Businesses losing revenue to bot-driven account fraud

Revenue loss from bot-driven account fraud and web scraping continues to increase according to a new report, with 69 percent of companies that have a bot management solution report losing more than six percent of their revenue due to account fraud this year.

Account fraud includes account takeovers and new account fraud, where fraudsters create fake accounts to gain access to loyalty programs and take advantage of promotional discounts.

The report from automated threat protection specialist Kasada also shows that 40 percent of companies lost 10 percent of revenue or more, a major increase from 2021 when only five percent reported that level of revenue loss.

Bots are becoming more sophisticated and difficult for security tools to detect according to 83 percent of companies. 62 percent have spent more than $500,000 fighting bots within the past 12 months. This is a 14-point increase from last year, when only 48 percent were spending more than $500K.

"Bots continue to evolve and thrive at the expense of companies. As this year's research confirms, it is imperative that companies have an anti-bot solution that evolves, keeping them a step ahead of attackers," says Sam Crowther, CEO and founder of Kasada. "Too much money, time and effort are being wasted by companies on reactive solutions that require a great deal of management and don't work well. We built Kasada to take an entirely different approach to bots -- an approach that makes it difficult for attackers, yet easy for defenders."

Companies continue to spend a majority of their bot management budget (66 percent) on management and remediation of their anti-bot tools rather than the anti-bot solution itself. Nearly 40 percent of companies also report a 10 percent or greater loss of revenue due to bot-driven web scraping -- when bots extract prices or content to obtain a competitive advantage. This is an increase from the seven percent that said web scraping was a problem last year.

You can get the full report from the Kasada site.

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