Modern businesses are expected to remain vigilant against fraudulent actions towards their digital assets, sensitive business information, and customer data. Information protection goes beyond good business; it is often also required to maintain regulatory compliance.
Many businesses are aware of the risks associated with large-scale cyberattacks like ransomware, but malicious bot traffic could be just as serious a risk that businesses might be overlooking. While legitimate bots like search crawlers serve valuable purposes, malicious bots can drain resources, commit fraud, and cause data breaches. A bot management solution can play a critical role in preventing fraudulent activities by detecting and blocking malicious bots, making it a crucial component in modern cybersecurity strategies. The security controls applied by bot management solutions can also be used to demonstrate compliance against regulatory standards such as SOC2 type 2, PCI-DSS, ISO27001 and EU DORA requirements.
Bot manager solutions allow businesses to mitigate a wide range of bot attacks that pose a risk to their operations and bottom line. By utilizing advanced techniques such as intent-based bot classification and real-time monitoring, effective bot management solutions are able to discern malicious bots in real-time, preventing them from doing harm. These systems integrate seamlessly with broader security strategies, including web application and API protection, to provide a robust defense for internet facing assets.
Understanding Bot Management Solutions
Today’s malicious bots have evolved to mimic human behavior convincingly enough to create fake accounts, manipulate marketing campaigns, scrape website data, and access user accounts. Some can even solve CAPTCHA puzzles using AI. All of this poses a very real risk to sensitive information. Leading bot management solutions are deployed in line with customer traffic to detect and block these legitimate-looking activities in real time, without blocking legitimate users, ensuring a seamless customer experience. They employ advanced protections like real-time monitoring to track user behavior, such as mouse movements, on mobile apps and applications to further distinguish between human users and bots. Machine learning (ML) can also be used to identify patterns of suspicious activities based on recent and historical attack patterns.
Key Benefits of Bot Management Solutions:
- In-line Deployment: This allows the solution to immediately block malicious traffic without requiring changes to the application or complex network integrations.
- Fraud Detection Capabilities: Identify and prevent fraudulent activities in real-time.
- Enhanced Compliance: Provide necessary controls to meet regulatory requirements.
- Improved Customer Experience: Allow real customers to interact without disruption.
- Security Solutions: Provide comprehensive protection against malicious activities.
- Fewer False Positives: Accurately differentiate between legitimate traffic and bots.
Businesses can improve user satisfaction by ensuring legitimate traffic flows smoothly. These solutions provide a shield against threats and support customer satisfaction and trust.
Common Bot Attacks Businesses Can Mitigate With a Bot Manager
Bot managers help detect, block, and respond to malicious bot traffic and attacks used to commit fraud and disrupt business operations. Some examples include:
Fake Account Creation
Bot herders (the human beings controlling the bots) use bots to mass-register accounts, exploit new-user promotions, or conduct money laundering. A bot management solution helps by detecting anomalies in signup flows by detecting higher than normal velocity, reused IPs, and automation frameworks.
Credential Stuffing
Credential stuffing bots use stolen login details to gain unauthorized access to user accounts. Bot management solutions track login attempts and spot patterns that indicate fraudulent activities.
Inventory Hoarding
Bots can manipulate checkout systems to hoard goods such as sneakers, electronics, and tickets. A bot management solution ensures fair use and integrity of digital transactions, ensuring that human customers are able to purchase limited goods.
Web Scraping
As with many other types of bots, there are good and bad web scrapers. Malicious web scrapers can lead to a loss of competitive advantage or improper data usage. Bot management solutions detect and prevent unauthorized data extraction. They monitor user behavior and block suspicious activities. By ensuring that interactions are genuine, they protect a company’s intellectual property.
DDoS Attacks
While Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is not directly related to fraud, it can cripple websites by overwhelming them with traffic. The resulting downtime can cost businesses money and damage customer trust. By mitigating these attacks, companies protect their resources and maintain smooth operations.
For a deeper dive into malicious bots, check out 10 Common Malicious Bots and What to Do about Them.
Advanced Bot Management Techniques
Bots are no longer simple programs that can be defeated by blocking known bad IP Addresses. Because today’s bots can mimic human behavior, bot management solutions must leverage more advanced techniques to detect and block bot traffic. Advancements in ML and real-time monitoring allow bot managers to understand user behavior to successfully differentiate between real customers and bots. Broadly speaking, there are two types of advanced bot management techniques.
Intent-Based Bot Classification
Intent-based bot classification focuses on identifying the purpose behind bot actions. Instead of just detecting the presence of bots, it categorizes them based on intent. This helps in distinguishing between legitimate traffic and suspicious activities. For example, intent-based classification can distinguish between a search engine bot and a content scraping bot. By understanding the intent, businesses can reduce false positives and enhance customer satisfaction.
Real-Time Monitoring
Speed is of the essence when it comes to detecting and blocking malicious bot traffic. Real-time monitoring allows businesses to observe traffic as it happens, identifying potential security issues immediately. The focus is on analyzing user behavior and detecting strange patterns that may indicate malicious bot activity. Ideally, a bot manager detects anomalous behavior as it’s happening, allowing mitigation efforts to begin immediately before fraudulent activities can impact users. For financial institutions and eCommerce platforms, this is crucial for maintaining security and preventing payment fraud.
Click here to discover how to identify and block bots.
Enhancing Regulatory Compliance with Bot Managers
Many industries are subject to strict regulatory and compliance requirements to safeguard sensitive business and customer data. When businesses experience a data breach, they risk not only damaging customer trust but they may also be subject to regulatory fines and penalties. Using a bot management solution can significantly reduce fraud, thereby enhancing an organization’s compliance posture and providing security teams with controls needed for compliance certifications.
Financial institutions and eCommerce platforms, which are highly regulated, benefit from bot management solutions that help them meet the more stringent requirements they are subject to. These solutions also put these companies in a better position to meet new regulatory requirements as they evolve.
Augmenting Bot Management with AI/ML
Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ML have been a game-changer for bot management. One of the biggest challenges in blocking malicious traffic is separating it from legitimate users and friendly bots—after all, you don’t want to block a search engine web crawler from indexing your website. Bot managers that leverage AL/ML models have multiple advantages, such as:
- Behavioral Analysis: Models can analyze user behavior to identify normal human habits like mouse movements and keystrokes, separating real human users from bots.
- Anomaly Detection: AI/ML excels at anomaly detection, threat classification, and accelerating response time to malicious traffic.
- Continuous Learning: Just as modern bots are constantly learning and improving, AI/ML models are always evolving, helping organizations stay one step ahead of fraudulent activity.
Leveraging a bot manager helps businesses manage legitimate traffic while safeguarding against fraud, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty.
Industry Applications of Bot Management Solutions
Whether protecting financial transactions or securing online shopping experiences, bot management solutions are beneficial. They adapt to the unique challenges each industry faces. With real-time monitoring and machine learning, businesses can efficiently tackle suspicious activities and provide a seamless experience for real customers. As we explore further, we’ll see how bot managers serve critical roles in the banking and e-commerce sectors.
Financial Sector
Unsurprisingly, numerous types of malicious bots are dedicated to stealing sensitive financial and payment information. This puts banks and other financial institutions that deal with sensitive data at a higher risk than other industries. Banks face threats like online fraud and payment fraud. Bot management solutions improve fraud detection capabilities by spotting malicious activities nearly instantly and enabling financial institutions to respond quickly.
Financial institutions operate under stringent regulatory frameworks, particularly with the advent of open banking initiatives like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Section 1033 rule. This regulation mandates that banks and financial entities provide consumers with secure, permissioned access to their financial data through standardized APIs, facilitating data sharing with authorized third-party providers. While API protection is fundamentally separate from bot management, some bot management solutions also have API protection capabilities.
eCommerce Platforms
There are several types of eCommerce bots that cause frustration for customers and siphon off inventory or block sales. To mitigate these risks, most eCommerce platforms often rely on bot management solutions to protect their user base and transactions.
Because eCommerce platforms handle both sensitive customer and payment data and have highly sought-after goods and services, they are prime targets for malicious activities. Bot management solutions help enhance both websites and mobile applications by ensuring only legitimate traffic flows through. Real-time monitoring detects and blocks suspicious activities, reducing risk to customer data. These solutions also contribute to a better customer experience. By minimizing false positives, users can complete transactions without frustration.
Enhancing compliance with industry standards such as PCI DSS also boosts customer trust. After all, customers are unlikely to use a platform if they’re worried about their payment data being stolen. With these comprehensive solutions, businesses ensure a seamless and secure environment for shoppers. This results in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty over time.
Block Bots, Not customers, with UltraBot Manager
Bots have evolved into sophisticated tools capable of sneaking past your defenses. One of the most effective things businesses can do is leverage a robust bot management and mitigation strategy. A good bot management solution should be frictionless, easily integrating with your environment to provide rapid value and enhance the customer experience.
Bots aren’t a problem with UltraBot Manager. Our solution enables organizations to quickly identify and block malicious bot traffic, accelerating time to value with deployments that require no application instrumentation or modification.
Interested in learning more? Get in touch with us to tailor a solution that meets your unique needs.
