Challenges
- Battling sophisticated bad bot traffic, especially during flash sales
- Experiencing unwanted web scraping, carding attacks, and gift card fraud
- Poor end-customer experience due to slow site and server crashes
- Limited visibility into which requests were malicious vs. real customers
Results
- 100x increase in legitimate web traffic
- Mitigated vulnerabilities, stopping automated attacks and fraud
- Protected customer data and experience, improving brand loyalty and reputation
- Gained visibility into their traffic with actionable threat intelligence
Customer background
Crocs is one of the world’s top non-athletic footwear brands. With over 100 million pairs of shoes sold per year and annual sales surpassing $3 billion, delivering an exceptional customer experience is paramount.
Scott Deitz, the Senior Director of eCommerce Technical Operations, oversees various critical responsibilities, including managing back-end integrations, transactional site operations, and order management system development for Crocs’ global eCommerce sites.
Challenge: Battling automated traffic and fraud
As Crocs intensified its flash sales and collaborated with celebrities like Post Malone and Justin Bieber, the company encountered an unforeseen surge in automated traffic and fraudulent activities.
Scott recalls, “We weren’t expecting the amount of bots and the automated attacks. They got into our APIs before we launched our events. Bots were getting in and placing orders before the products went live. That was a shock to us.”
These incidents disrupted the seamless customer experience that Crocs aimed to provide, prompting Scott and his team to seek a more robust bot defense solution.
Previous infrastructure limitations
Using a rudimentary WAF and an embedded CDN, the team was limited by their tools’ static nature and lack of visibility.
Frustrated, Scott’s team began the search for a new bot mitigation solution. The team quickly learned that Kasada detected and stopped bot attacks that other solutions couldn’t.
“We launched Kasada with our CDN’s bot mitigation in front, then Kasada, and then another instance. We’d see things get through one solution, then hit Kasada, and be blocked.”
“We had definitive proof that Kasada was effective and worked much better than the [other] bot mitigation product,” Scott asserted.
“So we added Kasada alongside our CDN. We had them both for a while and then began running the collabs with Kasada in front.”
Selecting Kasada: Expertise and actionable threat intelligence
Crocs chose Kasada as their bot mitigation solution due to the team. Kasada’s impressive expertise and comprehensive threat intelligence set them apart from competitive solutions.
“Kasada really knows what’s going on in the bot and automated fraud space. The solution, threat intelligence, and technical skills of the team are impressive. We didn’t see any threat intel from other bot mitigation solutions or CDN providers,” Scott said.
“I was impressed with that level of attention and not just, ‘Oh, here’s some software to block bots.’ Instead, the Kasada team proactively said, ‘We saw this,’ and was able to dive into a deeper discussion.”
