Case Study

Twelve Thirty Reduces Impact of Bot Attacks by 95% with HUMAN Application Protection

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Company

Twelve Thirty is a consumer engagement company that runs digital promotions and incentivized engagements to connect brands with their customers in creative ways. Companies such as Mondelēz, BIC, Panda Express, and Roku work with Twelve Thirty to enhance their consumer experience and increase brand interactions. Twelve Thirty enables real-time engagement with consumers via custom websites, gamification, sweepstakes and more by functioning as an extension of its clients to provide best in class activations.

“Data security and privacy are critical concerns for our clients, and HUMAN enables Twelve Thirty to go beyond standard protection to ensure unparalleled security and set us apart as an industry leader.”

– Brad Fishbain, President, Twelve Thirty

Challenge

Twelve Thirty creates digital games, loyalty programs, and contests in which consumers can win prizes to help brands gather data, drive engagement and build market awareness. However, these digital and incentivized promotions are ripe targets for bot attacks and fraud. The company had three main challenges: 

  1. Ensure prizes are awarded to legitimate winners
  2. Maintain data integrity for accurate reporting and campaign optimization
  3. Reduce the time and effort required for manual data scrubbing and manipulation

President Brad Fishbain explains how these campaigns experienced a significant increase in malicious activity and fraudulent attempts to game the system. “The sophistication of bot attacks has surged drastically as of late, rendering traditional bot defense tactics such as CAPTCHAs ineffective. These attacks increase software costs substantially, make true real-time reporting near impossible, and create hours upon hours of work to manually review and clean data sets.”

Solution

After an extensive search process, Twelve Thirty attempted several solutions, but with no success. The company then discovered HUMAN Application Protection and was impressed with the comprehensive, robust solution as compared to the other offerings.  

  • Protection against advanced bot attacks: HUMAN delivers industry-leading bot protection using behavioral analysis, machine learning models and predictive methods to accurately identify 99.99% of malicious bots. The solution also features Human Challenge and Precheck, low-friction, scenario-optimized challenges that enforce additional detections on suspicious requests without impacting the user experience.
  • Easy to manage and maintain: HUMAN continuously performs risk threshold and scoring optimization, providing best-in-class bot management without requiring extensive configuration from the Twelve Thirty team. Meanwhile, Twelve Thirty can modify and refine the solution independently if needed. Fishbain appreciates that he can create rules to stop malicious activity and implement restrictions without needing to push code or enlist his development team. 
  • Enterprise-level customer support: If needed, HUMAN experts quickly answer questions and deliver support as needed, especially during sudden spikes in activity that demand immediate attention.
  • Ability to deploy across microsites: Twelve Thirty needs to deploy bot protection across many different microsites as they are created for new campaigns. HUMAN was able to meet this unique requirement to ensure that every campaign is protected.

With HUMAN Application Protection, Twelve Thirty gained a repeatable solution that can be applied across countless microsites that have varying durations and requirements. “HUMAN Application Protection allows me, as a non-developer, to use the console and implement certain restrictions to stop malicious activity. This helps manage situations with spikes in traffic and determine if they are fraudulent or legitimate,” Fishbain says.

Learn More

Application Protection employs behavior-based analytics to detect anomalies and prevent even the most sophisticated bot attacks. It offered a range of features that aligned with the team’s requirements:

  • Flexible architecture: The cloud-based solution was a perfect fit for microservices because it easily integrated with any existing infrastructure, without adding appliances or latency.
  • Fast deployment and visibility: Application Protection was deployed quickly and easily with the close support of an experienced onboarding team.
  • Responsive customer support: HUMAN offers support via Slack, email, or phone to investigate security incidents, provide actionable insights and function as an extension of Twelve Thirty’s team.

RESULTS

HUMAN Application Protection enabled Twelve Thirty to significantly reduce the impact of bot attacks by 95% and continue to be a leader in the industry, as data security and privacy are critical concerns for its customers. Fishbain explains, “One client, a Fortune 100 CPG brand, experienced 80 million bot attacks in just one campaign prior to us deploying HUMAN. Within a matter of days, we were able to reduce that number to low thousands. What previously took up to 30 hours of data cleanup now only requires one or two, which allows my team to focus on other important tasks and reduce costs.” 

The support and customization provided by HUMAN has also been critical in addressing the company’s unique needs, including deploying the solution across different types of campaigns. Twelve Thirty is able to easily refine its HUMAN implementation, such as reducing cache times, to stay ahead of evolving bot attacks. “Since engaging HUMAN,” he continues, “we have deployed Application Protection on dozens of campaigns, saving us tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure and labor costs. Implementing HUMAN is a non-negotiable part of our business now and will continue to be in the future.”

The solution provides a significant differentiator for Twelve Thirty among its competitors, including maintaining data privacy and collecting PII. “We are protecting our clients’ brands with HUMAN Application Protection,” states Fishbain. “We can solve data security issues for clients that had negative experiences in the past with other vendors.” 

Overall, HUMAN helps maintain Twelve Thirty’s business success. “When customers engage Twelve Thirty to run a campaign, they know it’s their brand name—not ours—that’s on the line,” Fishbain said. “Knowing that we are backed by the industry-leader in bot management gives our customers confidence that their Twelve Thirty campaigns will be protected. This allows us to deliver on our mission of crafting engaging experiences that captivate audiences and create impact for our customers.”

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