Akamai Bot Manager Reviews

I think one of the concerns in our company was managing frauds, where we used to face multiple instances related to bots and other instances of VPNs, which we wanted to contain. In our company, we implemented Akamai Edge Platform. Our company's DNS routes through Akamai Cloud and then comes back into our production network. The tool filters and inspects the traffic, and then it reroutes back to us. One of the better experiences with Akamai is that it is PCI compliant. As my company accepts payments, we need to make sure that our vendors are also PCI compliant.

The features of the tool are associated with the licensing part, so my company uses Akamai Bot Manager for account takeovers. The aforementioned area consists of functionality related to the product, which is available straight out of the box. The product is very straightforward. One of the features of the product is associated with the fact that it allows us to automate the blocking of countries, like Russia, that have some serious criminal records or where the crimes are high, so my company uses IP geo protection as a function. VPNs from areas that are used by some bots to potentially launch attacks are blocked by automating certain processes through Akamai. Akamai has a database of blacklisted IPs, URLs, and users.

We use Akamai Bot Manager mainly to mitigate the botnets, including the malicious and advanced botnets. We use the solution for monitoring the elementary information, the difference between humans and bots. We also use the solution to stop all kinds of bot attacks.

The main benefit is to get the insight of each request reaching the domain. In Bot Manager Premier, we have the capability and facility to see the real-time traffic globally, reaching from any destination. In that, we can segregate inch by inch the level of all the information, the IPs, the domains, and the paths. Based on that, we have the facility to check if it's a false positive or false negative.

Bot manager consists of two versions: Bot Manager Standard and Bot Manager Premium. The Standard version handles regular requests, assessing for anomalies such as proper cookies, headers, and the legitimacy of the browsing source. It serves as protection against standard threats, allowing us to discern between genuine users and bots based on headers or cookies.

On the other hand, Bot Manager Premium offers heightened security by delving into more advanced settings. This feature relies on a selection process. Akamai facilitates this by sending two types of cookies when accessing a specific page. One cookie operates as a short-term collector, gathering data during typical site browsing, while another serves as a long-term cookie, analyzing user behavior, including keyboard and mouse movements. This comprehensive approach enables the collection of behavioral telemetry for a more thorough understanding of user interactions with the site.

The best feature is the BNP. That is what Manager Premium does, protection of transactional endpoints.

We use Akamai Bot Manager to onboard and secure our APIs from any kind of unprecedented attacks and create mitigation rules. We have APIs for different business functionalities.

Based on the telemetry, Akamai Bot Manager gives a rough estimate of all the hits and requests we get, which are suspected bots. Akamai Bot Manager has an engine that automatically defines or decides whether a request is a suspected bot or not. They have a lot of standard categories for good and bad bots. Since a lot of web crawlers are added to the block list by default, we ideally don't need to do much work on our APIs or requests. The solution also helps with fraud management to some extent.

The Akamai Bot Manager provides us with a variety of custom rules, such as whitelists and blocklists for specific bots. These rules are particularly useful as we work with numerous third-party vendors, each with its own unique use cases and incoming traffic. With the Bot Manager, we can effectively mitigate bot traffic while simultaneously allowing whitelisted traffic that we recognize as legitimate. Additionally, Akamai's identification of known and unknown bots is immensely beneficial as we better understand our traffic, including the volume of bot traffic. Overall, the Bot Manager is an essential tool for managing our traffic and ensuring that we maintain a strong client reputation.

In my opinion, the UI of Akamai Bot Manager is a bit unconventional and not as intuitive as one might expect. However, once you become familiar with the various features' layout and location, it functions well and meets expectations. I feel that the UI could be improved and made more user-friendly compared to other SaaS platforms. Please note that I am not comparing Akamai Bot Manager with Akamai CDN but rather referring to other similar platforms. I am not comparing it with Akamai CDN. I am just saying that its UI is not so intuitive, but it does work.

Akamai Bot Manager is used for security purposes. It helps prevent any bots which are trying to target our website and applications, unable to do so. The request or attack gets dropped at the Akamai lab before it comes and hits my cloud infrastructure or my applications. It makes my application more secure.

The most valuable features of Akamai Bot Manager are the seamless integration and accuracy with which it detects the bots that can make attacks.

It has a bot detection methods and options for you to do more work blocking specific traffic. That is exactly what the Bot Manager does.

Akamai Bot Manager has more advanced rules that allow it to detect and block bot scrapers. 

The problem is that because I have both, Akamai Bot Manager and Akamai Web Application Protector, I can't remember which features came from which because they are mixed. 

When you go to Akamai's website and have both, it doesn't really say which is a Web Application Protector feature and which is a Bot Manager feature, or it doesn't say it easily. It's a little difficult to tell which feature is which, and which feature comes from which package.