This year’s Amazon Prime Day will bring Prime members (and those who sign up for a free trial More

While TVs might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Labor Day sales, retailers like Amazon More

Akamai CEO Tom Leighton touted the company’s expansion this week on the heels of a Q4 earnings report that saw the company bring in a revenue of $905 million for the quarter and $3.5 billion for the full fiscal year. Akamai announced on Tuesday that it is acquiring infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform provider Linode for about $900 million. Leighton said Linode is a very developer-friendly IaaS provider that makes it very easy to spin up a virtual machine or a container to build and run applications. “By combining that with Akamai, we’re the world’s leaders in content delivery and web security. We make your applications really fast and we protect them from all sorts of attacks. We have the world’s most distributed edge computing platform for applications that need to be scaled up instantly on a global basis to respond to demand and various geographies in a serverless way,” Leighton told ZDNet in an interview. “Putting them together is a very powerful combination because now developers and enterprises will be able to much more easily do the whole thing on Akamai. They can build the apps on Akamai, run them there, deliver them from Akamai and have them be secured as part of Akamai. Akamai becomes the world’s most distributed cloud services provider, all the way from the cloud to the edge, and we’ll make it really easy to build, run and secure your applications online.”He went on to explain that Linode has great customer support and is already in 11 locations, which Akamai is going to “dramatically” expand. Linode does not have much of a sales force today, so Akamai will help them build that out, Leighton said. Akamai will be integrating in more than 250 employees from Linode’s headquarters in Philadelphia, which will bring them to well over 9,000 employees globally. Leighton also noted the September 2021 acquisition of Israel-based Guardicore, a cybersecurity company that offers a micro-segmentation solution to reduce the potential attack surface of corporate networks, secure applications, and meet compliance standards.

Leighton said the two acquisitions are the largest they have done in the last 20 years and noted that since closing the Guardicore deal, they have nearly doubled their initial projections of $30 million to $35 million in revenue for the company. “The micro-segmentation that they do is really important for stopping the impact of ransomware. Ransomware is a huge problem today and the visibility it gives our customers into what’s going on in their internal networks is really important,” he explained.  “When you put it all together, Akamai is now positioned as the most distributed cloud services provider, with three market-leading capabilities and pillars to support growth. That’s a pretty exciting place to be.” Akamai saw significant growth throughout 2021 in their security services, which contributed to revenue increases of 25% year over year and growth in their edge application services, which was up 30% year over year. According to Leighton, the company is expecting the cloud compute category — which includes edge applications, its net storage business and Linode — to reach “well over half a billion dollars in 2023.”While the company has seen growth in overall revenue, their earnings per share may grow a bit less than usual due to the acquisitions. But Leighton predicted the EPS would bounce back next year. “We generate a ton of cash so we’re in a position to make acquisitions that would benefit our customers and shareholders. I’m really excited about the future. We have a great history of innovation in the internet, beginning with the invention of content delivery and then bringing high quality streaming online, application acceleration, and of course, web security,” he said. “We were pioneers in edge computing and now we’re taking a big step forward in cloud computing with Linode.”

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The vast majority of ransomware attacks targeting the enterprise sector occur outside normal working hours, during the night or over the weekend. According to a report published today by US cyber-security FireEye, 76% of all ransomware infections in the enterprise sector occur outside working hours, with 49% taking place during nighttime over the weekdays, and […] More

NortonLifeLock has launched a dedicated cryptocurrency mining setup for users of the Norton 360 antivirus platform.Announced on Wednesday, NortonLifeLock says that the new feature, Norton Crypto, will be rolled out today for users signed up to Norton’s early adopter program. Norton Crypto has been designed to allow users to “safely and easily mine cryptocurrency.” In the initial stages, users will be able to mine for Ethereum (ETH).  Mining software leverages a PC’s CPU and graphics capabilities to obtain cryptocurrencies ranging from ETH to Monero (XMR). However, in order to do so, NortonLifeLock says users may have to disable their antivirus solutions — potentially Norton 360 included — and this could allow “unvetted code” to compromise their systems.  The vendor added that cryptocurrency miners taking this risk could lead to the theft of their hard-won coins, or loss if coins are kept in cold storage on user hard drives. To promote the new feature, NortonLifeLock claims that Norton Crypto will protect against these pitfalls by storing coins in a cloud-based wallet, Norton Crypto Wallet.  A company spokesperson told The Verge that once cryptocurrency has been earned, it will be possible to “pull money into Coinbase,” which suggests that Norton Crypto users may also need to sign up for an account with the trading platform — unless other alternative exchanges or means of transfer are also offered. 

“We are proud to be the first consumer Cyber Safety company to offer coin miners the ability to safely and easily turn the idle time on their PCs into an opportunity to earn digital currency,” commented Gagan Singh, NortonLifeLock chief product officer. Users in the US should be aware that cryptocurrency is considered a taxable asset and so earnings may have to be declared.  The timing of the announcement, however, is while the cryptocurrency market is far from flourishing.  The prices of popular coins, including Bitcoin (BTC), ETH, and Dogecoin (DOGE) appear to be on a slow recovery trajectory after cryptocurrencies at large suffered a crash in May, prompted by increasing regulatory scrutiny in China and the US, as well as Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla would no longer accept BTC as payment.  Norton Crypto will be rolled out and made available to all Norton 360 customers in the coming weeks.  ZDNet has reached out to the vendor with additional queries and we will update when we hear back.  Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More