Stop the Bots: Practical Lessons in Machine Learning

Bot-powered credential stuffing is a scourge on the modern Internet. These attacks attempt to log into and take over a user’s account by assaulting password forms with a barrage of dictionary words and previously stolen account credentials, with the aim of performing fraudulent transactions, stealing sensitive data, and compromising personal information.

At Cloudflare we’ve built a suite of technologies to combat bots, many of them grounded in Machine Learning. ML is a hot topic these days, but the literature tends to focus on improving the core technology — and not how these learning machines are incorporated into real-world organizations.

Given how much experience we have with ML (which we employ for many security and performance products, in addition to bot management), we wanted to share some lessons learned with regard to how this technology manifests in actual products.

There tend to be three stages every company goes through in the life cycle of infusing machine learning into their DNA. They are:

• Business Intelligence
• Standalone Machine Learning
• Machine Learning Productization

These concepts are a little abstract — so let’s walk through how they might apply to a tangible field we all know and love: dental insurance.

Business Intelligence

Many companies already Continue reading