Website Scraping Threats to Airlines: A Strategic Challenge

Soar High Airlines¹, a popular carrier known for competitive prices and excellent service, notices a sudden drop in bookings on its website. The airline discovers that a travel agency is using web scraping to collect and share Soar High's flight data, including prices and seat availability. The agency's web scraping tool places a heavy burden on Soar High's website, causing it to slow down and sometimes even crash. Frustrated customers are unable to book their flights, leading to lost sales and negative reviews. This is just one example of the challenges that airlines across the globe are currently grappling with. Data from The Intersection of AI, Digital Fraud and Cyber Defenses shows that 51% of companies in the travel and hospitality industry are concerned to a moderate or large extent about web scraping attacks—and our new report, A Data-Driven Analysis of Threat Actor Behavior, determines that 100% of attacks on airlines are perpetrated by bots. But by adopting a proactive stance against scraping, carriers can protect their digital assets, improve customer satisfaction and direct resources toward strategic growth initiatives. [resource_post_by_id id="32424"]

Scraping’s Costly Impact

Web scraping, the automated extraction of data from websites, has become a major challenge for airlines. While it can be used legitimately for market analysis and pricing insights, unauthorized scraping by third parties leads to revenue loss, eroded pricing control and poor customer experiences. As airlines fortify their defenses, the battle against scraping persists as a drain on resources and a hindrance to innovation.

The Bot Problem

Bots enable scraping attacks at an unprecedented scale, extracting massive amounts of data at inhuman speeds. This not only accelerates data theft but also puts an immense strain on servers, degrading site performance. Today's sophisticated bots mimic human behavior, hop IP addresses, and leverage residential proxies to evade detection. They enable competitors to undercut prices while allowing aggregators to repurpose data. Stopping scraper bots has become a critical priority for airlines to protect their competitive edge and their bottom line.

Our latest threat actor behavior report reveals that malicious bots conduct virtually all of the attacks on airlines.

Combating Scraping: Strategies and Measures

Airlines have taken several measures to counteract scraping. These include:

1. Advanced Bot Detection and Mitigation: Investing in modern solutions to identify and stop scraping attempts in real time, helping ensure genuine customers are accessing flight information and services.
2. Continuous Monitoring: Employing constant monitoring of digital infrastructure to detect and address scraping activity promptly, reducing the impact on customer experience.
3. Legal Framework Strengthening: Strengthening legal frameworks to protect digital assets and customer data, demonstrating a commitment to stopping scraping practices.

Measuring Success Against Scraping

Key success metrics for combating scraping include:

1. Improved Detection Efficacy: Accurately identifying scraping bots while minimizing false alarms that block legitimate users.
2. Higher Look-to-Book Ratios: Increasing the proportion of fare searches that result in ticket purchases, indicating more genuine customers.
3. Greater Good User Throughput: Ensuring anti-scraping measures do not hinder genuine customers, providing a smoother user experience.

These metrics are vital in assessing the effectiveness of solutions and determining the success of efforts against scraping attacks.

Arkose Scraping Protection

Arkose Labs is excited to introduce Arkose Scraping Protection, a comprehensive solution designed to safeguard valuable digital assets against automated theft and collection attempts. It takes a multi-layered approach to identify and stop even the most sophisticated scraping:

• Fingerprinting Beyond the Browser: Server-side protection secures surfaces where client-side JavaScript implementation isn't possible, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
• Risk Assessment: Analyzes payload data and returns actionable intelligence on potential threats.
• Adaptive Response: Selectively routes suspicious traffic to Arkose Bot Manager for additional defense. Legitimate users proceed seamlessly while automated systems face increasing challenges.

Arkose Scraping Protection stands out for its operational efficiency, with lightweight integration, low latency and user experience preservation.

Put an End to Unwanted Scraping

Don't let scrapers commoditize your valuable digital assets. Arkose Scraping Protection gives you back control over who accesses your data and how they use it. For more information on how Arkose Labs can help your airline combat scraping, reach out to start a conversation today.