 / Unified Security Guide / Chapter 6: Bot management

Bad bot traffic continues to account for a large share of all internet traffic, which means IT departments must deploy the proper bot management strategies to protect their company’s infrastructure and assets.

According to Google, the forced acceleration of digital transformation of so many brick-and-mortar businesses throughout COVID-19 played a key role in today’s increasing number of bot attacks. In a recent survey commissioned by Google and conducted by Forrester Research, 71% of companies experienced an increase in the number of successful bot attacks throughout 2020, and 75% experienced greater revenue loss due to these attacks.

While many organizations are aware of the growing threat of bot attacks, most do not have the infrastructure in place to defend against them. 78% percent of organizations are using Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection and web application firewalls (WAFs) to mitigate malicious bot attacks (both of which are key elements of a full bot management system), but only 19% are utilizing a full bot management system.

Rather than trying to weave together disparate security solutions to thwart bot attacks, organizations must understand the right combination of security strategies to truly safeguard their apps and APIs—and that includes a bot management solution.

Below we will break down just what bot management is, what constitutes a full bot management system, as well as how you can incorporate this system into your security architecture by partnering with a single cybersecurity vendor.

Common types of bot attacks

Some of the most common types of bot attacks against applications and APIs include:

Web scraping attacks

Web-scraping bots extract copyrighted or trademarked data from apps or APIs and reuse it, often for competitive purposes.

DDoS attacks

Attackers utilize a botnet (a network of computers infected by malware that are under the control of a single attacking party) to overwhelm an app or API with useless traffic. Advanced L7 DDoS attacks utilize bots that appear as if they are sending real requests.

Weakness scanning

Bots continuously search for weaknesses in web apps and APIs. If a vulnerability is found, attackers can deploy tactics like cross-scripting (XSS) or SQL injection.

Spam and malware operations

Attackers use botnets to deliver spam or malware to email inboxes. Botnets can also be used to deploy scaled phishing attacks.

Account control

Bots take control accounts through brute-force guessing tactics, such as credential stuffing or password spraying attacks.

The importance of bot management solutions

Without the proper bot security architecture in place, attackers can capitalize on application and API vulnerabilities to do things like steal intellectual property, hoard network or server resources, perform account takeovers, and compromise business intelligence. Fortunately, with a unified bot management solution, your organization can proactively mitigate bot attacks and safeguard your assets.

Citrix Bot Management detection techniques

Using Citrix ADC, your IT department can configure a wide range of bot management strategies to identify and respond to bot traffic, including:

Allow and block lists: Lists of URLs and policy expressions that work to allow good bots to access your apps and APIs while blocking bad bots from passing through. attributes.

Device fingerprinting: Detects if incoming bot traffic has a device fingerprint ID in the request header and browser

IP address identification: Identifies if incoming bot traffic is a malicious IP address.

Bot signatures: Identifies and blocks bots based on signatures. In addition, it prevents unauthorized web-scraping URLs, brute-force logins, and bots that search for web app and API weaknesses.

Bot traps: Detects bots accessing scripts that are enabled on webpages.

Rate limiting: Limits multiple requests coming from the same client.

Transactions per second (TPS): TPS identifies incoming web traffic as bots if the maximum requests exceed the set time interval.

Comprehensive bot protection with Citrix Web App and API Protection

Bot management is a core component of the comprehensive application security solution from Citrix. It is available as part of the Citrix ADC, as well as a component of cloud delivered Citrix Web App and API Protection service. Citrix offers bot management alongside advanced DDoS attack mitigation, WAF, and other security measures that protect applications from cyber-attacks.

As a cloud-delivered service, Citrix Web App and API Protection is easy to deploy, features no operational overhead with installing or maintaining the solution, and ensures the latest bot management protections are always available. It is also easy to scale the Citrix solution to meet your protection requirements—even in complex multi-cloud environments.

Modernize your bot security strategies with Citrix

With automated, scalable, and difficult-to-detect bot attacks on the rise, organizations must deploy holistic bot security solutions to truly protect their web applications and APIs. Unfortunately, even if you utilize piecemeal security strategies like DDoS protection, WAF, and API gateways, your organization might still be vulnerable to modern attack vectors.

By utilizing these strategies alongside a robust bot management solution from a unified security vendor, you can properly protect your assets no matter the type of bot attack—all from a single pane of glass.