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Blog • • 6 minute read

What Are Bots and How Can We Protect Against Them?

The article explains the definition of a software-enabled bot, what is F5's (xC) Distributed Cloud Bot defense solution and how it protects organizations.

In this blog

  1. What are bots?
  2. Generic methods used for bot protection
  3. How F5 Distributed Cloud(XC) provides bot defense
  4. Advantages of F5 Bot Defense Solution

Bots have become a ubiquitous presence on the internet, with some bots being beneficial business tools and others being a huge threat to cybersecurity. Bot assaults have gotten more sophisticated in recent years, making it more difficult to protect against them.  In this post, we'll look at the bot threat and how F5's Bot Protection Solution may help organizations defend against it.

 What are bots?

Bots are automated programs that are programmed to accomplish certain activities, which can range from basic operations like site scraping to more complicated duties like account takeover assaults. In recent years, bot assaults have gotten increasingly complex, with attackers employing advanced tactics such as credential stuffing to circumvent standard security protections. Bots can also have a substantial influence on website performance, creating slowdowns or crashes that negatively damage user experience.

The ability of bot assaults to mimic human activity makes them difficult to detect using typical security methods. Bots, for example, can utilize several IP addresses, use randomized intervals between requests, and change user-agent strings, making them impossible to distinguish from real traffic. As a result, businesses must use advanced solutions that can identify and block bot traffic without impacting legitimate users.

 Generic methods used for bot protection

There are various generic approaches for protecting against bot assaults in cybersecurity. These techniques are designed to identify and minimize the existence of harmful bots or automated scripts. Here are some typical approaches:

1.) CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Separate Computers and Humans): CAPTCHA is a popular way for determining whether a user is human or a bot. It poses difficulties that are simple for people but complex for bots to solve, such as distorted visuals or riddles.

2.) Rate Limiting: Implement rate-limiting methods to limit the amount of requests that a user or IP address may make in a particular interval. This prevents bots from overloading your system with requests or brute-force attacks.

3.) User Behavior Analysis: Monitoring and analyzing user behavior patterns to find abnormalities that may suggest bot activity. Bots frequently engage in predictable or atypical behavior, such as repeating acts or accessing pages in a non-human-like manner.

4.) Blocking/Blacklisting IP Addresses: Keep a blacklist of known malicious IP addresses or IP ranges connected with bot activity. Bot attacks can be mitigated by banning or restricting access from these IPs.

5.) Device Fingerprinting: Identify probable bot activity by analyzing unique features of devices (e.g., browser type, operating system, plugins). Bots may employ default or obsolete setups, which distinguishes their fingerprints from actual users.

Because bot technology is continually evolving, these measures are not infallible. For successful bot attack defense, a multi-layered security approach is required, keep educated about emerging threats, and routinely monitor and analyze your system's activity.

 How F5 Distributed Cloud(XC) provides bot defense

F5 Distributed Cloud provides a bot protection solution that detects and blocks harmful bot traffic using powerful machine learning algorithms and behavioral analysis. Bots that utilize strategies such as credential stuffing, content scraping, and account takeover assaults, among others, may be identified and blocked by the solution.

Security and fraud teams at industry-leading enterprises can further leverage Distributed Cloud Bot Defense's rich signal data and inferences to drive expanded threat analysis by integrating data feeds into leading SIEM systems like Splunk, Devo, Datadog and SolarWinds etc. in real-time or through cloud buckets.

Distributed Cloud Bot Defense utilizes connectors to create seamless e-commerce security connections to critical applications within public cloud environments. F5 has built connectors for the following public cloud environments: Adobe Commerce cloud, AWS CloudFront, Cloudflare CDN, and Salesforce Commerce cloud. For on-prem applications, Bot Defense is easily integrated via F5 BIG-IP through a native module (v17.0+) or an iApp (v14.x – 16.x). F5 Bot Defense scales to address application data from multi-cloud or hybrid environments.

 F5 XC Bot Defense Solution features

1. Real-Time Bot Detection: The solution employs real-time bot detection to identify and prevent dangerous bots from causing harm. The system examines traffic patterns and use machine learning techniques to detect unusual bot activities.

2. Behavioral Analysis: Behavioral analysis is used by F5's Bot Protection Solution to identify bots based on their activities and interactions with websites and applications. Patterns of activity associated with bot assaults, such as rapid-fire form submissions or repetitive clicks, can be detected by the solution.

3. User-Agent Analysis: The solution employs user-agent analysis to identify bots based on information from their device and browser. Bots that employ bogus or changed user-agent strings to masquerade as real traffic can be detected by the solution.

4. Bot Signature Analysis: F5's Bot Protection Solution employs bot signature analysis to detect and prevent the usage of recognized bot signatures. The solution keeps a database of known bot signatures and can block bot traffic that matches these signatures.

5. API Security: The solution offers API security to guard against bot attacks on APIs. To avoid bot attacks on APIs, the system employs strong security features such as rate limitation and IP filtering.

6. Customizable Policies: F5 Bot Protection Solution enables organizations to build unique policies to defend themselves from certain sorts of bot assaults. Granular restrictions are provided to prohibit certain IP addresses, user agents, or URLs linked with bot assaults.

 Advantages of F5 Bot Defense Solution

F5 Bot Protection Solution offers various advantages to enterprises wishing to protect themselves against bot assaults, including:

1. Simple Integration: The solution is simple to install and administer since it can be readily integrated with current security systems and procedures.

2. Advanced Machine Learning techniques: The solution detects and blocks harmful bots in real-time using sophisticated machine learning techniques.

3. Comprehensive Protection: F5 Bot Protection Solution protects against a wide range of bot attacks, such as credential stuffing, account takeover, and content scraping.

4. Customizable Policies: F5 Bot Protection Solution enables organizations to develop bespoke policies to defend against certain sorts of bot assaults.

Summary

F5 Bot Defense Solution is a complete bot protection solution developed to assist organizations in protecting their online assets from dangerous automated attacks. To detect and stop hostile bots in real-time, the system employs powerful advanced machine learning algorithms and behavioral analysis. F5 Bot Defense Solution, with its customized policies and simple integration, is a powerful tool for enterprises wishing to protect themselves against the rising threat of bot assaults.

Learn more about F5 Bot Defense  Contact a WWT Expert

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