Automated bot attacks have become one of the greatest threats in the web security environment. Recently, bot traffic has even surpassed human traffic in overall web sessions, significantly expanding the security risk. Traditional script‑based attacks have already shown their limitations, and the need to counter increasingly sophisticated automated attacks is growing.

At the heart of this change is the advancement of AI‑based automation technologies. With the widespread adoption of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, anyone—even without coding expertise—can now easily create complex automation bots. AI is leveraged to analyse failed attack logs in real time, rapidly identify defence patterns, and evade them; it enables CAPTCHA automation, browser automation, and more. As a result, a wide variety of bot types have emerged—from simple script bots to intelligent bots mimicking human behaviour—and large‑scale automated attacks are spreading rapidly regardless of attacker skill level. In fact, over 55% of all bot attacks now rely on AI or advanced technologies to defeat existing detection and blocking systems, placing a significant burden on enterprise security teams’ detection and response efforts.

Proliferation of Automated Bots and Limitations of Traditional Security Frameworks

Given that more than half of all web traffic is now automation bots, they constitute a major threat in web security. With AI technology advancing, attackers can create a wide variety of bots more easily and bypass complex security systems. It is no longer just skilled hackers; anyone can now easily build and deploy bots.

These bots often access a web service’s core data directly via APIs. Recently, in the e‑commerce sector and other areas, a significant proportion of bot traffic has been concentrated on login and payment APIs. These attacks lead to account takeover, automated payment fraud, large‑scale data scraping and other diverse damages. AI‑based scraper bots can access webpages hundreds of thousands of times per day, ignoring site‑imposed rules and exfiltrating information. Industries such as travel, retail and finance are especially exposed to these bot attacks; e‑commerce sites face automated payments or product sweeps, social media is hit by phishing and spam, and so on.

However, traditional security systems which rely on fixed patterns or static rules find it difficult to detect bots that exhibit human‑like behaviour and employ various evasion techniques via AI. Therefore, the current requirement is shifting away from simple blocking towards more sophisticated, multi‑layered defence strategies including behavioural analysis of bots, anomalous traffic detection and strengthened API security.

Cloudbric WAF+

In order to respond effectively to the evolving automated bot threat, a tailored web security system that adapts to various channels and scenarios is essential. The Cloudbric WAF+ was launched by Penta Security as a pioneer in the Security‑as‑a‑Service (SECaaS) model, delivering strong security through an intelligent logic‑operation detection engine. It serves as a unified web security service including WAF, API protection, malicious bot mitigation and DDoS defence—based on threat‑intelligence data collected from over 700,000 sites globally. With its SECaaS nature (no hardware installation or geographical limitation), it has secured over 1,100 global enterprise customers across 171 countries. 

Notably, the recent Cloudbric WAF+ 3.0 version enhances bot‑security functionality by adding good‑bot (Good Bot) management and custom bot‑blocking features, improving real‑time monitoring, and bolstering administrator features including multi‑account support, 2‑step authentication per admin, IP access control and audit logs.

👉Learn more: Penta Security Launches Cloudbric WAF+ v3.0, Advanced Cloud Security SaaS

Cloudbric Managed Rules

Adopting a WAF service from a cloud‑service provider (CSP) such as AWS WAF can be another effective method to strengthen web security against automated bot attacks. AWS WAF can identify and block malicious bot traffic and analyse various attack patterns, making it an effective first line of defence. However, when deployed alone, it may face limitations in applying finely‑tuned policies aligned with the company’s service environment or in real‑time monitoring. Typically supplied basic rules may struggle to keep up with evolving attack techniques or business‑environment changes, leading to operational challenges like false positives or omissions.

Penta Security’s Cloudbric Managed Rules is Korea’s first AWS Marketplace rule group, directly deployable via the AWS WAF console after AWS verification. It achieved the highest detection rate—outperforming competitor products by up to 40 percentage points—according to a report by IT‑evaluation group Tolly Group. Moreover, 98 % of its customers are foreign enterprises, and it recorded a global market sales growth of 156 % year‑on‑year—evidence of strong competitiveness and customer trust.

Conclusion

AI‑ and automation‑driven bot attacks are bringing new threats to the web‑security environment, and attacks targeting web services and APIs are expanding across industries. In order to respond to these attack trends, it is very important for each company to establish an optimal web security strategy tailored to their service environment and situational context, and to adopt a trusted operational management capability. As a top global cybersecurity company, Penta Security’s Cloudbric WAF+ offers a solution that can effectively cope with the latest web‑security threat trends. Additionally, companies that use CSP‑provided WAFs can also build a higher‑level web‑security environment through customised rules like Cloudbric Managed Rules.

Planning a tailored security strategy aligned to changing threats and adopting professional managed services is the key to truly protecting your digital assets from AI‑based automated bot attacks.