CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on analysis of traffic across the Akamai Intelligent Platform((TM)), upward of 60 percent of an organization's Web traffic may be generated by bots - programs that operate as an agent for a user or another program or simulate human activity. In response, Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services, today introduced Akamai Bot Manager. Unlike traditional bot detection or mitigation solutions that only enable automated Web traffic to be discovered and/or blocked, Akamai Bot Manager is designed to allow companies doing business on the Web to adopt a new, more comprehensive, strategy when dealing with bots. By helping users better identify and understand what types of bot traffic are hitting their sites, and by providing remediation capabilities beyond simple blocking, Bot Manager can help customers take the most appropriate actions and have greater control over the business and IT impacts of bot traffic - both positive and negative.

https://photos.prnewswire.com/prnvar/20160216/333884

Nearly all online businesses can be impacted by various types of bot traffic. This traffic may include scrapers that grab content or price information, automated "clicks" that fraudulently increase ad revenues and "transactional" bots that can be used to purchase limited availability goods and services, making them unavailable to legitimate customers. Further, there are situations where the impact of bot activity on the business may be beneficial, while the impact on site performance is not. As such, organizations require a new way to not only identify the type of bot activity they are experiencing, but also provide a variety of techniques to most effectively respond to different types of bot traffic beyond simple blocking. Bot Manager is designed to provide customers with this industry-first combination.

One company to see early benefit from Akamai Bot Manager is leading Internet retailer U.S Auto Parts Network, Inc. According to the company's IT Director, William Avellan, "Bot activity is in many ways a 'cost of doing business' when you sell online, and up until now, there has not been a good way to achieve the visibility into bot traffic necessary to make truly informed decisions. With Bot Manager, we have the information we need to solve all of the bot problems we've been facing including content theft, price scrapers, and even identifying the IP transit providers hosting these bots."

Akamai Bot Manager is differentiated from other solutions in a number of important ways:


    --  Large,  pre-defined directory of bot signatures - Building on the
        unprecedented visibility afforded by operating one of the world's
        largest distributed computing platforms, Akamai Bot Manager features a
        directory of more than 1,300 pre-defined bot signatures in 15 different
        categories of legitimate web and business services, making it easier to
        rapidly identify commonly seen bot traffic.
    --  Customizable bot signatures and categories - Akamai Bot Manager provides
        companies with the ability to easily create custom bot signatures and
        categories reflecting the impacts that new and/or unique bots to their
        sites have on their business and IT infrastructure.
    --  Real-time detection of unknown bots - To help identify new and/or
        previously unknown bots, Bot Manager provides a comprehensive set of
        real-time detection methods that includes automatic identification of
        clients that have engaged in web scraping behavior against other Akamai
        customers. Akamai's Threat Research Team continuously refines and
        updates Bot Manager's real-time detection techniques as the bot
        landscape evolves, offloading this effort for the internal IT
        organization.
    --  Establish flexible policies to deal with multiple varieties of bots - To
        help companies better manage different types of bot traffic, Bot Manager
        allows customers to apply a unique management policy to each custom or
        pre-defined category. This gives customers greater flexibility to tailor
        the bot management strategy for their unique circumstances.
    --  Remediation vs. simple blocking - In the case of malicious bots, simply
        blocking them alerts the bot operator that protections are in place and
        triggers the bot to evolve in order to better evade detection. When
        dealing with legitimate bots that may provide business benefit, but at
        the same time cause undue performance impacts, wholesale blocking is not
        an ideal option. By offering a variety of management techniques -
        slowing or delaying bot traffic, serving alternate content, redirecting
        to an alternate origin, or identifying bot traffic and allowing
        customers to take independent action - Bot Manager is designed to
        provide customers with the ability to mitigate the negative impacts of
        bots without  compromising the business benefit.
    --  Granular visibility and in-depth reporting - Bot Manager offers two
        reports intended to help organizations better understand the bot traffic
        impacting their site. The Bot Activity report provides a high-level view
        into the various characteristics of an organization's bot traffic,
        including category, detection method, and top URLs. Customers can also
        see how these factors change over time. The Bot Analysis report provides
        a more detailed and granular view into an organization's bot traffic to
        help them better understand what their bot traffic is doing and where
        it's coming from, as well as determine the appropriate management
        strategy for different types of bots. Organizations can view bot traffic
        across ten dimensions, as well as apply filters to further drill down
        into specific areas and see sample traffic logs.
    --  Security Optimization Assistance - Bot Manager customers have access to
        associated service offerings designed to provide ongoing analysis of bot
        traffic by Akamai security experts. Customers can benefit from ongoing
        analysis of customer bot traffic as well as updated bot signatures,
        categories and recommended actions without taxing current security or IT
        personnel.

"The Web is full of bots and until now, companies had two choices, block them or suffer in silence. Unfortunately, neither choice was ideal," explained Stuart Scholly, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Security Solutions, Akamai. "With Bot Manager, we believe we're changing the game when it comes to bots. We're giving our customers the power and flexibility to put a true bot management strategy in place intended to best fit their business goals and objectives."

About Akamai
As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company's advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter.

Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
This release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about future business plans and opportunities. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, a failure of Akamai's offerings or functionalities to operate as expected, a lack of market acceptance of such service offerings and functionalities, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10- Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.




    Contacts:

    Rob Morton                                            Tom Barth

    Media Relations                                       Investor Relations

    617-444-3641                                          617-274-7130

    rmorton@akamai.com                                    tbarth@akamai.com

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnvar/20100225/AKAMAILOGO

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160216/333884

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100225/AKAMAILOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/akamai-revolutionizes-bot-management-300221152.html

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.