FanDuel Wins the Wager Against Bad Bots With AWS and PerimeterX

Bot management, cloud computing and brand growth go hand in hand

The 2018 Supreme Court decision to allow states to authorize betting on sports events brought an unprecedented growth opportunity for the sports-tech entertainment field. That year, FanDuel, an online gaming company whose product portfolio includes daily fantasy sports, sports betting, casino, and horse racing, saw an 18% increase in group revenue.

With this explosive growth, FanDuel’s users became higher visibility targets. Account takeover (ATO) and credential stuffing attacks on FanDuel’s website became rampant with up to 10 million bad actor login attempts daily.

Alan Murray, FanDuel’s Senior Director, Architecture, outlined their challenges: “As our business has scaled, it generates a lot of attention for the brand itself and as such, that gathers the attention of bad actors who are keen to commit fraud.”

FanDuel’s Homegrown Solution Wasn’t Enough

FanDuel tried to develop an in-house mitigation system to respond to the threats, but it wasn’t enough to stop increasingly sophisticated attacks. Malicious bots put a strain on the company’s IT resources, reduced operational efficiency and threatened customer accounts. FanDuel turned to PerimeterX Bot Defender to solve its bot problem.

Accurate Bot Detection

Bot Defender leverages machine learning (ML) and behavioral analytics to detect and defeat bad bots. The solution mitigated 99.9% of attacking traffic to FanDuel’s website, enabling the company to protect a historic volume of user information. Murray noted that “During various 24 hour periods, I have seen Bot Defender dispel bad actor requests at a rate of 3000 requests per second. And this is not uncommon.”

FanDuel uses Bot Defender to collect data from incoming traffic, determine human vs. non-human interactions and mitigate malicious bot traffic. The solution generates advanced reports and analysis, which FanDuel can use to investigate attacks.

Easy Integration with AWS

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