Increasing bot traffic ups cyber threats against SMBs

Small and medium-sized businesses have experienced twice as many attacks last year as in 2020, mostly due to increasing bot traffic, with business websites having 2,306 more bot visits each on average than in 2020, reports ITProPortal. A SiteLock report revealed that bot attacks have become more prevalent as human traffic dwindled, with Filehacker and Backdoor being the most common cybersecurity threats against SMBs. Moreover, 93% of malware-infected websites have not been blacklisted yet and websites are being attacked nearly 172 times daily. Even though 50% of SMB website owners reported being breached, 48% continue to be unbothered by cybersecurity threats, according to the report. "While there are legitimate reasons for bots to visit a website like search engine crawlers and copyright scans, bots are also used for a variety of nefarious purposes. Malicious bots can programmatically visit websites and identify vulnerabilities in code to execute their attacks, such as stealing data or inserting malware," said Jason Soroko, chief technology officer of public key infrastructure at SiteLock parent firm Sectigo.