True Alliance Mitigates Online Retail Bot Threats and Improves Website Uptime by 99% with Kasada and AWS

True Alliance is one of the largest retailers, distributors, and licensees of premium accessories and apparel from fashion, sports, and outdoor brands in Australia and New Zealand. It represents world-class brands such as The North Face, Lacoste, and Speedo, and has a mission to grow the equity of those brands and delight customers. Ecommerce represents an essential part of True Alliance’s business, with heavily trafficked online shopping portals for each brand.

Online threats forced True Alliance to devote a significant amount of time and resources to fighting attacks from malicious bots. These automated software applications created security risks, disrupted operations, and introduced the potential for activities such as account takeover and credit card scams. These attacks, which continued to increase in volume and sophistication, led to revenue losses due to website slowdowns.

To protect its platforms and optimize its site experience, True Alliance sought a cybersecurity solution that was easy to deploy and provided immediate efficiencies. It wanted a solution that helped control access to its sites, but minimized false positives to ensure legitimate shoppers weren’t blocked. It also wanted a solution with a low cost of ownership backed by a company that offered outstanding customer service.

Kasada, a bot mitigation software company and an AWS Partner specializing in retail, offered seamless integration with True Alliance's existing AWS setup. After True Alliance evaluated Kasada’s platform it was clear the solution was the perfect fit, and the decision to select them was unanimous.

Malicious bots and their makers seek out the tiniest vulnerabilities on websites and pose a serious and ongoing threat to retailers. To protect customers like True Alliance, Kasada constantly updates and releases its bot mitigation software to stay one step ahead. Building on AWS helps Kasada accelerate response times and releases to deliver comprehensive vulnerability detection and prevention, respond to issues quickly, and deploy updates efficiently.

The True Alliance solution is led by Kasada’s Bot detection engine. Its algorithms and continuous traffic analysis help reduce the rate of false positives to below 0.01 percent. Amazon CloudFront, AWS Web Application Firewall (AWS WAF), and AWS Shield are all used as additional tools to further enhance overall security and performance.

Kasada’s solution was implemented in just minutes, and the effect was immediate. The easy-to-deploy and simple-to-manage software as a service (SaaS) promptly mitigated a variety of online attacks and added protection against price scraping and IP theft. Regan MacDonald, group IT manager at True Alliance, noted, “We were amazed by how simple and immediately efficient the solution was. After implementing Kasada’s bot defense solution, our conversion rates increased by 60 percent and website uptime improved by 99 percent.”

With bots no longer consuming valuable resources, True Alliance saw an improvement in website speed, availability, and reliability. This boosted customer satisfaction and increased revenue from online sales. The reduction in attacks also led to operational efficiencies. With a more resilient infrastructure and proactive threat mitigation in place, fewer resources needed to be devoted to responding to bot threats. Kasada’s solution helped free up True Alliance’s development team so they could focus on critical work and develop new applications to grow their business.

Kasada helped True Alliance achieve the security and resilience it required to keep its business running smoothly and remain poised for ongoing success. It continues to use Kasada to protect its ecommerce sites and ensure that only legitimate traffic reaches them. “Kasada has an incredible product that just works,” said MacDonald. “The experience is a seamless one for our customers because they don’t even know it’s there.”

The seamless implementation and measurable results were due to more than just Kasada’s technology. One of Kasada’s mottos is “Giving customers a team, not just a tool.” The company holds itself accountable for stopping bots, and its care and dedication were integral to the success of the True Alliance project. “We really liked the interaction with the Kasada team,” concluded MacDonald. “They were enthusiastic, highly knowledgeable, and very easy to do business with.”