This morning, Distil Networks, a global leader in bot detection and mitigation, is releasing findings from a study of how top websites perform against sophisticated, moderate, simple and crude bots.
This data is being provided with the Online Trust Alliance’s (OTA) Online Trust Audit, which recognizes excellence in consumer protection, security, and responsible privacy practices, the report’s announcement reads.
The ninth annual audit, powered in part by Distil, evaluated the top 1,000 websites in retail, banking, consumer services, government, news media, internet service providers and OTA members.
So what do the findings reveal? While an average of 16 percent of websites across all industries can thwart simple bot attacks, only five percent can properly protect against sophisticated attacks.
Bots are used by competitors, hackers and fraudsters and are the key culprits behind web scraping, account take over, competitive data mining, online fraud, data theft, unauthorized vulnerability scans, spam, digital ad fraud, and downtime. Bots vary in volume and sophistication, but all place an increasing burden on IT security and web infrastructure teams across the globe, wreaking havoc across online operations big and small.
“While top websites do a better job protecting against simple bots, they continue to miss the mark in more sophisticated bots that can mimic human behavior,” said Rami Essaid, CEO and co-founder of Distil Networks. “Our annual Bad Bot Report found that 75 percent of today’s bad bots are advanced persistent bots that can either load JavaScript, hold onto cookies, and load up external resources, or randomize their IP address, headers and user agents. These new findings show that no industry is immune to such attacks and, along with the OTA, we are committed to raising awareness about the risks posed by bad bots.”
To learn more, check out Distil Networks’ official website here.
