Why Am I Blocked by Akamai? Top Reasons and Solutions

Cloud computing and content delivery services often work behind the scenes to make your online life easier and more secure. For businesses, these tools can prove to be vital keys for seamless productivity. Nevertheless, when they don’t function properly or block organizations from accessing their services, setbacks and business losses can abound. If your business relies on Akamai for these services and you find yourself blocked from developing and running important applications through the Akamai platform, you could lose clients and even worse — your cybersecurity could be jeopardized. The reasons you might be blocked from accessing Akamai vary, but thankfully, there are simple solutions to avoid this obstacle in the future. Let’s take a look. Akamai is an international cloud computing, content delivery, and security company that helps to improve the performance and security of websites. Over 42,000 corporations use Akamai as a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Akamai is a direct competitor of Cloudflare and Google Cloud. Akamai’s services are used by major corporations including: Akamai is also widely used by the following industries: The Akamai CDN uses a global server network to cache and deliver content which can resolve lags and increase content delivery speed. Akami’s services also include: Content Delivery Network may sound like a hardcore tech term that would be used in a science fiction film, but most of us use a CDN daily. A CDN is a server network that is strategically, geographically distributed. CDNs like Akamai store a website’s HTML pages, images, and videos to its global network which allows users to enjoy optimized bandwidth, quick loading times, and improved application and website performance. This is especially imperative for businesses, as getting blocked by Akamai can significantly affect operations. For example, if you’re blocked by Akamai, it could create lag times and improperly functioning websites that can drastically reduce functionality and could detrimentally impact daily revenue. Yes, Akamai is safe, even if you didn’t intentionally download it to your computer. The CDN takes cybersecurity seriously and continuously updates cloud content delivery security protocols to ensure it protects users from threats and malicious attacks. Although Akamai doesn’t actively block users, you may find a specific website that utilizes Akamai has blocked you from access. In other words, getting blocked from Akamai isn’t something you’ll have to worry about when handling access to your own website. However, if you use Autodesk or need to access a website that uses Akamai, here are some reasons you may find that you’re blocked. A website owner might configure their Akamai settings to block users from specific geolocations. If you’re in a restricted region and are not utilizing a Virtual Private Network (VPN), you may find that you’re blocked. Akamai uses cybersecurity protocols such as behavior analysis, machine learning algorithms, signature-based detection, real-time monitoring of network traffic, and threat intelligence databases to identify and block malicious code. If you’re blocked from Akamai, it may be that your domain name, IP address, or signature was flagged for potentially malicious activity. Your IP address could be flagged by a website’s Akamai security settings as a result of  too many requests or potential bot behavior. For example, if you attempt to open a website or access a webpage too many times in short succession, you may get blocked. Similarly, if you open a website and leave it open without clicking, hovering, or scrolling, Akamai security settings might flag this as potential bot behavior and deny you access. If you copy or download large amounts of data from a website, you may be flagged for web scraping and find you’re blocked by the Akamai security settings. If you’ve set up a program or a bot to download data like HTML code or content text, this is considered web scraping. Web scraping can be useful for important business strategies such as competitor analysis and market research, but it could lead to getting blocked by a website using Akamai. If you’re blocked by Akamai, there are several steps you can take to resolve the issue. Some of the solutions to an Akamai block might include: Visit What Is My IP Address to learn how to protect yourself online. For more tips on cybersecurity, visit our blog or listen to our Easy Prey podcast available to stream on your favorite podcast platforms.