General News
Bots can skew your analytics… Is your data lying
to you?
JOHANNESBURG – April 26, 2019 – Data and analytics are increasingly
important tools that help businesses decide where to invest and develop, with
one example of this being UPS, which has used data/analytics to save up to $400
million every year through optimising delivery routes.
“While we rely on big data to provide actionable business intelligence on
everything from delivery logistics to crop yields to innovative marketing
techniques, the information we gather is only as valuable as the context it is
measured against,” says Simon McCullough, major channel account manager at
F5 in South Africa.
“We all know that data can’t really lie, but it can paint a distorted view depending
on how it is interpreted – it’s the old ‘garbage in, garbage out’ maxim and, in this
scenario, the ‘garbage in’ aspect of the equation can be boiled down to one main
culprit – bots.”
A recent F5 white paper says a large percentage of web traffic to a business’s site
is probably from bots and, while bot traffic, whether malicious or benign, may
appear to be legitimate, users should differentiate scans and probes performed
with automated programs from real engagement from customers.
Anton Jacobsz, CEO at Networks Unlimited Africa, a value-added distributor of F5
in Africa, says clicks from bots are not the same as clicks from actual humans.
“These unwanted clicks can skew analytics, distort market intelligence and hurt
the bottom line,” he says. “Sounds a bit dramatic but consider company X whose
customer base is located in South Africa and whose data keeps telling them there
is an influx and continuous rise in traffic from outside the country. Company X
might be inclined to invest resources into expansion to a much larger
international market when, in reality, most of that traffic is just scanning and
scraping its pages.
“The bottom line is that analytics cannot be accurate if companies are not
proactively and effectively managing bots and their interactions with sites and
services.”
Bots cost businesses money
F5’s McCullough agrees but adds that bots can do more than just deliver bad data
that impact on businesses decisions. “They can negatively affect your bottom
line,” he says. “With the growing popularity of cloud-based services provided
through a utility billing model, automated traffic can drive costs up without
providing any business value.”
The paper urges readers to consider the following: ‘every bot request against
your site can be quantified in terms of bandwidth, CPU time and memory costs -
all of which will show up on your monthly bill. More bot traffic means more
compute power in the cloud, more machine instances, and higher costs.
In addition, there are a variety of malicious bots out there. Criminals use
automated programs to steal pricing to boost competitive intelligence, disrupt
business through denial of service, and attempt fraudulent transactions using a
variety of means, all of which can negatively affect the reputation of your
business and your brand. Not to mention that you’re actually paying to render
pages and perform server requests for machines that are actively trying to hurt
your business. These aren’t potential customers; they’re attempts to scan for
vulnerabilities or steal intellectual property.’
“Whether it’s in skewing datasets, increasing utility costs or acting as vectors for
malware, bots can cost businesses money,” says Jacobsz. “Some business may opt
to ramp up security measures but if these are ramped up too high, these same
businesses risk exceeding customer tolerance, effectively DoS’ing their own web
sites and, since blocking all automated traffic isn’t an option, businesses must
investigate how to best facilitate good bots while mitigating damage from the
bad ones.”
Smart WAF; boosting the bottom line
Smart web application firewalls (WAFs) can manage the traffic to web sites,
delineating and filtering automated visits from engagements with actual humans.
Eliminating the large swatch of bot traffic results in better data, which in turn
delivers better business intelligence.
An effective WAF with bot-management capabilities can optimise web properties
by reducing useless traffic, resulting in considerable cost savings. Users can
streamline by serving only real and potential customers, which means that their
security tools are providing real value in decreasing costs in the cloud.
“Smart security solutions can help businesses manage automated traffic while
cutting costs and improving overall security,” says Jacobsz. “With a combination
of bot management and application protection solutions that learn and adapt to
the shifting threat landscape, users can better serve human customers while
optimising their sites and services – all while getting the data-driven insights
their businesses need.”
To find out more, please contact Esti Bosch, F5 product manager at Networks
Unlimited: [email protected].
You can access the F5 Networks report, ‘Get the Clicks that Count’ report here .
About F5
F5 makes apps operate faster, smarter, and safer for the world’s largest
businesses, service providers, governments, and consumer brands. F5 delivers
cloud and security solutions that enable organisations to embrace the
application infrastructure they choose without sacrificing speed and control. For
more information, go to f5.com.
About Networks Unlimited Africa
Networks Unlimited is a value-added distributor, offering the best and latest
solutions within the converged technology, data centre, networking, and security
landscapes. The company distributes best-of-breed products, including Attivo
Networks, Cofense, Carbon Black, Fortinet, F5, Hypergrid, Mellanox
Technologies, NETSCOUT, NETSCOUT Arbor, ProLabs, RSA, Rubrik, SevOne,
Silver Peak, Thales and Uplogix. The product portfolio provides solutions from
the edge to the data centre, and addresses key areas such as cloud networking
and integration, WAN optimisation, application performance management,
application delivery networking, Wi-Fi-, mobile- and networking security, load
balancing, data centre in-a-box, and storage for virtual machines.
Since its formation in 1994, Networks Unlimited has continually adapted to
today's progressively competitive and evolving marketplace, and has reaped the
benefits by being a leading value-added distributor (VAD) within the Sub-
Saharan Africa market.
Contacts
Networks Unlimited, Michelle Naidoo, +27 (0) 11 202 8400,
icomm, Vivienne Fouché, +27 (0) 82 602 1635, [email protected], www.icomm-
pr.co.za