Fastly has released the results of its new survey, “Bot Wars: How Bad Bots are Hurting Businesses,” which revealed 57% of IT professionals across the UK reported an increase in bot attacks over the past year, with significant incidents costing companies an average of £629k. 

“Bots are a double-edged sword: they can streamline tasks, but in the wrong hands they become powerful tools for cybercrime, costing businesses millions and eroding customer trust,” said Daniel Corbett, Security Product Manager, Fastly.

“Our new research reveals the impact and scale of these attacks, and underscores the urgent need for robust bot defences at organisations.” 

7 out of 10 respondents (70%) from organisations across a wide range of industries in the UK, including financial services, retail, IT and telecommunications, faced at least one bot attack in the past year, with 37% experiencing multiple bot attacks.

Respondents endured an array of bot attacks including DDoS attacks, spam bots, click fraud bots and web scrapers.

In fact, 88% of respondents believe automated bot attacks are now the “norm for e-commerce organisations.”

Key findings

• DDoS attacks were the most common reported threat, affecting 48% of organisations, followed by spam bots (46%) and web scrapers and click fraud bots (tied at 43%)
• 88% of UK respondents believe their organisation could do more to prepare for a bot attack
• Across the UK and US, while 73% of technical staff that deal with security incidents on a daily basis have seen a rise in bot attacks in past year, only 53% of senior management believe that bot attacks are on the rise at their organisations
• Respondents organisations were most concerned about data breaches (52%), customer trust (42%), financial loss and reputational damage (tied at 40%) resulting from bot attacks

In addition to these findings, the survey examined the potential use of AI by adversaries to accelerate bot attacks: 44% of survey respondents believed AI would significantly increase the number of bot attacks, while 22% think it will amplify the severity of bot attacks. 

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