Akamai buys bot-sniffing startup Cyberfend

Akamai Technologies has beefed up its existing bot management and mitigation services with the acquisition of US startup Cyberfend. Financial terms of the deal, announced Monday, were undisclosed.

Credential theft and abuse is a significant problem for online businesses and their customers. Cyberfend’s tech is designed to mitigate problems caused by compromised user credentials (eg, usernames, passwords, email addresses) that leak and become public following data breaches.

Hackers increasingly use these stolen and leaked credentials to log into a wide range of popular web and mobile services. Credential-stuffing attacks of this type have affected the UK National Lottery and online takeaway firm Deliveroo over recent weeks.

“With the introduction of Bot Manager earlier this year, Akamai helped change the way online businesses deal with the bots and other automated agents that visit their sites,” said Stuart Scholly, senior vice president and general manager, web security at Akamai. “The addition of Cyberfend’s technology is intended to give our customers a better way to spot and stop credential abuse on their sites – benefitting both the online business and its users.”

Through its acquisition of Cyberfend, Akamai plans to extend the capabilities of the Cyberfend’s Bot Manager product by offering online businesses the technology required to effectively distinguish between real customers and attackers, thus limiting hackers’ ability to skirt detection. ®