The New Front Line: Runtime Protection for AI and API-Driven Attacks | A Brand Story with Rupesh Chokshi from Akamai | An On Location RSAC Conference 2025 Brand Story

At RSAC Conference 2025, Rupesh Chokshi, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Application Security Group at Akamai, joined ITSPmagazine to share critical insights into the dual role AI is playing in cybersecurity today—and what Akamai is doing about it.

Chokshi lays out the landscape with clarity: while AI is unlocking powerful new capabilities for defenders, it’s also accelerating innovation for attackers. From bot mitigation and behavioral DDoS to adaptive security engines, Akamai has used machine learning for over a decade to enhance protection, but the scale and complexity of threats have entered a new era.

The API and Web Application Threat Surge

Referencing Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report, Chokshi cites a 33% year-over-year rise in web application and API attacks—topping 311 billion threats. More than 150 billion of these were API-related. The reason is simple: APIs are the backbone of modern applications, yet many organizations lack visibility into how many they have or where they’re exposed. Shadow and zombie APIs are quietly expanding attack surfaces without sufficient monitoring or defense.

Chokshi shares that in early customer discovery sessions, organizations often uncover tens of thousands of APIs they weren’t actively tracking—making them easy targets for business logic abuse, credential theft, and data exfiltration.

Introducing Akamai’s Firewall for AI

Akamai is addressing another critical gap with the launch of its new Firewall for AI. Designed for both internal and customer-facing generative AI applications, this solution focuses on securing runtime environments. It detects and blocks issues like prompt injection, PII leakage, and toxic language using scalable, automated analysis at the edge—reducing friction for deployment while enhancing visibility and governance.

In early testing, Akamai found that 6% of traffic to a single LLM-based customer chatbot involved suspicious activity. That volume—within just 100,000 requests—highlights the urgency of runtime protections for AI workloads.

Enabling Security Leadership

Chokshi emphasizes that modern security teams must engage collaboratively with business and data teams. As AI adoption outpaces security budgets, CISOs are looking for trusted, easy-to-deploy solutions that enable—not hinder—innovation. Akamai’s goal: deliver scalable protections with minimal disruption, while helping security leaders shoulder the growing burden of AI risk.

Learn more about Akamai: https://itspm.ag/akamailbwc

Note: This story contains promotional content. Learn more.

Guest: 

Rupesh Chokshi, SVP & General Manager, Application Security, Akamai | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rupeshchokshi/

Resources

Learn more and catch more stories from Akamai: https://www.itspmagazine.com/directory/akamai

Learn more and catch more stories from RSA Conference 2025 coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac25

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Keywords:

sean martin, rupesh chokshi, akamai, rsac, ai, security, cisos, api, firewall, llm, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand story podcast

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