Manual Chapter : About Bot Defense

Applies To:

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BIG-IQ Centralized Management

  • 8.3.0, 8.2.0, 8.1.0, 8.0.0
Manual Chapter

About Bot Defense

Proactive bot defense pre-emptively defends your applications against automated attacks by web robots, or
bots
. As a part of the Shared Security Module, bot defense helps identify and mitigate attacks before they cause damage to the site, by preventing bots from gaining initial access to a web site. This protective measure analyzes the signatures and anomalies in traffic that characterize a bot attack. This feature inspects all traffic the application (except items on the allowlist), but requires fewer resources than traditional bot protection.

Version Support

Bot defense profiles were introduced in BIG-IP version 14.1, as a replacement to the application security aspect found in the DoS profile. Applications with Web Application Security that are managed by supported versions of BIG-IP (version 14.1 or later) are eligible for anti-bot protection profiles. For more information about version limitations, see
Unified Bot version compatibility
Applications managed by BIG-IP devices that are not supported by a full bot profile, can use the Proactive Bot Defense within the DoS profile.