With the prevalence of ecommerce in the last two years, we’re facing a major risk avenue. In the burgeoning retail industry where businesses are prioritizing online sales and e-commerce more than ever now, cybercriminals have a plethora of opportunities presented to them. As bots attacks are rampant in the present times, retailers need to strengthen ecommerce website security through implementing advanced protocols.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the types of bots attacks and the recent study on how much businesses spend on eliminating them. This will allow you to gain essential knowledge and detect nefarious activity before major damage occurs.

A bot detection and mitigation company – Netacea – performed a survey and revealed the whopping price businesses pay to eliminate bot traffic. It was found that most affected companies pay up to $250 million every year – which is a huge deal! In every sector, around two-thirds of the business reported website attacks, out of which 46% faced malicious bot attacks on the mobile apps, while 23% said their API was at stake. In addition, businesses that transitioned to online work and retail for the first time faced major consequences.

There exist many types of malicious bots that affected many businesses – checker bots that steal usernames and passwords and take over personal accounts, sniper bots that monitor all the occurring activity, and of course the scraper bots that steal data from the websites. In addition, the most alarming thing is that it takes time to detect bot activity. In general, it could take as long as 14 weeks to figure out the records of the attacks as most of the time they’re insidious. The slow progress to detect the problem makes it difficult to limit the damage that occurs to a business’s reputation, operations, and customers’ satisfaction.

Netacea performed research in the Genesis Market – which is an underground marketplace for the stolen credentials – shows the whole industry is becoming more sophisticated with time. Ironically, bots have reached a professional level and it’s become easier for them to have access to the organization’s online infrastructure and help desks as they’re widely available.

How Bots Put Your Online Business at Risk

Indeed, malicious bots create a ruckus, sets up the management in panic mode, and wreak havoc for the organizations. From scraping the web to stealing card details, the breach level and impact range from major to minor.

Keep reading to know about malicious activities of the bots that can be damaging to your business. Having the right information will allow you to plan for bot mitigation and maximum protection.

Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks (DDoS)

It is one of the most common types of bot attacks that occur. In DDoS, a widespread network of bots attacks multiple servers at the same time. As a result, server resources and bandwidth get corrupted to the level where web, apps, and all online services go unavailable. In addition, some advanced botnets are also programmed to take over all the IoT devices to extend the attack on online servers and services.

Credential Stuffing

In credential stuffing, user information is stolen and used for unrelated services. The online retail business is the hot target for all cybercriminals when it comes to credential stuffing. It’s not difficult for them to get sensitive card details as everything is present online. With brute force methods, bots break into ecommerce website host security, steal the data from websites and use it for logging into a bank account. The incompetent security protocols in the retail businesses have given room to these cyberattacks on a large level.

Fake Accounts

From making purchases to maligning the business reputation, bots perform all the vile acts by creating fake user accounts. The most common example is that they make online purchases by using stolen credit cards and then resell them for higher prices. In another way, they perform payment fraud by using the stolen card details on multiple retail platforms through different networks. Having access to sensitive payment records allows them to make purchases from smaller to high-end items that can be traded for more cash.

Slower Website Performance

It goes without saying that online retail businesses are built on the online presence, such as websites, apps, and socials. And of course, you cannot afford to have the slow website performance at any cost. And this is exactly targetted by the bots – through sending a bug in the website build, they slow down your website performance and in some cases halting it. This is no more than a horrendous nightmare for the business owners, as it’ll direct all the customers and prospects to the competitor’s site. Sales, conversion rates will drastically go down and a negative reputation will surface on social media.

Website Scraping

In website scraping, bots are targeted to a specific website to extract useful information. Web scraper bots crawl webpages, breach privacy, steal digital information from the pages or the databases. They can access all the crucial information including price information, visuals, offers, and all sorts of hidden data.

System Takeover

If you’re noticing an unusual website behavior or multiple failed login attempts, it is one of the major signs that malicious bots are trying to take over your system. Series of bots analyze your website for the code glitches and then attack the weak areas in your website build. There might be repeated login attempts and crucial data missing on your ecommerce website. In addition, malicious bots also try to break into your website or network through SQL injection as well. If they end up breaking into a relational database, this can cause grave consequences.

Skewed Analytics

DDoS attacks make networks, websites, apps to go unavailable shortly and also disrupt the analytics data. The whole activity makes the online platforms look busier than normal when it’s just the network of bots spiking up the traffic. In a similar fashion, these bots create fake leads by loading and abandoning multiple carts. If the analytics are not closely monitored on the regular basis, this can lead to poor marketing decisions, display of incorrect metrics, and wasted finances.

With the cyber threat being high, there’s no time to work in silos, and adopting modern protocol is your key to survival. You must opt for bot management solutions that will provide maximum security to your network and e-commerce website. Having a strategy and a plan in place that incorporates bot management solutions and mitigation will upgrade the security of your e-commerce website. Make sure that all the decision-makers within your team truly understand the risk and opt for the best solutions accordingly.

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