Benefits of Real-Time Bot Detection

For those unaware, the bot revolution is happening right before our eyes. In fact, nearly half of all internet traffic consists of bot traffic. While some of this traffic is considered good bot traffic – think useful bots like web crawlers or AI chatbots for customer service – much of this can be considered bad bot traffic. 

Many of these bad bots are on the hunt for vulnerabilities to exploit, which is why it is imperative that enterprises look to a bot management solution. That said, any bot management solution should prioritize bot detection in real time. After all, if you can’t detect bots first, how can you mitigate them before the damage is done?

Want to learn more about bad bots, but don’t want to read anymore? Watch our video webinar. Beat Bad Bots by Building Cross-Functional Bonds. 

The rise of bad bots

Malicious bots have become the tool of choice for many cybercriminals. The growth of cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS) offerings, in which cybercriminals can purchase malicious bots, is fueling their popularity. CaaS provides cybercriminals with sophisticated bots ready-made to commit fraud and other crimes. For instance, a cybercriminal can purchase a malicious bot or botnet for web scraping, distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) that overwhelm web servers, conduct account takeover (ATO) attacks, or send spam and phishing emails. 

Bots can also be used for inventory scraping or sniping attacks in which a cybercriminal uses bots to purchase a popular item – like sneakers, game systems, or concert tickets – and sell them for upcharge prices online. These instances can frustrate potential customers who have to pay more money for inventory that seems to get gobbled up before they have the chance to make their own purchase. Additionally, bots can be used to leave poor reviews of a company, create fake accounts, or impact conversations about an enterprise on social media. 

Regardless of use, all of these bad bot instances go beyond hurting an enterprise’s bottom line and have the potential to negatively impact an enterprise’s hard-earned brand reputation and promise to customers and legitimate users.

Advanced bot protection starts with detection

When it comes to protecting your enterprise from malicious, advanced bots, it is important to prioritize bot detection as a way to shore up vulnerabilities, get a handle on your incoming traffic, and understand anomalous behavior as part of your enterprise’s cybersecurity strategy. After all, you can’t protect what you don’t detect. 

Real-time bot detection is easier said than done, however. Advances in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) have made bots more intelligent and adaptive. Cybercriminals can now use bots that are custom built to mimic human behavior and evade popular bot detection and mitigation tools. 

A look back at the first two generations of bot attacks and an overview of the current generation of intelligent and smarter bots (1):

Pinpointing malicious bot traffic can be difficult as attackers can also hide their location and spoof IP addresses and legitimate bots or consumer devices. This makes geofencing and blocking specific IPs difficult. 

Increasingly intelligent bots and botnets have the ability to bypass traditional WAFs (web application firewalls) and detection techniques, like a photo or image CAPTCHA, while mimicking legitimate consumers. More traditional bot detection and mitigation tools also negatively impact the user experience for legitimate human users by forcing them to complete unclear or overly difficult tasks that ultimately don’t stop malicious bots and provide the bot protection that enterprises need. 

Enterprises should instead look to advanced bot detection and bot protection solutions – backed by analytics – that are available. A solution that provides real-time detection methods that can detect patterns with statistical-or-machine-learning-based models can help security teams keep a leg up on cybercriminals. Additionally, harnessing data and machine learning as part of a bot management solution will enable the solution to build a unique risk assessment or behavioral analysis of specific human or non-human (bot traffic) users. 

Stopping bad bot activities with bot detection and bot management from Arkose Labs

Accurate bot detection means that once these risk assessments are built, and data has been crunched in real time, it is time to manage or mitigate the threat. This is where Arkose MatchKey challenges come into play. These challenges are the strongest CAPTCHA ever made and use state-of-the-art, variable challenges that malicious users need to solve. This makes it incredibly difficult for cybercriminals to automate their attacks in an attempt to bypass these challenges.

Arkose Labs understands that cybercriminals commit their crimes for a financial incentive. If that economic incentive is no longer available, or untenable, for cybercriminals, they will look elsewhere. This is why Arkose Labs bot management is so effective. In order to bypass challenges, cybercriminals will need to pour more time and capital into their attack. Once they realize that these challenges cannot be solved cheaply by bot automation they will lose their financial driver. Better yet, legitimate human users will often receive no challenge at all. 

Additionally, being able to make quick, efficient decisions is imperative in today’s cybersecurity landscape where malicious traffic filled with intelligent bots is wreaking havoc, yet many enterprises get little to no visibility out of limited signals with legacy solutions. Arkose Labs provides enterprises with increased visibility and actionable insights, including analysis of, and visibility on, human vs. bot traffic. Knowledge is power, and these insights provide enterprises with the information they need to win the battle against bad bots and keep legitimate users secure. 

Did you know that Arkose Labs also provides peace of mind with a $1 million credential stuffing warranty, an industry first? If you would like to learn more about how Arkose Labs can partner with you with its bot detection and bot management solutions, contact us anytime or book a demo today!