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Bot Manager

Stop the most dangerous, evasive bots before they erode customer trust.

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Bot protection that delivers improved user experience

Akamai Bot Manager effectively detects bot traffic and mitigates malicious bots at the edge, while effectively managing good bots — all without impacting user experience. It protects your apps and assets, regardless of how or where customers choose to interact with you. Akamai Bot Manager enables you to run automated operations more safely and effectively, increasing customer trust in your entire ecosystem. Bot Manager also provides customers with visualization and reporting tools, so customers can see the impact that various types of bots have on their business and infrastructure.

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Safeguard your most fragile asset: customer trust

Defend against dangerous, costly bot attacks

Let the good bots in. Keep the bad bots out. Right where they first make contact.

Outsmart the most sophisticated and elusive bots

Our researchers analyze TBs of new attack data daily to protect you from evolving bots.

Say goodbye to dealing with bot attack fallout

No more drains on IT spend or staff time to investigate compromised accounts.

How Bot Manager works

Customize

Customize

Configure how good and bad bots are managed through an easy-to-use portal.

Configure

Configure

Behavior anomaly detection is configured automatically by injecting a simple script into each monitored page.

Monitor

Monitor

Patented technologies with an AI framework see traffic at the edge, assign a Bot Score for each request, and learn over time.

Respond

Respond

Challenge suspected bad bots with cutting-edge security solutions that slow attacks and drive up costs for attackers.

Forrester Wave Leader 2022 Bot Management

Forrester names Akamai a bot management Leader

Forrester Wave™ calls Akamai’s vision — which recognizes the evolution of bot operations — a standout.

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Features

  • Advanced bot detection using AI models for user behavior analysis, browser fingerprinting, and more
  • Gain intelligence from the cleanest data based on billions of bot requests and logins daily
  • Stealthy defenses that go beyond block-and-allow actions that tip off bots
  • Real-time, big-picture reporting of trends, industry insights, and detailed analysis of your bot traffic
  • Continuous update to our directory of 1,700+ bots
  • Protect your entire attack surface using the same advanced bot detections for your mobile apps

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Bot Manager has visibility into more than 30 billion bots a day. It generates a score from 0 (human) to 100 (bot), looking at all anomalies, starting with the very first request. As the number of requests from the same bot increases, the score can also increase. This capability allows you to define a response strategy for different actions to be applied, based on the Bot Score. The strategy is defined in three response segments: Cautious Response (which should be watched), Strict Response (which should be challenged), and Aggressive Response (which should be mitigated). You can tune the score at which each of these response strategies apply, and you can also adjust the action that gets applied. Akamai evaluates every bot against every detection, giving you more insight into why it was classified as a bot, so you can strategically adapt your protections.

A bot is simply an automated software application and can be employed by its operator for a variety of tasks. As a result, Bot Manager can detect any bot based on signs of automation. Bot Manager helps customers manage specific bot-related use cases, such as price scraping, data aggregation, inventory grabbing, and more.

While many web app and DDoS attacks are perpetrated by automated bots, bot management and web application firewall solutions are still different solutions that address a variety of challenges with a different set of capabilities. Bot Manager provides a range of advanced actions to help mitigate business challenges from adversarial bots.

The data points collected are reviewed with the Akamai legal team on a regular basis to ensure compliance with various privacy laws around the world, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the U.S. More details on Akamai’s general statement on privacy can be found in the corporate website’s Privacy Trust Center.

The functionalities found in Bot Manager are fully available via APIs, so it can be integrated into your DevSecOps lifecycle.

Bot Manager includes a library of over 1,700 known bots, and you can also create your own category for any bots that you or your partners create. This ensures that the useful bots get through without lowering your defenses against adversarial bots.

Bot Manager integrates the insights generated from Bot Score into SIEM tools for customers who want more integrated security visibility. You can enrich the value of your existing tools with the insights from Bot Manager.

Products that work well with Bot Manager

App & API Protector

One-stop, zero-compromise security for websites, applications, and APIs.

Learn more

Edge DNS

Rely on highly secure DNS for nonstop availability of web apps and APIs.

Learn more

Prolexic

Stop DDoS attacks with the fastest, most effective defense — at scale.

Learn more
Quote Industry details

The Washington Post

Watch to learn how this publishing giant protectsits brand — from infrastructure to end-user devices.

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Bot Protection Use Cases

Learn how Bot Manager provides a range of advanced actions to help mitigate business challenges from adversarial bots.

User experience/site performance

User experience/site performance

Even good bot traffic can be considered to be noncritical traffic. However, as more content becomes dynamic, it becomes uncacheable from CDNs like Akamai and results in a slower site, which frustrates users. Bot management allows organizations to slow down bots during times of high user traffic, as well as serving cached content to bots instead of live site content.

Content and price scraping

Content and price scraping

Web scrapers attempt to steal digital content and appropriate it to increase the traffic to the bot operator’s website without credit to the original content owner. Content theft can also result in fraud, as sites can also be scraped to create similar-looking phishing sites. Also, online businesses often scrape competitor pricing to have the lowest prices and attract customers. Price scraping can also come from legitimate price-comparison websites.

Inventory hoarding / gray marketers

Inventory hoarding / gray marketers

Companies creating limited-run products to increase demand and hype around the brand often run into grey marketers, who reserve these products in shopping carts as soon as they are available. Grey marketers try to upsell their purchases in other markets, like eBay. This is a problem encountered by sneaker companies, luxury brands, and consumer electronics manufacturers. However, it’s also an issue for airlines or ticketing companies like Outbox, where bots hold on to seats and then release the poor-quality ones.

Marketing analytics

Marketing analytics

Ecommerce organizations typically analyze the behavior of users visiting their site to determine and adapt to user preferences, and maximize online sales. Traffic from automated bots can skew the data being analyzed and lead to inaccurate analysis, poor understanding of users, and lower sales.

Good bot management

Good bot management

While many bots can be considered “good” and conduct desirable activities, a “good” bot can still act overly aggressive or not be desired at a certain time of day or month. For example, Baidu is a classic example of an aggressive search engine crawler that does not respect customers’ robot.txt file instructing it on how fast it can crawl the site, imposing a high load on the origin and reducing performance for users. Some customers block Baidu to reduce the performance impact.

Bot visibility

Bot visibility

Customers do not have a clear idea of the amount of bot traffic hitting their site or the category of these bots (“good”/“bad”). Today, customers typically behave reactively when they have been alerted of a performance or availability issue and then just deal with the top offenders. They are not equipped with the right detection, analysis, or control tools needed to take a more proactive stance.

Resources

Ebook

Protect Your Online Business from Credential Stuffing

Take a deep dive into credential stuffing: the financial impact, a real-life case study, and the best defense.

View ebook
Article

Akamai Is Winning the Bot War

Bloomberg Businessweek reports on the misery that bot armies can bring about for retailers and how Akamai can help.

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White paper

Understanding Your Credential Stuffing Attack Surface

Dig deeper into the architectural challenges of managing bots.

Read white paper
Ebook

Top 10 Considerations for Bot Management

Learn now to evaluate bot management solutions. See how critical differences could impact your business.

View ebook

Live demo with simulated attack: Bot Manager

We’ll walk you through a credential stuffing attack simulation, so you can experience firsthand how Bot Manager:

  • Leverages AI to detect suspicious behavior and catch an attack in progress
  • Gives you the most accurate and self-tuning assessment of your bot traffic
  • Detects low-and-slow attacks even when nothing appears to be wrong
  • Provides many nuanced responses so you can stop bots — without tipping off the bad guys

Thank you for requesting a personalized demo of Bot Manager. An Akamai representative will reach out soon.