What is Advanced Bot Protection?

Web applications are the top attack vector for hacks resulting in breaches, and cybercriminals are getting better every day at using sophisticated bots to exploit web application vulnerabilities. While malicious bots started out using simple scripts, these attacks have evolved to using advanced tactics such as headless browsers and machine learning to outmaneuver traditional application security. That’s where the need for Advanced Bot Protection comes in.

Barracuda Advanced Bot Protection uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help customers defend against the latest automated threats. Available as part of Web Application Firewall and WAF-as-a-Service solutions, the new functionality fights malicious bot activity in several ways.

Elements of Advanced Bot Protection

There are four key components to Barracuda Advanced Bot Protection: bot spam detection, credential stuffing prevention, request risk scoring, and client finger printing.

• Bot spam detection reduces referrer spam and blocks comment spam, which helps keep analytics data and website comment sections clean.


• Credential stuffing is one of the most popular bot attacks as cybercriminals take stolen passwords and try to use them access other sites or applications. By blocking these types of attacks, credential stuffing prevention helps stop account takeover attacks.


• Request risk scoring tracks incoming requests and uses advanced behavioral analytics to detect attacks or suspicious activity.


• Client finger printing tracks users more accurately than IP addresses. IP addresses may point to many users, but client finger printing is tied to a single user.

In addition, a dedicated user interface makes it easy to configure bot mitigation features.

Importance of an integrated solution

To address malicious bots effectively, organizations need a bot mitigation solution that is fully integrated into web application firewalls. Traditional WAFs don’t provide advanced bot protection, and many bot mitigation vendors only offer point solutions.

Organizations are increasingly under attack by malicious bots. Unfortunately, most web application firewalls don’t provide enough bot mitigation capabilities. At the same time, stand-alone bot mitigation solutions are expensive, and they do not integrate with WAFs, which makes them difficult to implement and manage. Customers need sophisticated bot mitigation capabilities that are fully integrated into WAFs.

Barracuda now offers sophisticated bot protection capabilities that are fully integrated with Barracuda WAFs, are easy to implement and manage, and are included in the WAF price. Powerful bot mitigation solutions are now available to many customers who need them but have not been able to afford or manage bot mitigation point solutions.

Learn more about Barracuda WAF solutions