In 2017, "bad bots" accounted for 21.8 percent of all website traffic, up 9.5 percent from 2016, according to a Distil Networks report.
For the report, the cybersecurity company analyzed billions of bad bot requests to determine the scope of automated threats. In the report, Distil Networks differentiated between "good bots," such as search engine crawlers that index websites, and "bad bots," which scrape data from websites without permission. Hackers often use bad bots for online fraud, account hijacking and data theft.
Here are the top five industries hit by automated threats, ranked by the percent of web traffic coming from bad bots. Distil Networks analyzed a total of 10 industries for the report.
1. Gambling: 53.1 percent
2. Airlines: 43.9 percent
3. Finance: 24.7 percent
4. Healthcare: 24.4 percent
5. Tickets: 23 percent
To access Distil Networks' report, click here.