Why your current anti-bot system might be failing

Anti-bot solutions have been around for a long time. Firewalls and WAFs are used by all kinds of businesses to protect their online assets from malicious bots. But as bots become more sophisticated and bot traffic volumes increase, many of these measures have become outdated and ineffective.

If your anti-bot system isn’t performing, it could open your site to serious data breaches and other threats like DDoS attacks and online fraud. So what causes anti-bot systems to fail — and how can you prevent this?

Why is bot traffic increasing?

Data is increasing in value. Through web attacks like account takeover, card cracking, scalping, and credential stuffing, cybercriminals use malicious bots to harvest data from your business. They then use the information to steal directly from the user, or sell it on to other parties. And as internet usage grows, websites hold more valuable data than ever.

Because selling data is becoming more lucrative, cybercriminals are creating increasingly advanced bots to effectively evade existing security measures. In fact, this process has already begun. Bad bots now make up more than a quarter of all web traffic — so not only are bad bots getting more sophisticated, they’re also becoming more prolific.

As your website grows, it becomes more vulnerable to malicious traffic. That’s why you need to ensure your anti-bot system offers the right protection.

Is your anti-bot solution fit for purpose?

There are many anti-bot solutions out there, but not all of them are effective. Even if your solution used to work, sophisticated bots can outwit outdated anti-bot systems.

There are a few reasons your bot management system might be failing:

1. Your system hasn’t been updated recently. Most anti-bot solutions rely on people to input rules that tell them which traffic to block. If your system doesn’t know about recent bot developments, it can’t protect against them
2. Your solution uses agents, which are slow to react to attacks. Agent-based bot detection solutions take longer to identify and block attacks, increasing the chance of a significant data breach
3. You’re passing information about your security system to the attacker. Client-side anti-bot measures inherently share information about your defenses to bot developers, so they can retool against your system.

How to switch to a new anti-bot system

If your anti-bot system isn’t as effective as it used to be, consider switching to an alternative bot management system.

Switching to another agent-based system can be time-consuming and costly to set up. By choosing a system with agentless architecture, you can start monitoring your website activity almost instantly — there’s no complicated set up process. We even offer urgent access to our anti-bot technology for businesses currently experiencing an attack, so we can help you block bot attacks and control damage.

Learn more about our anti-bot protection

Netacea’s bot management system is proven to spot and block six times as many threats as standard anti-bot solutions. Powered by machine learning, our system rapidly learns about bot behavior so it can detect even the most advanced, aggressive brute force attacks.

Find out more about our anti-bot solution here.