How E-Commerce Companies Can Protect Themselves From Bot Fraud Online

Prioritize the right bot-blocking features

Most cybersecurity platforms have inbuilt bot detection features but become obsolete quickly due to the speed of malicious bot development. For instance, WAF rules were more than enough to protect E-commerce websites from scraping and DDoS attacks a few years back.

These days, WAF is table stakes and E-commerce platforms need more firepower in their bad bot-blocking solutions. The first step is to check whether the solution effectively distinguishes between good and bad bot activity.

For instance, can it tell the difference between Google's crawlers and a competitor's scraper? Block the former and the E-commerce website will struggle to attract traffic. Good vendors usually have proof of such effectiveness. Their dashboards must also be easy to use, without complicated jargon.

Evaluating onboarding time is another critical task. Some bot detection platforms need time to learn a platform's activity baselines before becoming fully effective. While these platforms eventually protect a website from all forms of malicious bots, they aren't much help if a website is already under attack or is perilously close to one.

E-commerce firms must choose platforms that can get up to speed quickly and learn activity baselines over time to customize protection. Lastly, the platform's solution architecture plays a critical role in its effectiveness.

Some solutions need complicated changes to web apps and DNS rerouting. Companies must choose solutions that offer simple installation procedures, preferably one-click.

Monitor and analyze traffic

E-commerce firms use a wide range of tools to monitor their traffic to boost sales. However, they neglect to analyze that traffic for suspicious patterns that hint at an impending bot attack. For example, a spike in traffic from an IP region, in the absence of any marketing campaign, indicates a malicious attacker launching test attacks to detect vulnerabilities.

Traffic spikes are usually a good indicator of a wave of bot attacks, but E-commerce firms must correlate these spikes to existing activity. Blocking traffic from an IP region after running expensive marketing campaigns only results in negative ROI.

Product launches are another example of non-malicious traffic spikes. Correlating these spikes to existing baselines and current marketing activity is important since it gives them context. Repeated traffic requests from single IPs or a spike in direct traffic without a corresponding rise in PPC ad clicks or marketing event engagement are examples of potentially malicious activity.

Digging deeper into traffic analytics data can yield some interesting results. For instance, a spike in website bounce rates indicates an attacker pinging pages to analyze vulnerabilities. Again, correlating these datasets to existing activities is critical since E-commerce companies must not confuse declining product interest for malicious bot traffic.

However, in the right context, reduced engagement and dwell times indicate malicious intent. These abnormal bounce rates usually accompany slower performance and server response times. Attackers might be overwhelming the website's servers with bot traffic before launching an attack.

Block known malicious sources

Malicious bot attackers use modern data centers these days but plenty of unsophisticated attacks originate from older data centers. Blocking these is a basic, but highly effective tactic. Most bot protection solutions have a list of data centers previously used for attacks that they automatically block.

E-commerce companies can also purchase lists of compromised data centers and block traffic originating from them. Some attackers use reputed data centers such as Amazon to circumvent these blocks. Diverting such traffic to CAPTCHA forms is a good way to reduce bot traffic to a website.

Note that these solutions will generate a high degree of false positives. Legitimate users will likely get blocked as a result. The best way to prevent this situation is to use a top-notch bot-blocking solution.

Blocking or challenging old browser versions is another basic tactic. Less sophisticated bot launchers use old browser versions to infiltrate E-commerce websites. Blocking browsers older than three years and challenging those around two years old is a standard tactic.

Actively blocking bots needs investments

Most E-commerce companies use passive rules to block bots, relying on their cybersecurity platform to do the trick. However, bots are sophisticated these days and can bypass passive rules easily. To actively block bots, E-commerce companies must prioritize them and upgrade their infrastructure.

The tips in this article will prevent bad bot manipulation on E-commerce websites. When backed with the right cybersecurity processes, companies can create a safer environment for their users.

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