Picture your online shopping site overwhelmed with fake orders, your customer accounts being drained one after another, or your essential APIs flooded by an endless wave of automated attacks.
This is the reality businesses face today—thanks to a fully automated army of cyber criminals determined to cause harm. In this digital bot invasion, businesses of all kinds are under urgent pressure to establish defenses that effectively fight this digital threat.
As digital transformation accelerates and attack surfaces expand, bots are becoming increasingly advanced, automated, and more difficult to detect. Automated threats—from account takeovers to data scraping and fraud—are increasingly challenging, making it difficult for many organizations to keep up. Consider, for a moment, these examples.
The nature of these threats is evolving quickly. Advanced bots are increasingly mimicking human behavior, which allows them to bypass traditional security measures and makes it harder to identify whether a user or an automated program is involved in suspicious activity. This issue is widespread: according to a 2025 study by ESG Research, threats from web applications and APIs involving bots are among the most common, with organizations ranking them alongside malware as a top concern for the next 12 to 24 months.
It's clear why this is the case. The same ESG study showed that most organizations (68%) are employing specialized bot management tools, understanding that traditional solutions are no longer enough against sophisticated modern bot threats.
While some still rely on basic WAF-based bot features, an increasing number, especially enterprises, are choosing advanced, purpose-built solutions. These trends highlight a growing recognition that bots pose a serious risk to both security and business continuity.
The rapid growth of APIs heightens the challenge. APIs foster innovation and digital flexibility, but they also create a significant, mostly unprotected attack surface. As APIs are used more and integrated into more applications, they become increasingly attractive targets for bot-driven exploits. ESG’s research supports this: fully 80% of organizations now report that more than half of their applications use APIs, and API security incidents are an escalating concern.
Scalability remains a key concern. As traffic volumes rise, especially during events, promotions, or peak business cycles, bot detection must scale without losing performance.
However, limited resources and expertise often hinder this flexibility. In fact, nearly half of all respondents in ESG’s research said that protecting web applications has become more difficult than two years ago. They pointed to the shift to cloud technologies, modern development practices, and a growing API footprint as the main reasons. Additionally, not all organizations enjoy seamless collaboration among security, fraud, and DevOps teams.
According to the ESG survey, 44% of organizations say their security and fraud/e-commerce teams work together on bot mitigation only quarterly or less. This siloing within different parts of the organization adds another layer to the story of ineffective defenses.
Bots are more than just a technical problem; they also pose a strategic threat. When it comes to APIs, web applications, or customer-facing interfaces, today's bots are smarter, faster, and more difficult to detect. They operate in ways that are not easily noticed by you or your customers. But in the hidden areas where they function, they threaten the core trust that your enterprise relies on to build relationships with customers and partners.
LevelBlue's Managed WAAP was created with this reality in mind. Our solution offers a modern approach to bot security, helping enterprises shift from a purely defensive stance to one of proactive control. In the complex field of web application and API security, LevelBlue Managed WAAP stands out — not just for utilizing advanced technology but also for operational excellence, which turns technological capabilities into real-world security for our clients. We maintain strong integration with threat intelligence that helps us stay ahead of emerging threats. However, our true differentiator is the operational expertise in managing web application security, ensuring our approach is proactive and that peace of mind is our standard.
LevelBlue Managed WAAP begins defending against sophisticated bot attacks by utilizing the powerful Akamai App & API Protector. This leading market solution offers complete protection against complex automated threats through its multi-layered detection and mitigation features. Its advanced behavioral analytics identify bot activity that closely mimics human behavior. Additionally, it uses edge-deployed controls to stop bots near their source, reducing the impact on your applications and APIs while ensuring that the solution halts bots without disrupting legitimate users.
Additionally, LevelBlue Managed WAAP continuously integrates advanced threat intelligence with its core technological functions. LevelBlue ensures that your WAAP instance is configured using the latest intelligence from the changing threat landscape. This means that as we see threat actors displaying increasingly sophisticated behaviors, your WAAP setup becomes better at telling good actors from bad ones and responding appropriately.
Importantly, LevelBlue extends beyond the technological layer. The LevelBlue Security Operations Center (SOC) acts as an extension of your security team, providing ongoing monitoring, expert configuration, threat detection, and incident response. To improve the service further, LevelBlue offers strategic advisory services, including regularly scheduled meetings with the LevelBlue service delivery team to review your service and suggest updates for both the LevelBlue Managed WAAP service and your internal security strategy.
LevelBlue Managed WAAP helps organizations of all sizes:
In an environment where bots have become the primary means of exploitation, LevelBlue Managed WAAP offers more than just protection; it delivers peace of mind. It enables security teams to take control, build defenses, and protect business outcomes in a landscape dominated by bots.
Don't let bots control your digital future. Contact LevelBlue today for a free consultation and learn how our Managed WAAP can help you regain control of your web applications and APIs.