Akamai Page Integrity Manager vs cside

This article takes an honest look at the features of Akamai Page Integrity Manager. Since you're on the cside website, we acknowledge our bias. That said, we've built our case honestly and based our analysis on publicly available information, industry information, and our own or our customers' experiences.

Apr 28, 2024 • Updated Jul 19, 2026

Simon Wijckmans Founder & CEO

TL;DR: cside vs Akamai Page Integrity Manager

Page Integrity Manager applies behavioral monitoring to third-party scripts inside Akamai's CDN. Requires an Akamai CDN contract, no public pricing.
cside runs on any CDN, in 100% of real user sessions with no sampling, and produces QSA-grade evidence for PCI DSS 4.0.1 requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1. Every script is downloaded to cside's own infrastructure for server-side analysis, and the raw attack code is archived. Free tier available.
Already deep in Akamai and want the native add-on: Akamai. Want CDN-agnostic deployment, full session coverage, and QSA-grade payload evidence without the enterprise minimum: cside.

What is Akamai Page Integrity Manager?

Akamai Page Integrity Manager solely competes with cside's Client-side security solution and PCI Shield. Other services like VPN detection, AI agent detection and Privacy Watch are not in their scope.

Akamai Page Integrity Manager is a client-side security solution that monitors and analyzes JavaScript running in users' browsers to detect malicious activity, like digital skimming, formjacking, and Magecart-style attacks. It focuses on identifying suspicious behavior from third-party scripts and alerting when potentially harmful actions are found.

Is it a good idea to buy a client-side security solution from a firewall vendor?

Large security vendors sometimes have a stab at shipping a quick side product. They do this as they know that their buyers are bought into their platform. The easy choice is to simply buy their solution. However, many users notice quickly that these products did not get the attention they needed and often simply do not work or address the requirements. Browsers as an attack surface are totally different from looking at a network packet as firewall.

How Akamai Page Integrity Manager works

Akamai's Page Integrity Manager is mainly able to list, allow, and block scripts based on previous intel and known issues. They offer great visibility of the script sources, but no insight into the actual payload of a script. This means they can't block scripts in real-time, before needing confirmation after alerting you.

Akamai Page Integrity Manager injects a JavaScript file into the of a website, which runs in the user's browser during live sessions. The script monitors the execution of all other scripts on the page.

Users need to set up a policy management system that allows them to allowlist or block specific scripts or domains. This is combined with a threat feed to check which sources are deemed safe and malicious.

This is a reactive solution. Akamai Page Integrity Manager can not actively block malicious scripts before they execute. Blocking relies on predefined allow/block policies or manual response after detection, meaning new attacks need to be found, understood, and adjusted for so they can be properly detected and blocked next time.

How cside goes further

Akamai's Page Integrity Manager runs JavaScript agents inside the browser. Every attacker who visits your site can see that code, study it, and reverse-engineer the detection logic. cside's analysis runs on our own infrastructure. There's nothing in the browser for an attacker to find.

This isn't theoretical. Attackers routinely inspect in-browser monitoring code and design their payloads to avoid triggering alerts. With cside, our detection engine downloads scripts server-side and runs analysis before content reaches users.

Akamai detects and alerts after a script has already been delivered. cside blocks it before it ever executes. If we catch a compromised dependency, we can serve the last known safe version using hash-locking, so your site keeps working while staying protected.

Akamai also requires you to be an Akamai CDN customer. cside works with any infrastructure. Add one script, and you're protected. No CDN lock-in, no minimum contract. Pricing starts at $99/month with a 14-day free trial.

For compliance, cside archives every script payload with full version history, covering both PCI DSS 4.0.1 requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1. Akamai's behavioral alerts don't produce the kind of evidence QSA auditors expect during assessments.

Try cside before you buy. cside has a free plan, so you can sign up, deploy, and explore the platform yourself, with no sales calls or procurement process. And our support team is one message away whenever you need a hand.

Akamai PIM alternatives: how cside compares

Akamai Page Integrity Manager (Akamai PIM) is a client-side security add-on that runs a JavaScript agent in the browser and requires an Akamai CDN contract. If you are looking for an Akamai PIM alternative, cside is CDN-agnostic: it works on any infrastructure, runs in 100% of real user sessions with no sampling, downloads every script to its own infrastructure for server-side analysis, and archives the raw payload as QSA-grade evidence for PCI DSS 4.0.1 requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1. Pricing starts at $99/month with a free tier, with no CDN lock-in or enterprise minimum. Choose Akamai PIM if you are already committed to Akamai's CDN and want the native add-on; choose cside for CDN-agnostic deployment, full session coverage, and payload-level evidence.

Related resources

Founder & CEO Simon Wijckmans

Founder and CEO of cside. Previously a product manager on Cloudflare Page Shield (now Cloudflare Client-Side Security). Co-chair of the W3C Anti-Fraud Community Group and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. Building accessible security against client-side attacks, web security is not an enterprise-only problem.

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FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Akamai Page Integrity Manager is a client-side security solution that injects a JavaScript agent into your web pages to monitor third-party scripts in the user's browser and alert on digital skimming, formjacking, and Magecart-style attacks. It is a detection-and-alert tool, it flags malicious behavior after scripts execute, and requires you to be an Akamai CDN customer.

The fundamental difference is where protection happens. Akamai injects JavaScript monitoring code into your pages and watches for suspicious behavior after scripts have already reached your users' browsers. cside's hybrid approach analyzes every script on our own infrastructure before it executes, blocking malicious content before it can run. This means we prevent attacks from happening, while Akamai detects them after they've already executed and potentially collected user data.

No, because cside's core analysis happens on our platform, completely invisible to attackers. Akamai's JavaScript monitoring code runs in the user's browser where sophisticated attackers can see it, analyze it, and potentially disable or bypass it. Since our protection occurs server-side, before content reaches the browser, attackers have no way to detect, study, or circumvent our security mechanisms.

Akamai provides behavioral alerts and monitoring data when suspicious activity is detected, but cside captures and archives the exact malicious code bytes that were attempted to load. This gives you complete, replay-ready forensic evidence showing precisely what the attack looked like, how it worked, and what data it was trying to steal. Auditors and incident response teams get immutable proof of the attack rather than just behavioral observations.

cside provides superior compliance documentation because we maintain immutable records of every script version, complete with cryptographic hashes and archived code. This creates a complete audit trail showing exactly what was blocked and when. Akamai's monitoring approach provides behavioral logs and alerts, but lacks the detailed forensic evidence that regulators and auditors increasingly require for thorough incident documentation and compliance reporting.

Prevention stops attacks before any damage occurs, while detection only alerts you after malicious scripts have already executed in your users' browsers. With Akamai's approach, credit card numbers and personal data can be stolen in milliseconds before the monitoring system even detects the attack. cside ensures malicious scripts never get the chance to interact with user data because they're blocked before reaching the browser entirely.

Akamai injects monitoring JavaScript into every page, adding overhead to each page load and consuming browser resources to constantly monitor script behavior. cside's approach often improves performance by caching scripts and blocking resource-heavy malicious scripts before they can execute.

cside's AI-powered analysis is far superior for sophisticated attacks. Our self-hosted LLM can analyze obfuscated code and conditional logic that bypass simple behavioral monitoring. Akamai's browser-based detection relies on recognizing suspicious behaviors, but advanced attackers design their code to appear normal while operating maliciously. Our platform catches these attacks through deep code analysis before they ever reach the browser.

Akamai monitors what scripts do after they're already running in the browser, looking for suspicious behaviors like unauthorized data collection or DOM manipulation. cside analyzes what scripts are before they execute, using analysis rules and AI to examine the actual code structure, logic, and intent. This lets us identify malicious scripts even if they're designed to behave normally until specific conditions are met.

When Akamai detects suspicious behavior, it sends alerts and may block certain actions, but the malicious script has already been delivered to the user's browser. When cside detects a malicious script, we block it entirely before it reaches the browser, and if needed, we can serve the last known safe version using our hash-locking technology. This ensures your website continues functioning while staying completely protected.

cside is virtually impossible to reverse engineer because attackers never see our analysis logic. It all happens on our infrastructure. Akamai's JavaScript monitoring code is delivered to every browser where attackers can study it, understand how it works, and craft attacks specifically designed to avoid triggering alerts. This is why sophisticated attackers have learned to bypass browser-based monitoring systems.

cside is a CDN-agnostic alternative to Akamai Page Integrity Manager (Akamai PIM). It works on any infrastructure with no Akamai CDN contract, monitors 100% of real user sessions with no sampling, and produces QSA-grade payload evidence for PCI DSS 4.0.1 requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1, starting at $99/month with a free tier.

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