Akamai partners with NVIDIA for agentless critical infrastructure security

Akamai Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) announced a cybersecurity solution developed with NVIDIA Corp. designed to protect critical infrastructure systems without requiring software agents on industrial equipment.

The solution combines Akamai Guardicore Segmentation software with NVIDIA BlueField Data Processing Units to provide zero trust segmentation for operational technology and industrial control systems. The approach targets infrastructure that cannot support traditional cybersecurity software due to age or operational sensitivity.

The system offloads security processes from host systems to NVIDIA BlueField DPUs, enabling monitoring and protection of critical systems including those used in water plants, power grids, and factories. The hardware-isolated approach allows security enforcement without installing agents on legacy or fragile industrial equipment.

"Whether you are running a water plant or a high-performance computing cluster, your priority is keeping the system moving at full speed," said Ofer Wolf, Senior Vice President, Enterprise Security at Akamai. "By offloading segmentation and observability to the DPU, we're giving organizations a way to stop attacks in their tracks while maximizing CPU power for the heavy lifting it was meant to do."

Kevin Deierling, Senior Vice President, Networking at NVIDIA, stated that the integration allows organizations to "enforce Zero Trust at the infrastructure layer, protecting their most sensitive operations without impacting system stability or production performance."

The solution provides network visibility, real-time policy enforcement, and threat detection capabilities. It can identify anomalous network connections and isolate compromised systems at the hardware level.

The joint solution is expected to be available globally in the second quarter of 2026, according to the companies' press release statement.

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