Who’s Fastly?
Fastly was originally founded in response to the shortcomings of “established” content delivery networks (CDNs) and geared towards customers with a global presence, huge traffic spikes and dynamic, constantly changing content. Right from the start, our architecture was designed to meet the requirements of the modern web. Today, we are a provider of a powerful and fully programmable edge cloud platform that handles large portions of the global Internet traffic for some of the world’s largest organizations. Our portfolio spans edge computing, delivery, security and observability solutions, all designed to boost website performance, secure applications and enable digital innovation quickly and easily on a global scale.
How does Fastly help businesses?
To put it simply: We make our customers’ websites and applications available in real time, globally and securely via our programmable platform.
“Real-time” means in the fraction of a second. “Global” means that customers don’t have to worry about regions or deployment locations – unless they want to. And “programmable” because you can control the entire user experience between your application and your user via software. This also includes easy personalization and faster innovation cycles. All of this is crucial to providing the best possible user experience.
When it comes to cybersecurity, where do you disagree with popular opinion?
There are some opinions that feel almost written in stone – also due to the influence of the media.
- “Attacks are becoming more technically sophisticated, nation-state attacks are a daily occurrence and AI-supported attacks are causing sleepless nights for security teams.” It’s true that technologies are constantly evolving and you often find yourself in a cat-and-mouse situation. BUT: Our data shows that the majority of attacks are standardized, widely distributed and can be easily blocked with a holistic strategy and a solid security setup. Because at the end of the day, attackers also have to think economically.
- “More is more.” Customers often think that security tools have to be complicated. If it takes hours to set up a solution, then it must be particularly difficult to crack. But that’s not true. On the contrary – too much complexity can actually be detrimental to security. If it takes thirteen steps to change a setting, you may be too slow to react in time if a threat occurs. You also risk buying a number of tools that overlap in their functionality – or produce so many false positives that you can’t deploy them in full blocking mode.
As an edge cloud platform, Fastly specializes in layer 7 attacks, i.e. securing the application layer. Our specialists also incorporated advanced threat intelligence and cross-network learning effects in our product development – “Secure by Design”. Additionally, we offer a 24/7 managed security service if customers need immediate assistance.
What makes Fastly unique?
Our powerful edge cloud platform is designed to be fully programmable – for agile software development with real-time insights and minimal latency. We process, operate and secure our customers’ applications as close to the end users as possible.
For cyber security, this means we empower customers to be much more agile when it comes to threat detection. Most web application and API security tools were developed for a completely different era. But attackers are developers too. To stay one step ahead of them (without compromising the user experience) we need to be more sophisticated in how we detect and react. Fastly’s next-generation WAF analyzes the intent of each web request instead of just following basic rules to block traffic. This, combined with a user-friendly interface, more control and increased visibility, empowers our customers to minimize false positives and respond to issues in real time.
Does Fastly offer anything no one else does?
Our architecture is designed for extreme efficiency. We make exceptionally good use of our hardware – and operate it with highly optimized software. This enables us to keep up with the biggest players despite our comparatively small company size. Because we need fewer data centers – or more precisely: points of presence – we can modernize our hardware and software much faster. This agility helps us to quickly support new internet protocols as they emerge. We can also easily implement software rollouts worldwide. Our edge cloud platform is designed from the ground up to be programmable and support agile software development with real-time insights and minimal latency. We process, operate and secure our clients’ applications as close to the end users as possible.
Especially in security, this allows us to be much more agile in our defense against threats. Most web application and API security tools were developed for a completely different era. But attackers are developers too. To stay one step ahead of them without compromising the user experience, we need to be more sophisticated on the defense side. Hence, Fastly’s next-generation WAF analyzes the intent of each web request instead of just following static rules for blocking traffic. This, combined with a user-friendly interface, more control and increased visibility, empowers our customers to minimize false positives and respond to issues in real time. That’s a crucial ability.
Does Fastly offer anything no one else does?
Fastly is the only CDN and web application security player that takes an API-first approach. What does that mean? All configurations and configuration parameters can be controlled and automated via an API. Thanks to the support of Terraform or Pulumi, integration into CI/CD pipelines is seamless.
Another special feature, which I already mentioned earlier, is that our next-gen WAF uses a technology called SmartParse. This extremely precise detection method evaluates the context of each request and its possible target in order to determine whether there is malicious or unusual content in the requests. SmartParse enables almost setup-free use and immediate detection of threats. This means that Fastly’s WAF does not require days or weeks of time-consuming training cycles. Ready to be implemented and protected in just a few hours!
Many of our customers also love the so-called “One Click DDoS” feature with our proprietary attribute unmasking technique to defend against DDoS attacks. It recognizes threats within seconds by analyzing traffic characteristics and comparing them with baseline values. In doing so, it minimizes false positives and protects legitimate data traffic. It also disguises the defensive measures taken in order to reveal as little information to attackers as possible. The system works directly at the edge of the edge network for maximum speed and effectiveness.
Why should businesses reach out to you now?
No better time than now! Because we can help businesses meet the new requirements of PCI DSS 4.0 effective since 31st of March 2025 – in particular also requirement 6.4.2. Our approach to security automation helps organizations seamlessly document, audit and secure changes to their code base without negatively impacting time-to-market. With Fastly, organizations can both achieve compliance and use it as a real competitive advantage.
Any thoughts on the topic of AI?
Fastly sees AI as a key technology of the future and actively supports developers in using it efficiently. We also incorporate it into our traffic routing and threat blocking. Our AI Accelerator also offers a solution that caches requests to large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI or Gemini. This lowers costs, reduces latency and improves performance – without developers having to fundamentally change their applications. The goal is to make AI applications faster, more scalable and more economical.
In addition, Fastly’s cloud engine that is powering our Next-Gen Web Application Firewall collects anonymized attack and telemetry data to help local agents detect and defend against attacks. With the help of a Network Learning Exchange (NLX) and other feeds such as external or customer-specific IP lists, threats are detected at an early stage. All information is available via APIs, DevOps and security tools as well as dashboards in the management console, ensuring transparent, context-based decisions.
This is all rounded off by Fastly AI Bot Management. It enables customers to protect their web content from unauthorized scraping by AI bots. It recognizes both verified and suspicious AI bots and allows you to create targeted rules to block, deceive or allow them through. This not only preserves the integrity of your content, but also reduces bandwidth consumption and performance losses caused by unwanted bot activity. This solution is available to Fastlys Bot Management customers and can be integrated seamlessly into existing security strategies.
If you could send an email to all CISOs addressing anything you’d like – what would you pick?
When it comes to security, you have to think holistically. One example is the topic of web application firewall (WAF), a crucial part of our security portfolio. In many conversations with end customers and partners, we are asked why a WAF is needed when a firewall is already in use. However, HW firewalls generally only protect data traffic based on network protocols and addresses on network layers 2 – 6. A WAF, on the other hand, protects your web applications from attempted attacks on layer 7, and that is nothing to sneeze at. No matter how well secured your traffic is, if an SQL injection, a cross-site script or a DDoS attack is initiated via HTTP, you need to be prepared for it. And this is exactly where we come in with our security solution.
Which customers or verticals does Fastly use?
We serve customers from all industries. However, we see particular interest in verticals such as digital streaming, publishing, gaming, online retail, financial services, education and high-tech. In these industries, constant innovation is essential to be able to stay one step ahead of the competition. This is exactly where Fastly makes a big difference. Our website hosts countless customer case studies, here are some examples from the DACH region:
- Thanks to us, the Berlin-based CMS platform Contentful was able to cut its delivery time in half and better secure its APIs with our WAF solution.
- The Swiss digital experience platform Magnolia gained a competitive advantage by expanding its PaaS offering to include Fastly’s next-gen WAF – an important aspect for its customers in the banking and financial sectors.
- Fashion and lifestyle provider Spreadgroup protects all assets via Fastly and provides customers with a seamless user experience.
But in general, a good rule of thumb is: if your company has (web) apps and APIs, let’s talk!
Fastly is part of the Provider Directory
