What are bad bots and why are they a threat to my website?

Bad bots are automated software programs designed to perform malicious activities on your website. They can scrape data, perform account takeovers, and initiate DDoS attacks, disrupting business operations and compromising sensitive information.

Can bad bots cause account takeovers?

Yes, bad bots often use credential stuffing and brute force attacks to take over user accounts. This can lead to fraudulent purchases, unauthorized access to sensitive information, and damage to your brand’s reputation.

How do bad bots affect API security?

Bad bots can exploit API vulnerabilities to steal sensitive data, execute unauthorized transactions, or overload your servers, leading to service disruptions and potential financial losses. Bots can also be used as reconnaissance tools to identify API misconfigurations or vulnerabilities as preparation before an attack.

What are the long-term consequences of not addressing bad bot attacks?

Failure to stop bad bot attacks can result in data breaches, loss of customer trust, regulatory penalties, and significant financial losses. Over time, the damage to your brand can be irreversible.

Which industries are most at risk from bad bot attacks?

While eCommerce, financial services, travel, and media are the most common targets of bad bot attacks, all industries are at risk due to the flexibility of what attackers can achieve with bots. The OWASP Automated Threat Handbook highlights a wide range of automated threats, making any industry vulnerable to bot attacks.

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Imperva was named a security leader and achieved a perfect SecureIQLab WAAP Vulnerability Assessment score, earning a “Secure-by-Design” rating.

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Bot traffic is a growing business risk

Unmanaged bot traffic poses significant threats to various aspects of a business.

Content and data protection

Bots scrape proprietary content and pricing, damaging your bottom line and reputation. This threat extends to Large Learning Models (LLMs), where bot-driven content scraping is used to train AI on your proprietary data. Imperva identifies and mitigates malicious bot traffic, ensuring your proprietary content and pricing remain secure.

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Account security

Bad actors use bots to gain illegal access to user accounts, commit fraud, and steal sensitive information. These attacks can have severe financial and reputational impacts. Imperva effectively prevents fraudulent access by utilizing cutting-edge behavioral analysis and machine learning to analyze login patterns and other indicators, protecting your customers and brand.

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Inventory protection

Resellers deploy bots to target limited-availability, high-demand items, gaining an unfair advantage over legitimate users. This affects not only sales but also customer trust and satisfaction. Imperva detects and blocks scalper bots, ensuring your inventory is accessible to genuine customers. Imperva helps maintain customer trust and optimize sales outcomes by preserving fair access to your products.

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Marketing and analytics integrity

Automated bot traffic skews marketing analytics, leading to inaccurate insights and poor decision-making. Ad fraud is another issue, resulting in wasted marketing budgets. Imperva filters out non-human traffic, ensuring your marketing analytics are accurate and reliable, ensuring that your marketing investments yield the intended results, enabling better decision-making and maximizing ROI.

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Operational efficiency & security

Attackers deploy bots for surveillance, looking for application vulnerabilities and APIs. Additionally, unwanted bot traffic degrades site performance, potentially leading to downtime and a compromised user experience. Imperva identifies and blocks bots before they can reach your infrastructure, enhancing performance by minimizing unwanted bot traffic and ensuring your applications run smoothly and securely.

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Protect your business from the impact of sophisticated bot attacks

Reduce costs

Minimize bots' direct and indirect costs – reduce chargebacks and customer support costs and free your IT team to focus on revenue-generating tasks.

Buy down risk

Reduce the risk of malicious, bot-driven attacks resulting in significant costs and noncompliance with data privacy regulations.

Improve customer experience

Block unwanted traffic without imposing unnecessary friction on legitimate consumers and improve conversion rates.

Bot protection for every industry

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Intelligently manage bot traffic and block malicious bots in their tracks

Advanced Bot Protection

Protects websites, mobile apps, and APIs from sophisticated automated attacks without affecting legitimate users.

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Account Takeover Protection

Safeguards login endpoints from sophisticated account takeover attempts and account-based fraud.

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Web Application Firewall

Best-in-class, PCI-certified WAF offering stops web application attacks with near-zero false positives.

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API Security

Provides continuous protection of all APIs using deep discovery and classification of sensitive data.

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Being in the airline and travel industry, we’re aware of the importance of safeguarding our online platforms and booking engines from the diverse traffic we receive. The online landscape is filled with potential threats, particularly bot attacks. Recognizing this challenge, our quest was to find a solution that consistently delivers value. Imperva has not disappointed in meeting those expectations.

Danson Maina Manager, IS Operations How bots affect the travel industry

FAQs

What are bad bots and why are they a threat to my website?

Bad bots are automated software programs designed to perform malicious activities on your website. They can scrape data, perform account takeovers, and initiate DDoS attacks, disrupting business operations and compromising sensitive information.
Can bad bots cause account takeovers?

Yes, bad bots often use credential stuffing and brute force attacks to take over user accounts. This can lead to fraudulent purchases, unauthorized access to sensitive information, and damage to your brand’s reputation.
How do bad bots affect API security?

Bad bots can exploit API vulnerabilities to steal sensitive data, execute unauthorized transactions, or overload your servers, leading to service disruptions and potential financial losses. Bots can also be used as reconnaissance tools to identify API misconfigurations or vulnerabilities as preparation before an attack.
What are the long-term consequences of not addressing bad bot attacks?

Failure to stop bad bot attacks can result in data breaches, loss of customer trust, regulatory penalties, and significant financial losses. Over time, the damage to your brand can be irreversible.
Which industries are most at risk from bad bot attacks?

While eCommerce, financial services, travel, and media are the most common targets of bad bot attacks, all industries are at risk due to the flexibility of what attackers can achieve with bots. The OWASP Automated Threat Handbook highlights a wide range of automated threats, making any industry vulnerable to bot attacks.