A bot is software that performs repetitive tasks, such as spiders that crawl websites for specific data or terms.

Akamai Technologies Inc., one of the largest content delivery network and security providers to online businesses, has bought startup Cyberfend, a vendor that aims to help companies stop bots and malicious automated traffic that use stolen credentials, such as emails and passwords, to log in to websites. The purchase price for the all-cash transaction was not disclosed.

Akamai says the acquisition, intended to beef up its existing bot management and mitigation services, will not have a material impact on financials. A bot is software that performs repetitive tasks, such as spiders that crawl websites searching for specific data or terms.

“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,” says Stuart Scholly, senior vice president and general manager of web security for 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.”

Successfully detecting attacks using stolen credentials can be challenging as the credentials are typically legitimate, Akamai says. In addition, the attackers can hide within regular web and mobile user traffic, attack during normal service hours and distribute attacks from commonly used devices associated with millions of IP addresses across multiple geographic regions.

Akamai has 45 content delivery network clients in the 2017 B2B E-Commerce 300, including General Electric Co. (No. 6), CDW Corp. (No. 32) and Amazon Business (No. 104).

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