Today’s marketing, advertising, and cybersecurity teams confront online challenges such as distinguishing real users from impersonating fraudsters, especially when they come from millions of malware-compromised devices. Sophisticated bots can mimic human behavior by hijacking browser history and activity when visiting websites, and more. Since these bot attacks look and act just like humans, they evade and overwhelm current bot detection methodologies that are offered as a feature.
HUMAN (formerly White Ops), a NY-based cybersecurity company, specializes in stopping these types of attacks. The company was founded in the back of a sci-fi bookstore with a mission to protect the integrity of the internet by disrupting the economics of cybercrime. HUMAN has developed an award-winning verification engine that detects and protects its customers from the most sophisticated bot activity on the internet—including its Advertising Integrity, Marketing Integrity, and Application Integrity solutions.
Cutting-edge Bot Mitigation Solutions
While anomaly-based detection solutions can catch some of today’s basic bots, most companies lack the tools to catch more sophisticated bots that have mirrored human activity and as a result cannot stop these automated attacks. HUMAN’s Application Integrity protects against the abuse of applications and websites by bots and fraudsters, including web scraping, automated account creation, and account takeover attacks. The solution distinguishes bots from real human activity and mitigates attackers through several threat models.
The entertainment and streaming industries have seen a dramatic increase in sophisticated bot attacks recently. HUMAN is actively working to stop fraud in these industries. Streaming fraud as a concept is still in its infancy, however, it has gained momentum with investigations into fraudsters whose teams have been accused of using bots to influence the popularity of songs to get them on the top of the charts. HUMAN works with streaming services to eliminate this type of bot activity to protect the artists and listeners. The company had success in the video streaming industry, particularly as it relates to CTV. The team detected and disrupted the largest CTV ad fraud scheme to date.—PARETO.
Additionally, sophisticated bots are impacting marketing campaigns today as a majority of traffic visiting websites, filling out forms, creating accounts is non-human i.e. bots. HUMAN’s Marketing Integrity Solution solves the problem of marketing fraud by giving brands visibility into where the source of bot traffic is coming from—so brands can be protected to ensure they engage with real humans. When the brands take this action, conversion rates go up significantly and it drives better business results. This helps the industry reduce fraud and provide a better experience for customers.
Innovative Approach
Bots have dramatically become more sophisticated alongside technology over the years. They evade detection by mimicking human behavior so well that it becomes difficult to spot and stop them. Thus, instead of relying on traditional, anomaly-based detection in digital transactions, the Human Verification Engine investigates each transaction for signs of automation, continuously monitoring for device and network-level data to pinpoint evidence of breach or fraud, constantly hunting for new threats to stop them.
The engine protects web and native mobile applications by delivering the detection payload on every transaction across desktop and mobile environments to detect malicious bot activity. Companies can easily deploy HUMAN’s technology within minutes through a JavaScript tag, Software Development Kit (SDK), or a 1×1 pixel for environments that do not accept JavaScript. Once detection tags are placed, macros are populated and metadata is sent to the dashboard for immediate reporting.
“Our innovative approach combines superior detection techniques, global visibility, and a dedicated team of cyber threat intelligence analysts enables us to protect many of the largest internet platforms and brands across the globe,” says Tamer Hassan (Co-founder and CEO of HUMAN).
Spearheading the Growth
Tamer grew up in the Bay Area, where he was introduced to technology early. He quickly taught himself to code at the age of eight. While he was studying engineering at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened and he knew he had to do everything he could to help protect others. He spent the next 12 years as a combat search-and-rescue pilot flying Black Hawk helicopters to save military and civilian lives behind enemy lines in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After his time in the military, Tamer combined his passion for coding and protecting by co-founding HUMAN in 2012. Starting as a CTO—where he helped develop a technology that has been recognized industry-wide, Tamer was appointed as the CEO of the company in 2019. Under his dynamic leadership, at the end of 2020, HUMAN received a strategic investment from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division, in partnership with ClearSky Security and NightDragon to accelerate its growth.
Collective Protection Approach
“Our competitors are fraudsters, and just like the technology they are ever-evolving—trying to find new ways to take advantage of humans on the internet. We stop them,” adds Tamer. HUMAN believes in a collective protection approach to combat this. This means the more companies it works with, the better visibility it has on the internet. Today, the company protects the largest internet platforms and companies from sophisticated bot attacks by verifying the humanity of more than 10 trillion interactions per week, giving HUMAN the most unique signal and accurate bot detection in the industry. With that better picture, HUMAN can accurately protect companies and their consumers. Additionally, when HUMAN finds some malicious bot activity on one end of the internet, it can deploy protections across all companies they with. “Currently we protect 85% of the programmatic ecosystem. As more companies sign onto our mission, the internet becomes safer,” Tamer continues.
The Emerging Threats
2020 was formative for businesses as there was a new emphasis on connecting with consumers digitally. With this pivot to digital, new threats are emerging that organizations need to be aware of. Tamer predicts that every company will realize that application security attacks and marketing fraud are much bigger problems than they have realized and can no longer be accepted as the cost of doing business.
Furthermore, with bot fraud becoming an increasing area of concern, Tamer anticipates that marketing leaders and security leaders from the same company will come together to address the bot problem holistically by leveraging new bot mitigation technologies. By implementing these technologies, marketers and security leaders will have increased visibility into attacks and be able to stop them, reducing risk and losses to the business and improving conversion rates and their business results. Additionally, as parts of the world begin to open up, Tamer expects that there will be a deluge of sophisticated bots jumping in to grab flights and tickets to events. Now is the time to work together to stop them.
