Web applications face a multitude of highly advanced and lethal security threats today. One of the most pervasive and challenging threats comes from increasingly sophisticated bad bots, which make up nearly 39% of all web traffic.
Bad bots are responsible for ad frauds, DDoS attacks, account takeovers, spamming, and much more. So, identifying and mitigating all kinds of threats, including bots, is critical. Given this context, bot manager vs. WAF is an ongoing debate. But we believe it should not be bot management vs. WAF, but a combined effect of the two. Read on to know why.
Bot Manager vs. WAF: An Overview
Bot Manager
A bot manager is a comprehensive and intelligent security software/ solution that can detect bad bots and prevent them from gaining access to the application/ network. Thereby blocking bad bots from performing malicious activities while allowing good/ useful bots to access web properties. It is a combination of bot management and bot detection solutions.
Effective bot managers must be able to accomplish the following:
- Parse all web traffic and distinguish between human and bot traffic
- Distinguish between good and bad bots to prevent a range of bot-based attacks
- Evaluate bot reputation, identify the origin IP address, and block ones with a bad reputation
- Granular analysis of bot behavior and flagging suspicious behavior
- Challenge potential bots with CAPTCHA test or other methods
- Whitelist good bots
- Instantly block bad bots or redirect them to a different page
- Keep updating the database of bots based on global threat intelligence, security analytics, behavioral analysis, etc.
- Leverage its self-learning capabilities to update the rules to prevent emerging threats effectively
- Offer rate limiting to ensure bots don’t overuse services
- Serve alternative content to bot traffic, etc.
WAF
Also, based on rules and configurations, WAF or Web Application Firewall is a security solution that sits at the edge of the network to act as the first line of defense between web traffic and the application/ network/ infrastructure.
WAF analyzes incoming traffic against a predefined set of policies, filtering out bad requests and malicious users based on attack signatures. In the case of advanced WAF, they filter traffic using behavior, pattern, and heuristic analysis in addition to signature analysis. It is effective against all known threats, and if tuned correctly, even logical flaws. Using patch management, they virtually patch known vulnerabilities until fixed by developers.
Bot Manager vs. WAF
The main point of difference between bot managers and WAFs is that –
- Bot Management Solutions focus exclusively on targeting, detecting, and managing bot activity
- WAF targets and protects against a combined threat profile to safeguard data and other mission-critical assets and prevents attacks against the application
Bot Detection Solutions: When Do You Need It?
Today’s next-gen, sophisticated bots can seamlessly evade security defenses and slip undetected. The following are indicators of malicious bot activity:
- Website slows down and erodes user experience
- Original content published by the organization is outranked by other sites published content stolen from your site
- Closely guarded dynamic pricing information is being leveraged by competitors
- Fresh content is published on your application/ website (prices, ads, articles, etc.)
- Suspect IP addresses are scraping content
- Skewed web analytics with higher bounce rates
- Unwanted comments/ ads are interrupting user interactions on the forums
- Increasing fake leads/ registrations via online forms
In such cases, bot detection and management solutions are necessary.
Why are Traditional WAFs Not as Effective in Bot Detection and Management?
Comparing bot manager vs. WAF in their effectiveness against the fast-evolving, lethal breed of bots, WAFs are found wanting. WAFs are typically designed and built to secure applications/ websites against known and emerging threats that exploit common vulnerabilities such as XSS vulnerabilities, broken access controls, SQL injection vulnerabilities, and so on.
They possess basic bot mitigation capabilities such as device fingerprinting, IP-based blocking, etc. However, they fall short against the automated, next-gen threats. This is mainly because bots do not target vulnerabilities or carry attack signatures but mimic human behavior. They can replicate human clicks, mouse movements, and behavior, thus, easily evading security defenses and are difficult to stop.
The Way Forward: Moving Towards a Synergistic Security Solution
With a growing number of complex and multi-vector attacks, we need to move beyond debates of bot managers vs. WAF towards an advanced, purpose-built security solution. The application security solution must combine behavioral analytics, self-learning capabilities, global threat intelligence, intelligent automation, and bot detection capabilities with managed, next-gen WAFs.
Indusface’s AppTrana is one such solution. In effect, it is equipped to mitigate all sorts of advanced threats, protect against exploitation of known, logical, and unknown vulnerabilities and safeguard data and other mission-critical assets. Further, by combining bot managers with bot detection capabilities, several attacks and bot activities can be stopped at the network’s edge. This helps to minimize the security risks facing the application.
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