Using Cyber Risk Quantification to Fight Bot Attacks

Using Cyber Risk Quantification to Fight Bot Attacks

Bot traffic is any non-human traffic to a website or application. While some bot traffic is beneficial, abusive bot traffic - such as malicious bots that are used for credential stuffing, data scraping and launching DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks can be disruptive to business. Digital e-commerce is a haven for bot attacks that can significantly impact business performance, sales numbers, supply chain, fulfilment processes, and your bottom line.

Seasonality of Bot Attacks

Bot attacks increase during promotional launches and seasonal events and begin with either tweaking or damaging SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which has a direct impact on traffic —blocking inventory through abandoned baskets and adulterated sales. Further downstream inventory seeking bots can negatively impact inventory availability, efficiency of fulfilment, and customer contacts — not the happy kind! The impact of bots varies significantly throughout the purchasing cycle. Unauthorized bot traffic can create a lot of frustration for retailers because page views, bounce rate, session duration, geolocation of users, and conversion metrics are crippled by the statistical noise created by bots. These deviations in metrics make it extremely hard to measure conversion rate optimization and the performance of a site that is being flooded with bot activity. It is critical to identify points of failure within controls — such as customizations, aging rules, and cancelling scripts. It is also important to consider where you can make the bots work for you and not against you — creating an urgency and push to buy.

Mitigating Bots

Rate limiting, direct engineer intervention and bot management solutions can be used to stop bad bot traffic. Bot managers use machine learning and behavioral analysis to block bad bots, then create allow lists for good bots to access your website. Bots are evolving and will continue to be a part of your business operations far into the future. This requires a new way of thinking and strategies to consistently enhance bot mitigation.

Scenarios to Explore

As digital strategies evolve, and new channels emerge it is more important than ever to keep up bot defenses as well as build bot strategies to enhance business productivity. Important scenarios to consider:

• Using bots to your advantage — understanding the potential negative impacts — yet building a narrative that can be used as a sales push (i.e., urgency to buy) 
• Identify the negative impacts of bots and stay laser focused on mitigating those scenarios
• Layering in seasonality, exclusivity, and limited offerings. Identify the potential impact and put measures in place to help balance, address, and mitigate various situations

Cyber Risk Quantification

Alfahive offers the only cyber risk quantification platform to deliver an industry specific, scenario-driven approach to cyber risk that helps tie financial risk directly to business processes and company KPI’s. Our goal is to help senior executives and board members communicate and plan risk reduction so they can thrive in the digital economy.

 Our analysis of one organization revealed a high likelihood of sophisticated Bot attacks on their online store becoming a loss event. And that in the next 12 months they could see an average annualized loss of $7.5 million. A clear understanding of the financial impact of Bot risk makes it easy for CISOs and Risk Managers to make better cyber investment decisions and reduce risk exposure. More specifically, we can help our clients: 

‍QUANTIFY the impact at each stage of the business lifecycle.

Calculate the BUSINESS RISK using the Alfahive platform. RiskNest is the first Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) platform built on the Open FAIR™ standard and enhanced with industry-specific attack activity, financial loss data and business model context to quantify risk 10X faster – saving months of research and consulting fees

Leverage Alfahive retail industry expertise and research — we provide actionable RECOMMENATIONS on how to:

LEVERAGE bots to work for the business, with OVERSIGHT

MINIMIZE the impact of bots systematically

Why Choose Alfahive?

Boards require a clear understanding of the business value of security investments and the real-world ramifications of a cybersecurity incident. RiskNest removes technical jargon and measures cyber risk from a financial and business perspective – a totally new concept that makes it easy to prioritize security investments, drive urgency around risk mitigation, and connect the security big picture to day-to-day business operations.