John MacKinnon on Akamai as a Security Layer for Drupal

John MacKinnon is the Manager of the Public Sector Channels for Akamai Technology, and he explains how governments are using Akamai as a security layer for open source platforms like Drupal. He says that Vivek Kundra's "Cloud-First" Initiative and the WhiteHouse.gov's launch on Drupal have helped the US government to close the IT gap, but that there were still some security officers who were concerned about the security of open source platforms, especially at the highest levels of government that face large-scale DDOS attacks.

Most people think of Akamai as being the largest Content Delivery Network, but they also provide a number of security offerings that were used in the launch of White House.gov. When the White House contributed their first batch of Drupal source code last year during DrupalCon San Francisco, one of the modules that they released was the Akamai Drupal module.

MacKinnon also provides more details on the Akamai infrastructure and some technical details for how they're able to provide this security at the edge as well as deliver content to a variety of different platforms. Finally, MacKinnon shares some cautionary hope that as Drupal continues to grow that the new Drupal shops will maintain the passion and collaborative culture of contributing back to the community.