DataDome was recently named to the 2023 Enterprise Security Tech Cyber Top 20 list, which recognizes the top cybersecurity companies providing the most value to the market. We had the opportunity to speak with Benjamin Fabre, CEO at DataDome, to discuss the importance of bot protection and how the company is helping to combat online fraud.
What are some of the most common cybersecurity concerns for online enterprises?
A Forrester Consulting survey commissioned by DataDome of 100+ online commerce enterprise decision makers found that:
91% feel that protection against card fraud, including card cracking, is critical.
90% are concerned with protection against inventory fraud, such as scalping.
89% prioritize protection against account fraud, which includes credential stuffing and ATO.
86% are prioritizing user performance and app availability.
67%, or roughly two out of three, are focusing on mobile app and API protection.
These stats show that online fraud as a whole is a key concern for organizations today. Furthering this, as companies expand and modernize their digital presence, their attack surface continually increases as well. This gives fraudsters more and more vulnerable endpoints across websites, applications, and APIs to target with their increasingly sophisticated attacks.
These sophisticated bot and online fraud attacks have significant impacts on bottom-line business costs, as well as customer satisfaction, brand reputation, and other key factors for e-commerce enterprises, highlighting the imperative nature of protection and mitigation against them.
Why is bot protection critical to online fraud prevention?
If your website, mobile application, and/or API processes payment information, or any other sensitive data, fraudsters are going to target and attack your platform—no matter what. And fraudsters require bots to scale and distribute their attacks against online enterprises.
That’s why bot protection is the foundation of online fraud prevention.
Bot attacks are not the exception, but the rule, for most online and e-commerce businesses because bots make it easy and cheap for bad actors to overwhelm and bypass basic security measures. In fact, cybercriminals use more sophisticated tools and techniques every day, constantly adapting to circumvent cybersecurity software.
Their goal? To monetize any exposed digital surface or data that can be stolen from your business and your customers.
Online fraudsters aim to steal your website content and products, as well as your customers’ personal information, accounts, and payment details. Effective mitigation depends on the specific issues bots are causing for your business.
How does DataDome’s solution help combat online fraud?
DataDome’s award-winning bot and online fraud solution detects and mitigates attacks on mobile apps, websites, and APIs in real time, protecting 300+ enterprises from account takeover, scraping, payment fraud, DDoS, credential stuffing, and more.
Traditional methods (such as WAFs and siloed CAPTCHAs) are no longer effective against today’s advanced threats. Thankfully, fraud detection software continues to evolve alongside advances in artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and machine learning (ML). ML fraud detection techniques play a big part in mitigating losses and preventing catastrophe for businesses, both financially and operationally.
Machine learning is increasingly used in fraud detection for e-commerce businesses, governments, apps, and online services to detect and prevent sophisticated, often automated attacks that threaten to damage your infrastructure and steal your data, goods, and funds.
For fraud detection, machine learning models must be trained using historical data about fraud (attack attempts, sources, methods, etc.). ML algorithms can be used to recognize patterns in a historical dataset, and then dynamically change a solution’s security rules to prevent future fraud attempts—even attempts using methods that have never been seen before.
Machine learning in the fraud detection context is a smart adaptation that is now necessary in today’s volatile cybersecurity environment. ML detection is much more effective than human intervention, which requires people to manually look for patterns and create rules to try and mitigate specific threats. ML is the best response to the evolving nature of online threats, giving users a massive advantage in the fight against card fraud, fake account creation, account takeovers (ATOs), and credential stuffing.
With the emergence of scraping as a gateway threat, how can organizations develop a robust cyber strategy?
Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly commonplace for organizations to fall prey to malicious web scraping behavior, and this tactic is often just the beginning of a series of attacks. While scraping is typically used to collect research or conduct a competitor analysis, in malicious use cases, threat actors use scraper bots to identify and assess opportunities for higher-impact attacks.
Beyond serving as a gateway threat to other types of attacks, scraping bots are also leveraged for competitive intelligence like price scraping. As with any business, when selling a product or service, it is critical to create pricing strategies to ensure that profit margins are balanced with customer demand. E-tailers invest significant resources to ensure that this is the case. When competitors enlist scraping bots to gather information on prices, this can be used to undercut these businesses’ strategies.
Scraping tools have become more widespread than ever, leaving unprotected organizations open to severe and costly ramifications not only from scraping but from the further attacks scraping can lead to. Complicating matters is their increasing sophistication. Scrapers are always adapting and evolving.
So how can businesses protect themselves without spending an arm and a leg and without requiring constant maintenance and monitoring? In the short term, businesses must understand that not only “hot ticket” items during timely sales are at risk, but content such as product descriptions, prices, reviews, media news and even coupons can be in jeopardy as well. Knowing the red flags, like user accounts with high levels of activity but no purchases and strange activity on content-heavy pages, is also critical. Four key steps include:
Staying alert: Keep an eye on user accounts, both new and existing ones, that exhibit significant activity but haven't made any purchases yet.
Enlist bot protection: To stop scrapers before they can do damage, discuss with your team whether it would be worth it to search for a solution that can identify and analyze any visitor’s technical and behavioral parameters in real time.
Get legal: Consider including an article in your terms and conditions or user agreement that explicitly forbids the use of scraping bots on your site.
"Closing the gate" on scraper bots is a critical step in ensuring your website is protected from further, more damaging attacks. Monitoring for suspicious activity and shoring up your defenses are critical in this fight. With the right tools and tactics, scraper bots can be stopped in their tracks!
DataDome has generated a lot of buzz over the last year. What are some of your top accomplishments?
Most recently, DataDome was proud to announce that it is again recognized as a Leader in the G2 Grid® Report for Bot Detection and Mitigation, receiving the highest satisfaction score among products in the market. Touting nearly 100 reviews from security and IT leaders, DataDome was celebrated for its ease of use, ease of setup, ease of doing business with, ease of admin, and quality of support, with 94% of users likely to recommend DataDome. The company was also recognized as a leader in the G2 Grid® Reports for Cloud DDoS Mitigation, DDoS Protection and Mid-Market Fraud Detection, as well as a High Performer in Fraud Detection.
As one user stated, “DataDome has exceeded my expectations on all fronts. Its unrivaled bot detection capabilities have fortified my website’s security, while the ease of use, intuitive dashboard, and unparalleled customer support have simplified my life as a business owner. If you’re in search of a top-tier bot detection solution, look no further than DataDome. It’s a game-changer that will undoubtedly elevate your online business to new heights. I can’t recommend it highly enough—it’s worth every penny and more.”
To be recognized by our users in such a resoundingly positive way reinforces our value proposition. It’s not enough to simply fight fraud with accurate bot detection. We strive to fully empower our customers with a solution that is as user-friendly and frictionless as it is reliable, so that our customers truly have peace of mind. Our satisfaction score reflects these efforts, and the trust our customers have in us.
As we gear up for an exciting 2024, we are proud to reflect over the past 12 months. The company’s inclusion in the 2023 Inc. 5000, its channel partner program expansion, as well as closing $42M in Series C funding. DataDome has received widespread recognition in the past year for its market-leading detection and mitigation capabilities, including Best Use of Machine Learning/AI in the 2023 SC Europe Awards, the 2023 Fortress Cybersecurity Award for Application Security, the 2023 Global Infosec Award for Most Innovative Bot Mitigation, and more.
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