Survey highlights bots, account takeover, third-party scripts, and audience hijacking

Akamai Technologies, Inc., the cloud company that powers and protects life online, today released the results of a new survey of IT and security professionals on the prevalence and effectiveness of specialized third-party solutions that combat the challenges of malicious bots, account takeover (ATO), third-party scripts, and audience hijacking.

From Bad Bots to Malicious Scripts: The Effectiveness of Specialized Defenses found that not only are these protective technologies prevalent, but the companies using them have seen significant, quantifiable improvement in their ability to mitigate risk and prevent damage to their organizations and customers.

Akamai partnered with Foundry on the report, which surveyed more than 300 global IT and security decision-makers. Respondents were asked about the solutions they had in place for four broad categories of fraud and abuse: malicious bots, ATO attacks, script risks, and audience hijacking.

Malicious bots

Almost nine out of 10 respondents (89 percent) use third-party solutions or a combination of third-party and in-house solutions to combat malicious bots. Nearly all (97 percent) reported an improvement in their efforts to combat bots, with more than half (54 percent) of those using third-party solutions indicating their cybersecurity capabilities have improved significantly since deployment. Of those who saw significant improvement, the top three capabilities and gains most frequently mentioned were:

• The ability to handle high heat events and surges in traffic (47 percent)
• An improvement in marketing effectiveness (42 percent)
• The ability to balance security controls with performance optimization (41 percent)