Because of the ever-ballooning instances of cybercrimes, it is a priority to keep yourself protected. In this age, malicious bots are among the primary threats. Because most internet traffic is from bots, it makes logical sense that they pose a significant threat to your online infrastructure. Malicious bots target all industries from retail, gaming, finance, and health. They automate the attacks, making them deadlier than in the past. Examples of automated attacks include credential stuffing, Ad fraud, content scraping, and card cracking. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure the bots have no access to your site. Many of the mechanisms used to stop bots online cannot do so as the bot developers keep on inventing new methods of evading them. One mechanism that is widely trusted is the use of antibots. So, what are they?
What is an antibot?
An antibot commonly referred to as an antibot solution refers to the processes or technologies instituted to stop malicious bots in real-time. Antibots use powerful algorithms for detecting, analyzing, and categorizing bot’s patterns and signatures. They additionally use various methodologies like dynamic Turing tests, device fingerprinting, and behavioral analysis to help uncover bot activity. Using the antibot solution eliminates the false positives, ensuring that no legitimate website visitor is penalized. Their effectiveness is reinforced by the data scientists who improve the detection accuracy.
Use cases for an Antibot solution
There are various ways in which you can apply an antibot solution. Below are some of the use cases for antibot technology.
Botnet attacks
A botnet is an interconnection of compromised devices commonly referred to as “Zombies”. Cybercriminals use them as the medium for launching large-scale DDoS and brute force attacks to compromise the stored sensitive data. An antibot system can detect and block these bad bots, hence protect your data against theft or scrapping.
Blocking bot-based phishing
A cybercriminal may use a spoofed email having malicious attachments and/or links disguised as legitimate content to steal your data. An antibot blocks these bots-based phishing attempts at reaching your inbox.
Bot traffic
Because of the increased bot population, fake website traffic has also increased. The traffic can be part of DDoS attacks, Content scraping, or other forms of attacks. Having a bot-detection solution like DataDome enables you to differentiate good bots from those that want to harm your website before they can act to cause damage.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Cybercriminals also use bots to exploit the vulnerabilities in the various IoT devices. They spread malware and worms that, if not prevented, can infect other connected systems. An antibot system protects your IoT devices from such incidents and keeps the attacker’s attempt to infect them at bay.
Abuse and Spam management
Spammers use nasty techniques like sending out thousands of emails with the sole purpose being to get another person’s email and/password and sell it on the dark web. Other times they go through this to send you unsolicited messages and malware. They can use bots or botnets as a medium for spamming. Using an antibot solution, you can effectively identify spam messages from bad bots and stop them before they reach your customers or employees.
How can you choose the right antibot system?
Because of their wide range of effects on a business, the first thing to contemplate is how you need to handle the bots, the legitimate and the malicious. While many webmasters try developing bot movement solutions in-house, studies show these solutions are, in most cases, fail in bot detection resulting in a higher number of false positives. They are becoming more intelligent, using ‘slow and low’ techniques, through making a hit or two from many IP addresses to counter the installed security measures and devices. Through behavioral hijacking, the bot can replicate how a real user can interact with a PC, Smartphone, or website. Therefore, there is a need for special solutions using the latest technologies like machine learning and AI techniques to separate the two- humans from bots. Below are factors to consider when choosing the right antibot system.
Management and visualization
A good antibot solution should accord you comprehensive features management and visualization. It helps you see even the granular details on the trends of your website traffic. It should give you insights into the origins, types, and intents of the bots. The antibot should have bot management features like enabling blocking by ISP or the country of origin, generation-wise customizable malicious bot management, action-specific bot management like throttling, blocking, and feeding fake data showing captcha.
Ease of integration and compatibility
Integrate an antibot solution with a vast set of web infrastructure to ensure it suits the organizational needs. Integrate your website, APIs, or mobile applications to ensure complete bot protection. Therefore, security and web teams can spend fewer efforts and time managing bots. With GDPR, it is crucial to consider measures that prevent breaches in data that can cause punitive signs and a poor reputation.
There should be negligible false positives
Because bots are getting better at mimicking human behavior, they go undetected by the security systems. A good antibot solution should differentiate between a legitimate human being and a bot to minimize the number of false positives. They should not block humans or force them to solve CAPTCHAs. Subjecting them to such acts makes human beings frustrated and can lead to losses in the business and a poor brand reputation.
If a false negative occurs, the bot is mistaken for a legitimate human visitor to a site. This can lead to attacks like carding, account takeover, DDoS, and other malicious actions. In a nutshell, an antibot solution must be able to detect the bots accurately.
Conclusion
Depending on which industry you operate in, there may be different requirements for bot management. It is because various industries face different bot threats. Other factors to consider when evaluating how a management system for bots should be integrated into the infrastructure stack are the use of anti bots are the location of your business, government regulations, and requirements for compliance. Ask yourself, what core functionality do I need in a bot management technique? It will give you a set of details to keep on the look when considering a bot detection solution.
