Leading Online Learning Platform Eliminates Malicious Bots for Optimal Application Performance

Bots were being used to scrape and download content from the site. Because the online learning platform was primarily designed for streaming content, it was unable to handle the flood of concurrent content downloads and performance slowed significantly. 

In addition, many users complained that their accounts were compromised. Users’ login and password combinations were being validated by brute force credential stuffing attacks on the login page, leading to account takeovers (ATOs). As the team investigated, they also noticed a high number of bot-created fake accounts that were used to plagiarize content and post it on other platforms.

The online learning platform The company wanted a solution that could manage bot traffic at the edge before unwanted requests reached its infrastructure. HUMAN Application Protection addressed the company’s application performance and bot attack challenges.

Application Protection is a behavior-based bot management solution that protects web and mobile applications and APIs from automated attacks safeguarding online revenue, competitive edge, and brand reputation.

• Application performance: The platform’s CPU resources were being taxed by the volume of automated attacks. With Application Protection, they were able to block malicious traffic at the edge, limit specific types of bots attacking the system, and throttle traffic to keep the application running at its optimal level.
• Scraping: Scraping bots were infiltrating its system to steal course content. Application Protection identified and blocked these scraping bots, which were often particularly sophisticated in their ability to mimic human behavior.
• Account takeover and abuse: ATO bots were taking over valid user accounts or creating fake accounts to steal and resell gated content, such as practice quizzes. Over 80% of the traffic to the company’s login pages was from ATO bots. Application Protection defended against these attacks.