One of the historical challenges of building real-time, distributed applications has been state. The missing piece is state – the contents of its memory that allow the application to run. Serverless has always been implied as a stateless process. So is the term "stateful serverless" a contradiction? Not anymore.

Macrometa's Justin Johnson and Redmonk analyst Kelly Fitzpatrick discuss how to build a real-time distributed application on Macrometa’s stateful serverless platform. Check out the demo below.

Build geo-distributed apps with the Macrometa CLI

What Is Stateful Serverless?

Bots are a growing menace for eCommerce businesses across sectors including retail, travel, gaming, and more. Automated attacks hurt sales, steal data, and damage site infrastructure. Legacy defenses relying on behavior analysis and signatures fail against today's highly sophisticated bots mimicking human patterns.

A smarter approach is strategic deception using honeypots - traps that lure bots but have no production value. Integrating deception tactics into your defenses can divert and reveal attacks early while frustrating bot efforts.

Current good and bad bot detection falls short

 management solutions. These use various techniques to classify traffic as human or bot:

 - Bots get flagged for inhuman patterns like high click rates.

 - Known bot tools and patterns are recognized.

- Check for suspicious fingerprints like headless Chrome.

However, these approaches have severe limitations against modern bots:

Behavior analysis fails once bots mimic humans well.

Signatures only detect known bot tools. Newer tools go unnoticed.

False positives from incorrectly flagged humans disrupt business.

Updating detection patterns is complex and slow. Bots evolve rapidly.

Reactive approaches allow bots to attack before detection.

Due to these gaps, sneaky bots bypass legacy systems and hurt eCommerce businesses.

Ineffective bot management leads to major risks like:

Scalper bots quickly snap up limited inventory of hot products before real shoppers can buy them. This leads to PR backlash.

Scraping bots steal vast amounts of pricing data, product catalog information, customer reviews, and other original content. This undercuts competitive advantage.

Gift card fraudster bots check the validity of stolen card numbers and monetize active ones before merchants can react.

Bots attempt stolen username/password pairs on login forms to take over accounts and steal payment data.

 overload servers with junk traffic, hurting site availability and performance.

Clicker bots generate fake ad clicks to inflate display ad costs.

Ticket scraping - Bots rapidly scrape ticket pricing and availability data from airline, hotel, and event sites. This undercuts competitive pricing strategies and drives up query costs.

Blocking seat/ticket inventory - Bots book seats or tickets en masse without purchasing, preventing real customers from accessing limited inventory and driving up prices.

Distorting analytics - Bots viewing listings without booking distort metrics like visitor counts used for marketing decisions.

Enabling account takeovers - Compromised loyalty program accounts let bots improperly access and use customer miles and points.

Reliance on OTAs - Airlines rely heavily on online travel agency bots for bookings, increasing their bot traffic and complexity.

Here are risks faced by the ticketing industry that can be faced with large volumes of traffic for key events:

Ticket scalping bots - Bots rapidly purchase tickets the moment they go on sale, making it difficult for real fans to buy tickets before resellers mark them up drastically. This draws public criticism.

Fake ticket botnets - Networks of bots impersonate customers to trick ticketing systems into issuing valid tickets that are sold illegally. This defrauds both ticketing companies and fans.

Price scraping - Bots continuously scrape ticket prices and availability to undermine competitive pricing strategies.

Ad click fraud - Bots generate fake ad clicks on ticket sale pages to artificially increase advertiser costs per click.

 to detect, deflect, or analyze malicious bot activity. As bots parse pages, execute links, and fill in forms, they can be detected and analyzed using honeypots. These honeypots are isolated, monitored traps mimicking real environments. These honeypots exist right on web pages as bots and users come to visit. Real users will not see the honeypots, but bots will detect and interact with a link or an additional button hidden in the web page, or through another honeypot trap. When bots interact with honeypots, it reveals their behavior so security teams can take defensive action.

Today’s honeypots are designed with advanced deception technology that complement legacy defenses. They are implemented by creating fake application pages like product listings and databases and making them highly visible to bots via links on real pages or SEO optimization. Bots will attempt to interact with these honeypots as they crawl and scrape sites, unaware they are fakes. Meanwhile, all activity with the honeypot is closely logged and analyzed. Based on what traps the bot falls for, mitigation responses can be crafted.

Here are some techniques honeypots use to attract and detect malicious bots:

Fake login page links to catch credential stuffing attacks.

Product pages with inaccurate data to divert scraping.

Fake gift card generators with valid codes to lure fraud bots.

Pages with spun content that seems unique to distract content scraping.

Bots aim to interact with as many application pages as possible to scrape valuable data or find vulnerabilities. Bots will hit fake product pages trying to extract pricing data, hit fake login forms with stolen credentials, and access fake databases. Without sophisticated logic to detect honeypots, bots fall for these traps revealing their presence and inner workings.

Why do honeypots have huge advantages over legacy detection?

 real users don't find or access honeypot areas

Bots get distracted exploring high-interaction honeypots instead of attacking production systems.

Attack footprints are captured as bots interact with traps. No need to wait for damage.

Easy to quickly deploy new traps mimicking latest targets. Bots get frustrated finding no value.

Low performance impact since traps are served selectively to suspicious visitors.

Honeypots provide 360-degree protection against various threats:

- Fake product and inventory pages divert scrapers. Generated content with spun text wastes scraper time and resources.

 - Honeypot login forms catch credential stuffing without locking out real users.

 - Fake gift card generators lure fraud bots allowing merchants to track and blacklist them.

 - Bots get distracted trying to scalp fake limited inventory honeypots.

 - Traffic to honeypots reduces attack load on production servers.

Most sites already use commercial bot mitigation services. The ideal approach is to complement legacy defenses with honeypots:

Handoff hard to detect sneaky bots to honeypots for diversion.

Reduce dependence on ineffective behavior analysis.

Detect more attack variants to update legacy tool signatures.

Retain backup protection if any bots get past the traps.

The advantages of the PhotonIQ Honeypot Service

Honeypot services like PhotonIQ Honeypot Service, powered by the 

, handle the complexity of building, deploying, and managing sophisticated traps tailored to each business's needs at the edge. 

lets eCommerce businesses take a dynamic approach to outsmarting bots by using honeypot trap triggers to detect bots in real time.

Honeypots utilize various traps that are dynamically created and managed to attract and deceive bots. For example, unused form fields called "honeytokens" can be embedded within real applications. Enticing "honey files" like PDFs or documents are also deployed as bait for bots.

These honeypot traps are randomly placed across different pages. Their links, forms, fields and cookies are generated dynamically to stay one step ahead of bots and prevent them from learning to avoid the traps.

By continuously monitoring bot interactions with the honeypots in real-time, analytics can correlate which honey triggers to use to block future bots. These insights are applied to create and deploy new unpredictable traps as needed.

Bots are a complex and constantly evolving threat. But their own techniques can be turned against them using smart honeypots that lure and deceive them.

Adding this potent deception capability can help 

Proactively divert attacks instead of waiting to get hacked.

Outsmart persistent bots frustrating their efforts.

Extract valuable insights into emerging bot behaviors.

Strengthen defenses by complementing legacy tools.

Honeypots deliver a crucial edge against the bot menace. Fight back against bots on your terms with strategic honeypots. If you would like to learn more about how the PhotonIQ Honeypot Service can bolster your bot defenses, please schedule a chat with an 

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." - Sun Tzu

Outsmarting Bots: How Honeypots Can Boost eCommerce Security

As we wrap up the summer season and check off the back to school list, the countdown is on to the busiest sales period in US eCommerce. Traffic can surge up to 

 during Cyber 5. Retailers risk losing millions if sites experience disruptions or delays over the Black Friday weekend.

and shoppers ready to splurge, Cyber 5 can account for a significant part of annual revenue. A 2021 

 showed shoppers plan to spend 50% of holiday budgets during Cyber 5. However, consumers can’t buy when a site goes down. And 50% won’t stick around if pages take 

The Cyber 5 peak shopping period puts eCommerce infrastructure through the ultimate stress test and any consequences can have a long lasting impact. The key is taking action now to improve website resilience, get control of bots, optimize virtual waiting rooms, safeguard coupons, and improve performance even at scale.

Say bye to "bad" bots, DDoS attacks, and peak traffic crashes

Modern eCommerce landscapes often experience overwhelming traffic surges during promotions, pushing websites to the brink of crashing. Virtual waiting rooms emerge as a remedy by effectively regulating user access and preventing overloads, ensuring stability even during peak demand. This proactive approach safeguards smooth user experiences and cultivates loyalty by reducing frustration during spikes.

While managing traffic is a necessity, it's worth noting that not all visitors are genuine customers. In the midst of the Black Friday shopping frenzy, virtual waiting rooms play a pivotal role in filtering out approximately 

 attributed to bots and fake users, conserving valuable computing resources for authentic customers. Furthermore, these waiting rooms act as a deterrent to bots attempting to hoard limited-stock items for resale, preserving fair access for actual shoppers.

, exploiting legitimate traffic to mask malicious activities. By distinguishing and filtering out such traffic, virtual waiting rooms bolster the overall security of platforms.

 seek discounts and offers when deciding to buy from a retailer or brand. This trend intensifies during the holiday season, as 

 businesses compete to capture consumers' attention with irresistible deals.

Securing these incentives is vital, striking a balance between engaging users and curbing misuse. Fraud prevention is key to tackling code exploitation. Careful tracking mechanisms are essential to deter misuse proactively.

In the anonymity of online shopping, unclear customer details enable easier coupon abuse, damaging profits. 

 counters this by assigning unique identifiers to track coupon usage without cookies. Each coupon receives its own distinct fingerprint made of letters, numbers and symbols, linking it to transactions or users.

During redemption, the system checks the coupon's fingerprint against valid codes, foiling counterfeits by comparing fingerprints. Over time, it spots suspicious patterns like identical prints by multiple users - indicating potential fraud. With 

, fingerprinting detects odd behaviors, triggering alerts to resolve disputes. Fingerprinting enhances coupon security and traceability.

Ecommerce website optimization is now essential

Fast website performance isn't just a choice – it's a competitive necessity. Users expect quick, seamless experiences, and delays lead to lost conversions and revenue. Extensive research confirms the link between site speed and business success. Sites loading in a second see 

 and even a 0.1-second speed improvement can mean an 

 say page speed affects their buying decision. However, large eCommerce businesses and retailers face complex challenges in maintaining fast site speed at scale. Fragmented efforts and legacy tech can complicate matters. Automated performance proxies offer a unique solution to optimize pages and assets on-the-fly from any device, at scale.

The edge advantage: Macrometa eCommerce & retail solutions

Navigating the ever-changing digital landscape of 

 requires prioritizing exceptional user experiences and robust defenses against online threats. From enhancing fraud detection and site resilience to driving up performance, Macrometa’s real-time approach addresses the diverse challenges of eCommerce and retail.

Optimize experiences and defenses with virtual waiting room services

Beyond limiting users and filtering traffic to help thwart DDoS attacks and bots, Macrometa’s Virtual Waiting Room Services act as an effective buffer between users and origin services to ensure optimal performance. A continuous feedback mechanism dynamically adjusts the dequeuing rates, while a seamless user experience and fairness in resource allocation are maintained. Upon visiting the waiting room page, users are informed of wait times and queue status in real time. Administrators can see valuable insights into user behavior and queue metrics, and receive threshold alerts. 

Enhance user tracking and fraud detection with fingerprinting

Macrometa’s Fingerprinting creates non-cookie identifiers from browser attributes to identify customers. Fingerprint profiles update in real time instead of becoming stale. Advanced machine learning models strengthen accuracy, address fingerprint shifts, and detect spoofing or misuse like coupon fraud. This is critical during sales events when attackers are active and consumers may misunderstand coupon rules. With responsible fingerprinting, Macrometa empowers companies to maintain personalized experiences while adhering to privacy regulations. The solution uses lightweight code to minimize performance impact, unlike heavy fingerprinting scripts.

Drive up page loads, performance, and revenue

Macrometa's PhontonIQ Performance Proxy (P3)

 optimizes delivery between CDN and origin infrastructure. PhotonIQ employs AI optimization, edge processing, and holistic monitoring to dramatically improve site speed. Running on Macrometa’s 

 (GDN) of edge nodes, P3 accelerates your site transparently without any changes to code and works seamlessly with existing infrastructure and apps. Unique capabilities include AI-Powered dynamic page optimization that can increase site speed over 70% and significantly boost Core Web Vitals scores - even at scale.

Get ready for the holiday season in just 60 days!

Learn about Macrometa’s AI-powered solutions, which are designed to boost website resiliency, effectively manage bots, protect coupons, and streamline virtual waiting rooms. Or 

 today to ensure uptime and peak performance during the holiday sales crunch.

Holiday Countdown: Optimize eCommerce Defenses & Performance

 has become a must-have for eCommerce businesses looking to stand out and drive sales in an increasingly competitive landscape. According to a

, companies excelling at personalization make 40% more income from those activities versus competitors.

But there’s an advanced level beyond basic 

 - emotional personalization. This is because 90% of our financial decisions are based on emotions and just 10% on logic, according to research by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, as highlighted by 

Harness the power of emotions in eCommerce

 involves using technology to detect the emotional state of each online shopper and customizing their experience accordingly. For example, if a shopper seems stressed or impatient, the site might simplify navigation or recommend more straightforward purchase options. For happy, relaxed shoppers open to discovery, the site could suggest additional items or new releases.

How emotional personalization drives eCommerce success

Emotional personalization creates a tailored experience that resonates better with customers. Shoppers feel understood and are more likely to make purchases when the site seems to “get” them. Emotional personalization can lift metrics like 

 rate, average order value, and customer lifetime value. 

, “70 percent of emotionally engaged consumers say they spend up to two times or more on brands they are loyal to, while only “49% of consumers with low emotional engagement say the same.”

Here are some of the most effective methods for identifying visitor emotions:

 - Rapid, erratic clicks can signal impatience or frustration while leisurely browsing indicates openness and enjoyment. Smart analysis of these digital body language cues can reveal how website visitors are feeling as they navigate.

 on chat transcripts - Tools like natural language processing can detect sentiment and emotion in customer service chat logs. This gives invaluable insight into pain points causing frustration and successes evoking happiness.

Track social media mentions - Monitor Social Media listening tools go beyond brand mentions to hashtags, images, video and conversations that reveal customer emotions. Harness the treasure trove of feelings that customers now express through social media.

Survey customers - Asking visitors direct questions through surveys and polls can provide insight into their mindset and emotional state. Well-crafted emotional measurement questions can uncover how website experiences make customers feel.

 - Advanced algorithms can analyze behavioral signals and predict emotional states. AI takes emotion detection to the next level by combining cues for deeper insights.

Power emotional personalization with clickstream data

Clickstream data provides a wealth of signals to uncover visitor emotions and intents. Here are 5 examples of how clickstream can inform emotional personalization:

 or filtering can indicate impatience - Frantic clicking and quick search abandonment are digital body language cues that a customer is in a hurry. Meet them with instant recommendations and easier ways to find products.

Browsing high-consideration categories suggests care and research - For big ticket or complex items, customers want to learn. Share more detailed information to build confidence.

Abandoning cart repeatedly shows hesitation - When data shows customers consistently bail before checkout, respond by easing their doubts. Reviews, guarantees, and 

Viewing many items hints at excitement and engagement - Customers exploring broadly have interest and time. 

 more items to deliver and keep them captivated with more discoveries.

Leaving a site quickly from certain pages shows dissatisfaction - When analytics surface pages that consistently lose visitors, uncover design issues, performance delays, or lacking content. Then optimize - learn more about Macrometa’s 

Process clickstreams in real-time with the Macrometa GDN

To leverage clickstream data, eCommerce businesses need the ability to ingest and process huge volumes of events in real time. Ecommerce & retail solutions powered by the 

 are ideally suited for this data load with infinite scale and millisecond latency at the edge.

 allows businesses to consume clickstream events as they occur and immediately detect patterns to inform personalization. By handling clickstream data at the edge, the Macrometa GDN enables emotional personalization that is instant and responsive.

With a combination of streaming data and search capabilities, Macrometa empowers eCommerce businesses to take 

 to the next level. By incorporating emotional signals into real-time search and recommendations, businesses can boost conversion rates and provide customers with more relevant, satisfying experiences.

 today to learn more, or schedule a demo to see it in action.

Emotional Personalization: The Secret to Boosting eCommerce Sales

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What Is Stateful Serverless?

Related Posts

Outsmarting Bots: How Honeypots Can Boost eCommerce Security

Holiday Countdown: Optimize eCommerce Defenses & Performance

Emotional Personalization: The Secret to Boosting eCommerce Sales