31% of all the traffic on a website can be malicious

Mar 19, 2012 08:16 GMT  ·  By

Many website owners are unaware that Google Analytics and other traffic monitoring tools don’t take into consideration the “non-human” visitors. The most worrying part of this observation is that the 51% of the traffic is not seen in reports and it can be represented by hackers, bots and other spying software.

A report made by Incapsula reveals that 31% of the traffic is potentially harmful, especially if a business website is targeted.

A number of 1,000 sites, all of them with 50,000 to 100,000 visitors per month, were monitored and the results show that hacking tools represent an average of 5% out of the total traffic.

Domains that belong to firms of all sizes are targeted by these malicious tools designed to compromise or hijack sites, steal data, and spread malware infections. Part of the 5% are distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) clients meant to take the site out of order, snipers that exploit security holes, and applications that scan for vulnerabilities.

Another 5% of traffic is represented by scrapers. Mostly targeting forums, news and travel-related sites, the scrapers steal email addresses, later used for spamming, and content, which is reposted on other websites.

Websites that accept and display elements submitted by visitors are favored by content spammers, which not only smudge the site with irrelevant content, but also get it blacklisted.

Spies that steal marketing intelligence and keep competitors up-to-date with most of the changes that occur on a site represent 19% of the potentially malicious traffic.

These results should represent a wake-up call for site owners and administrators. The non-human traffic must be carefully analyzed and the appropriate measures need to be taken to block out the unwanted visitors.

A sound security strategy can not only keep hackers at bay, but also ensure that the competition doesn’t gain possession of sensitive information that can put them in the lead.