WASHINGTON— According to a new report from cybersecurity firm Imperva, over half of all web traffic is now automated, with financial institutions ranking among the top targets for malicious bots.
The firm found that in 2024, automated traffic surpassed human activity, accounting for 51% of all web traffic, the ABA Banking Journal stated in its analysis.
Thirty-seven percent of traffic was the result of “bad bots,” which include malicious automated software that targets consumers and businesses.
The U.S. is the top target for bad bots with financial services the fourth most targeted industry, following travel, retail and education. However, financial services were the top industry for API attacks, in which bad actors attempt to break into a computer system to steal data. It was also the top industry for account takeover attacks, in which hackers gain access to a customer’s account, ABA Banking Journal said.
“The proliferation of APIs in the industry has expanded the attack surface for cyber criminals who target API vulnerabilities such as weak authentication and authorization methods, to conduct account takeover and data theft,” the report concluded.