Imperva Introduces Bot Protection Services for the SecureSphere Web Application Firewall

Imperva Inc, pioneering the third pillar of enterprise security with a new layer of protection designed specifically for physical and virtual data centers, has announced ThreatRadar Bot Protection Services, a new add-on for the SecureSphere Web Application Firewall (WAF). ThreatRadar Bot Protection Services distinguish between good bots, bad bots and human users, allowing customers to take action accordingly. Using the new service with the SecureSphere WAF, users can quickly identify and protect against malicious bots – a top threat for web applications.

Automated software robots, or “bots,” perform a variety of tasks on the Internet. Based on a review of websites using the DDoS Mitigation service from Incapsula, an Imperva company, bots accounted for up to 61.5 percent of all website traffic in 2013. Some bots are good. For example, Google and other search engines use bots to index website pages. But according to Incapsula research, about half of the bots visiting a website are malicious, accounting for a significant portion of all website attacks, including participating in DDoS attacks, injecting comment spam, and scraping website content. Additionally, between early 2013 and early 2014, there was a 240 percent increase in botnet attack activity for websites using Incapsula’s DDoS Mitigation service . DDoS bots are not only becoming more common, but they are getting smarter, able to bypass both JavaScript and Cookie challenges, previously the two most common methods of bot filtering.

“Accurately assessing and addressing bots is a key part of delivering the best experience possible for our users,” said Chris Sessions, Director of Operations at Trulia, a leading online marketplace for home buyers, sellers, renters and real estate professionals. “As bots grow in sophistication, it’s more challenging to weed out the good from the bad without negatively impacting users. There’s definitely a need for automated solutions like ThreatRadar Bot Protection Services and SecureSphere WAF that can classify bots quickly and accurately, and then protect against unwanted traffic.”

ThreatRadar Bot Protection Services leverages a unique Client Classification Engine and a real time feed to profile clients accessing an organization’s web applications. It accurately distinguishes between human users and bots, and identifies whether bots are good or bad. The intelligence it collects during this process is then used by SecureSphere to take immediate action, for example blocking a bad bot before it can do damage. ThreatRadar Bot Protection Services enhances an organization’s online business and bottom line by protecting against the malicious bot traffic that would otherwise attack their applications and waste network and website infrastructure resources.

“ThreatRadar Bot Protection Services is built on technology that has been battle hardened on tens of thousands of sites for several years,” said Mark Kraynak, Chief Product Officer of Imperva. “This proven technology enables an organization to proactively defend itself against rapidly growing automated threats to web applications.”

Availability and Pricing

ThreatRadar Bot Protection Services is expected to be widely available by the end of this year. Other ThreatRadar services available from Imperva include ThreatRadar Reputation Services, Community Defense and ThreatRadar Fraud Prevention Services.

Imperva also announced today SecureSphere version 11 with new capabilities to keep Big Data deployments safe.

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