"Bot Attack Costs Double to $86m Annually"
According to security researchers at Netacea, the typical business in the US and UK loses over 4% of their online revenue every year due to malicious bot attacks. The researchers surveyed 440 businesses with an average online revenue of $1.9bn across the travel, entertainment, e-commerce, financial services, and telecoms sectors in the US and the UK. The researchers found that the average firm loses $85.6m annually to bot attacks, up from $33.3m per business in 2020. The researchers noted that this is far greater than the average ransom payment or GDPR fine. Most attacks (53%) came from Russia or China, with nearly half (48%) of respondents also seeing attacks from endpoints in Vietnam, although the source of these threats may be actors in other countries. The researchers noted that the majority (65%) were targeted at mobile devices, followed by websites (63%) and APIs (40%). The researchers stated that the threat appears to be getting worse. Most companies that detected an automated attack (99%) said they had seen an increase in attack volumes, with 13% claiming the increase was "significant." The most common attacks, observed by half (49%) of respondents, were from sniper bots, which monitor time-based activity and submit information at the very last moment, such as on online auction sites. The researchers noted that these can be particularly damaging to dynamic pricing environments in financial services. Also common were account checker attacks (45%), scraper bots (33%), gift card crackers (30%), and scalper bots (29%). Unfortunately, these attacks are often allowed to persist for months before they are spotted. The researchers calculated the average "dwell time" at four months, with almost all (97%) respondents saying it took over a month to respond to malicious automated attacks. Such attacks can have a major impact not only on the bottom line but also on reputation, with 88% claiming bots have impacted customer satisfaction.
Infosecurity reports: "Bot Attack Costs Double to $86m Annually"