Chief Marketing Officer
Today, more than half of all internet traffic isn’t human: 51% is bots. And malicious bots? They now account for 37% of all web traffic.
What started as an annoyance has become a serious security problem. AI is supercharging these attacks, making bots smarter, faster, and harder to stop. And businesses that rely on websites and applications are squarely in the crosshairs.
From Simple Scripts to AI-Powered Attacks
The first generation of bots was easy to spot. Clumsy scripts hammered servers with repetitive requests. Today’s bots look very different because they:
- Rotate IPs across massive networks
- Mimic human behavior, including clicks, scrolls, and even mouse movements
- Target APIs, where traditional defenses often don’t reach
According to Imperva’s 2025 Bad Bot Report (PDF), AI is fueling this surge. Low-skill actors can now launch simple bot attacks at massive scale, while more advanced “polymorphic bots” constantly change tactics to avoid detection. API-focused bot attacks are rising fast, with account takeovers up 40% year-over-year and data scraping leading the pack.
That means a bad bot can look just like your next customer—until it starts stealing credentials, hijacking accounts, or scraping data.
The Business Impact
AI-powered bots aren’t just a nuisance. They create real business risk across multiple fronts:
- Financial risk: Credential stuffing leads to account takeovers, fraud, and chargebacks.
- Operational risk: API abuse or DDoS campaigns can cripple performance, take down services, and interrupt revenue.
- Intellectual property risk: Scraping bots harvest pricing, content, or sensitive data that erodes competitive advantage.
- Compliance risk: Stolen or exposed customer data can trigger PCI DSS violations and regulatory penalties.
Bots aren’t just “traffic”—they’re a growing attack vector that can disrupt your business at every level.
Why Bots Are So Hard to Stop
If bots were easy to block, they wouldn’t account for over half of today’s internet traffic. The challenge is that modern bots:
- Blend in with legitimate users, making it difficult to separate noise from real customers.
- Adapt faster than static defenses, morphing tactics before signature-based tools can catch up.
- Exploit blind spots like APIs and mobile apps, where many organizations have less visibility.
Traditional defenses weren’t designed for this kind of cat-and-mouse game—leaving security teams overwhelmed by false positives while the real threats slip through.
Are You Ready for a Bot-Dominated Internet?
David Holmes, CTO of application security at Imperva, joined DataEndure’s CTO Shahin Pirooz to explore the rise of bots, digital trust, and how to defend a bot-driven internet.
A Better Defense
Security isn’t just about technology—it’s about how solutions are integrated and adapted to real-world challenges. At DataEndure, decades of experience have taught us that resilience comes from seeing the bigger picture: connecting people, process, and technology to address threats as they evolve.
Take AI-powered bots. They don’t just demand another tool; they demand defenses that can evolve as quickly as the threats do. That’s why we partner with leaders like Imperva (now part of Thales). Imperva’s advanced protections for web apps, APIs, and data give organizations a foundation. But the real value comes from making those capabilities work seamlessly across your environment.
Why DataEndure
For 40 years, we’ve helped organizations thrive through disruption—whether it’s a cyberattack, compliance shift, or natural disaster. We’ve learned that tools alone don’t deliver resilience. What does is weaving them into a strategy that spans people, process, and technology.
That’s why our practice covers five interconnected disciplines:
- Security & compliance—the foundation for every engagement
- Information management
- Cloud & data science
- Network
- Infrastructure
With this breadth, plus a trusted portfolio of partners, we know what works well together—and what doesn’t. Our approach is simple: no agendas, just solutions that work.
So, for example, when we deploy Imperva, it’s not “just another tool.” We integrate it into the broader fabric of your business—aligning it with compliance needs, scaling it across your environment, and adapting it as threats change.
Next Step: Explore What Protection Looks Like
AI-powered bots aren’t a future problem—they’re here now, reshaping how businesses think about security and resilience. The best way to prepare is to see how modern defenses stand up in real-world conditions.
Imperva offers a 30-day free trial so you can experience its protections firsthand. And with DataEndure alongside you, you won’t just “try a tool”—you’ll gain insight into how bot protection fits into your broader security strategy.
As part of your trial, our experts will provide a complimentary risk assessment, helping you understand where you’re most exposed and how to close the gaps.
Explore the trial and see what stronger, adaptive defense looks like in practice.