Defend your apps from automated attacks

May 14, 2024

Automated cyber threats, such as bots and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, are constantly adapting to evade security measures, compromise services, and degrade customer experiences. Organisations need trusted solutions that safeguard applications while staying ahead of attacker retooling.

With Web Application Defense (WAD), part of Telefónica Tech’s NextDefense managed services portfolio, you can secure your business applications from persistent, automated, and ever-evolving threats—without introducing additional complexity to technology stacks.

Bot protection

While many bots are helpful, they can also pose a significant threat. With bad bots making up 30% of all internet traffic1, threat actors are leveraging these automated tools to emulate human-like behaviours and blend in—bypassing traditional perimeter defences and retooling rapidly to avoid detection.

In fact, bad bots are a primary source of credential stuffing, account creation fraud, content scraping, and more. To safeguard against these threats, businesses need proven solutions that can quickly distinguish legitimate from malicious activity to block attacker attempts.

Businesses need proven solutions that can quickly distinguish legitimate from malicious activity to block attacker attempts.

WAD equips businesses with highly effective bot protection for legacy and modern apps, on-premises, and across clouds. Using unparalleled AI analysis of devices and behavioural signals, WAD analyses massive traffic volumes to unmask bot attacks with maximum efficacy and near-zero false-positive rates.

This enables organisations to permit frictionless access for legitimate sources while effectively detecting and stopping nefarious attempts. Advanced obfuscation tactics also keep businesses one step ahead, preventing reverse engineering and bypassing signal collection by attackers.

DDoS protection

Today’s businesses are ultra-reliant on the availability and performance of their apps and services. But what happens if these services are no longer available? DDoS attacks that can take services offline are increasing in volume and changing tactics by targeting the application layer. They are named one of the top cyber threats by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

Businesses need mitigation designed for today’s modern DDoS attacks.

With WAD, organisations can secure networks and apps against a variety of DDoS attacks, including volumetric L3-L4, application layer 7, SSL, and DNS flood. Using machine learning, threat intelligence, and deep application expertise, Telefónica Tech’s security experts deliver around-the-clock protections to preserve the integrity of critical digital assets, infrastructure, and bandwidth.

✅ Real-time defences continuously differentiate between legitimate traffic and malicious requests to prevent the consumption of critical resources that degrade app availability and performance.

API protection

Application programming interfaces (APIs) have played a pivotal role in application modernisation. Businesses rely on APIs to drive connectivity and innovation of their services, but as API usage grows, it’s become a focal point of automated attacks.

Research shows that over 90% of today’s web-based attacks target API endpoints, with bad actors employing bot, DDoS, and injection attacks to disrupt APIs and manipulate their logic.

With APIs at the centre of seemingly every app and service, businesses must adopt ample security measures to safeguard these interfaces from misuse and compromise.

WAD eliminates blind spots caused by unmanaged APIs. With deep visibility across new and legacy apps, Telefónica Tech WAD rapidly identifies known and unknown APIs to secure hidden or decentralised interfaces from advanced threats.

Built-in protections surface unusual activity, such as malicious attempts or dangerous connections, while proven defences prevent automated and human-driven attacks (including zero-day, bot, DDoS, and OWASP Top 10 API Security Risks).

WAD also standardises security configurations across the entire API lifecycle with centralised governance to derisk current investments and secure development and deployment in the future.

✅ Telefónica Tech's Web Application Defense (WAD), powered by F5 Distributed Cloud Services, is a managed security service for businesses of all sizes and industries.

With easy activation and instant scalability, WAD offers a cost-effective and hands-free approach to securing and managing critical apps and online services—without consuming in-house resources.

○ Backed by our Telefónica Tech’s expert cybersecurity team and 11 global security operations centres (SOCs), you get full 24x7 protection.

○ Reduce risk, mitigate attacks, and increase app availability and performance.

More information →