ZIFFPAGE TITLEAkamai Base Case

A new breed of online extortionists is threatening to attack Web sites unless the companies pay up. Some big-name sites, including Microsoft and Google, were saved from harm last June with concerted combat against an army of bots.

Akamai Base Case Headquarters: Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142

Phone: (617) 444-3000

Business: Provides Web serving capacity on 15,000 servers in 69 countries to improve Web response times and reliability for customers.

Director of Information Security: Andy Ellis

Financials in 2003: Lost $29 million on revenue of $161 million.

Challenge: Respond instantly to innovative, large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks to keep itself and its customers in business.