BotGuard vs BitNinja
When it comes to buying a bot protection service, choosing the right provider can be daunting. While we respect our competitors, we also believe our solution is more accessible and effective for a wider range of clients and end-users. We’ve gathered some information in this blog that will hopefully help you choose the best solution for your business.
BotGuard and BitNinja do have some overlapping features, but they’re essentially very different in how they operate and how they protect a web server. While BitNinja offers an all-in-one solution with different subsystems and products, the BotGuard server focuses exclusively on protecting websites against malicious traffic and does so very successfully. As a result, the same difficulties that BitNinja’s different subsystems are designed to address are resolved by BotGuard’s service in a very simple and efficient way.
BitNinja protection is mostly based on maintaining a database of “bad” IP addresses. This is accomplished by tracking IP activity using data collected from honeypots, and logs from the network of protected servers via their agent software. This system works fine with botnets, but it doesn’t work with most types of modern automated threats, including bots like scrapers or a hacker attack. Unfortunately, IP addresses that weren’t previously spotted in any attacks are generally invisible for BitNinja’s sensors.
BotGuard detects in real time whether a request is malicious and whether it was sent by a real human or by any kind of bot (including “New-gen” bots) or automated or security software. Such an approach has significant security benefits. Moreover, the software is installed on a dedicated server and does not create any load on protected web servers.
Let’s compare some of BotGuard and BitNinja’s key features:
| Valuable Features | ||
| Web application firewall (WAF) L7 HTTP/HTTPS protection | ||
| DoS/DDoS protection | Based on intellectual bot recognition algorithms. L7 protection only. Protects HTTP/HTTPS traffic. If a request wasn’t sent by a real human, it will not reach the site. | |
| Firewall L4 protection | Installing a Layer 4 firewall on a web server is not the most effective strategy. We believe that regardless of the quality of implementation, this method will not provide efficient protection. For this purpose, it is preferable to use network infrastructure. | |
| Log analysis | HTTP/HTTPS log analysis for the most secure website protection | HTTP / HTTPS / FTP / SMTP / IMAP / POP3 |
| Bot protection | Intellectual bot recognition based on detecting if a request was sent by a human or not. Protects against content scrapers, scalpers, brute-force credential crackers, spambots, and all the OWASP Top 10 threats. | Does not catch ‘lawful’ bots. Detects only bots that are acting as a part of a botnet or if they’re trying to attack a server based on widely known methods. |
| Botnet protection | Intellectual bot recognition, based on detecting if a request was sent by a human or not. | Attack is detected using IP reputation only |
| Server-side malware scanner | ||
| Scalability | ||
| Cost | Subscription plans available for all levels of enterprise. Only €74 EUR / 10M hits per month and unlimited domains. | Subscription plans are available, but on average the price is twice as expensive as BotGuard. |
| Licensing model | Flexible license mode: Free traffic analysis server + stable price for BotGuard Protection Server regardless of the number of web servers integrated + ability to upsell advanced protection licenses to websites | Licensing is based on a per-server model |
| Resource usage optimization | Offloads resource-consuming threat analysis to locally installed dedicated BotGuard servers, but does not load a web server. | Requests are processed at a protected offsite server |
| Horizontal scalability | If needed (due to an increase in traffic, or additional web servers integrated) additional BotGuard servers can be deployed automatically within minutes. | The end-user’s hosting team is responsible for installing the software on each new server. |
| Customer Service | ||
| Free 24/7 support | Due to the advantage in architecture, BotGuard SOC specialists can have access to all L7 security events without direct access to hosting servers. This allows BotGuard to provide support of a much higher quality. | Limited support with CET office hours. Most of the work is done by a hosting engineering team. Often direct access to servers is required. |
We are confident that our solution is more efficient at blocking malicious web traffic and more easily adaptable for different levels of business and enterprise. The BotGuard Cloud Web Protection service is the better option, hands down, for reliable and robust web protection.
Hopefully you found this information and comparison useful! Visit our website for more information about our products.
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.