Kasada, the provider of solutions designed to specifically defend against advanced bot attacks, has released its annual report on the state of bot mitigation and automated fraud.

The 2022 State of Bot Mitigation Report is based on the findings of organisations that are already using anti-bot solutions and compares results against last year’s report.

The company’s annual report shows that revenue loss from bot-driven account fraud and web scraping continues to skyrocket, despite companies spending more on bot mitigation solutions every year.

Key findings from the 2022 State of Bot Mitigation Report include:

• Overall, 69% of companies that have a bot management solution report losing more than 6% of their revenue due to account fraud this year, up from 64% in 2021. This includes 40% of companies that lost 10% of revenue or more, a major increase from 2021 when only 5% reported that level of revenue loss. The report also finds that account fraud includes account takeovers (ATO) and new account fraud, where fraudsters create fake accounts to gain access to loyalty programs and take advantage of promotional discounts.
• The report also finds that 83% of companies say that bots are becoming more sophisticated and difficult for their security tools to detect. This amount increased from last year’s 80%.
• A majority of companies (62%) 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% were spending more than $500K. Overall, 21% of companies have spent $2.5 million or more fighting bots this year. In addition, 85% of companies expect to spend even more on bot mitigation in the next year, increasing from last year when only 63% reported that they planned to spend more.

Sam Crowther, CEO and Founder of Kasada, says, “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.

"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.”

Additional findings:

• Companies continue to spend a majority of their bot management budget (66%) on management and remediation of their anti-bot tools versus the anti-bot solution itself.
• Nearly 40% of companies also reported a 10% or greater loss of revenue due to bot-driven web scraping. This is an increase from the 7% that indicated web scraping was a problem last year. Web scraping occurs when bots extract prices or content to obtain a competitive advantage.

Kasada commissioned Atomik Research, an independent market research agency, to conduct a survey of more than 200 technology professionals who said they or their teams have the responsibility of managing and/or mitigating bots. Fieldwork took place in August 2022.

Kasada itself is focused on stopping bad bots that other solutions cannot. It's modern, proactive solution adapts as attackers do, in order to make automated attacks unviable.

Unlike legacy rule-based systems, Kasada is designed to be easy to use, offering long-lasting protection from bot attacks across web, mobile and API channels.

Its invisible defences eliminate the need for ineffective CAPTCHAs, ensuring a frictionless user experience, the company states. Kasada is based in New York and Sydney, with offices in Melbourne, Boston, San Francisco and London.