in as many months caused customers “and our need to restore” their confidence, blogged CEO Tom Leighton. “Many of our customers experienced interruptions in service, and for that I sincerely apologize,” he said. “Any downtime is unacceptable, and all of us at Akamai deeply regret the impact.” Neither disruption was caused by a cyberattack, Akamai said. “We have conducted a thorough review and root cause analysis of both incidents,” Leighton wrote Friday. Though the “direct causes of the incidents were different, our platform maintenance processes played a contributing role in both cases,” he said. “The safety mechanisms we had put in place to prevent problems associated with updates to these services did not perform in the manner necessary to prevent a disruption.” Akamai is performing “a full audit of all tools, systems, and processes associated with updates for all of our services,” he said: Until the audit is complete, “there will be additional manual supervision of all updates.”