This section explains Bot Management service offered as part of Live Security Threat Intelligence.

Bot management is a strategy that enables you to filter which Bots are allowed to access your web assets and which should be rate-limited or blocked completely. This service currently delivers real-time feed for the User-Agent database which is a critical bot detector component. Customers can protect their applications from bad bots by enabling this service on their Controller deployments.

Note:

It is important to enable IP Reputation service to obtain comprehensive protection from bad bots.

Feature Highlights

  • Bot detection

  • Bot classification

  • Allow-deny, rate-limit bad bots

Data Collection and Retention Policy

Data Collection:

No data is collected by and for this service. User-Agent database updates are pushed only to the Controllers where this service is opted-in (enabled).

Data Retention:

Does not apply to this service.

Note:

  • This service does not store or exchange any customer data.

  • This service has no access to customer infrastructure, including, NSX, vCenter, and others.

  • This service does not read or write any configurations on the registered NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controllers.

How to enable this service

This is an opt-in service and is disabled by default.

The steps to opt-in to this service and enable User-Agent DB updates are as follows:

  1. Navigate to Administration > Cloud Services.

  2. Click EDIT.

  3. Under Live Security Threat Intelligence, select User Agent DB.

  4. Click SAVE.

Note:

Customers can opt-out of this service at any time to stop the IP Reputation updates.

Service Details

VMware utilizes whatismybrowser as its User-Agent database source. User-Agent database is cached on the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Cloud Services portal. Registered NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controllers where this service is enabled, pull User-Agent database data from NSX Advanced Load Balancer Cloud Services portal. The Controllers then immediately update connected Service Engines as part of its configuration update process.

For more details on BOT management, see BOT Management.

Impact of Unavailability

During the period that this service is down, new User-Agent database updates are not pushed to enabled NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controllers. Load Balanced applications continue to utilize cached User-Agent database (in conjunction with other Bot detectors) available on the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controllers to detect, classify and protect against bad bots.