Akamai Technologies Inc., a provider of content delivery network (CDN) services, has introduced Akamai Bot Manager, a new product designed to help manage, not just mitigate, bots. Traditional bot detection or mitigation solutions only enable automated Web traffic to be discovered and/or blocked. Akamai Bot Manager allows companies to better identify and understand what types of bot traffic are hitting their sites. By providing remediation capabilities beyond simple blocking, states the company, the solution can help customers take the most appropriate actions and have greater control over the business and IT impacts of bot traffic – both positive and negative.
Nearly all online businesses can be impacted by various types of bot traffic – from scrapers that grab content or price information to automated “clicks” that fraudulently increase ad revenue and more. Additionally, there are situations where the impact of bot activity on the business may be beneficial, while the impact on site performance is not. Bot Manager provides a variety of techniques designed to effectively respond to different types of bot traffic beyond simple blocking. The solution offers:
- A directory of more than 1,300 pre-defined bot signatures in 15 different categories of legitimate Web and business services, making it easier to identify commonly seen bot traffic.
- The ability to create custom bot signatures and categories reflecting the impacts that new and/or†unique bots to their sites have on their business and IT infrastructure.
- A comprehensive set of real-time detection methods that includes automatic identification of clients that have engaged in web scraping behavior against other Akamai customers.
- The ability to apply a unique management policy to each custom or pre-defined category.
- A variety of management techniques – slowing or delaying bot traffic, serving alternate content, redirecting to an alternate origin, or identifying bot traffic and allowing customers to take independent action – allowing users to mitigate the negative impacts of bots without compromising the business benefit.
- Granular visibility and reports intended to help organizations better understand the bot traffic impacting their site. The Bot Activity report provides a high-level view into the various characteristics of an organization’s bot traffic, including category, detection method, and top URLs. The Bot Analysis report provides a more detailed and granular view into an organization’s bot traffic to help them better understand what their bot traffic is doing and where it’s coming from, as well as determine the appropriate management strategy for different types of bots.
“The Web is full of bots and until now, companies had two choices, block them or suffer in silence. Unfortunately, neither choice was ideal,” explains Stu Scholly, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Security Solutions, Akamai. “With Bot Manager, we’re changing the game when it comes to bots. We’re giving our customers the power and flexibility to put a true bot management strategy in place that best fits their business goals and objectives.”
