The Total Economic Impact™ Of Kasada

Cost Savings From Reduced Fraud

Evidence and data. Interviewees said Kasada reduced fraud risk for their organizations by filtering out a significantly higher volume of sophisticated bot activity than their previous bot management solutions. By accurately identifying and blocking automated attacks that legacy tools failed to detect, Kasada helped lower overall fraud exposure without increasing friction for legitimate customers.  

• Across the board, the interviewees shared that implementing Kasada dramatically decreased the bad bot traffic flowing to their applications. The security specialist at an airline compared Kasada to a previous vendor: “For one of our critical endpoints, bot traffic has dropped by over 90%. Overall, bad bot traffic has declined by around 50% on applications protected by Kasada.”
  The CISO at a travel company also said bot traffic declined significantly: “During the POC (proof of concept), Kasada pulled us aside and told us that we are dealing with some of the most talented [threat actors]. But we definitely saw a significant reduction in bots post-Kasada implementation because [bots] just weren’t being successful anymore. … We no longer have to contact our customers about their information being compromised through a bot or an account takeover.”

• Interviewees reported that Kasada particularly was particularly effective at detecting low-volume traffic that closely mimics human behavior but is generated by sophisticated bot attacks. The CISO at a travel organization described how this was a differentiator: “Kasada has the ability to identify the really challenging stuff, whereas other providers are good at looking for more signature-based or volumetric-based bot traffic. Kasada is really, really good at the low-level, low-volume traffic that looks like human traffic but is actually bots. I haven’t seen or heard of other providers doing that as well.”

• The interviewees shared that their organizations improved detection accuracy with Kasada, with fewer legitimate users incorrectly blocked and fewer malicious bots slipping through compared to their prior solutions. The security specialist at an airline noted: “The magical moment is when we have an incident with our legacy provider, and then we switch that traffic to Kasada. After we switch it, we usually see a huge improvement in terms of false positives. Kasada will help you do the tuning, and after that there are almost no incidents.”

The same interviewee described how Kasada helped their organization better identify false negatives: “We had one critical service protected by our legacy provider, and then we added Kasada. Kasada [was given] some time to study our traffic and found sophisticated attacks on our endpoints, and applied [additional] tuning. After the tuning, we noticed a 90% drop in traffic hitting our origin. Kasada found out 90% of traffic was bots, which our previous provider didn’t tell us about. That is how good Kasada is.”

• Interviewees agreed that using Kasada led to a sharp drop-off in both false negatives and false positives. The manager of security at an electronics company stated: “We’ve seen a 50% reduction in false positives. Kasada overall has very low false positives, and that was a big frustration with our previous vendor as people were being challenged constantly. … We’ve seen an overall reduction in the number of attacks because attackers have found it difficult to get past Kasada in a number of ways.”

• The interviewees praised Kasada’s threat intelligence, which they said surfaced emerging bot patterns and attack techniques early. They also shared that Kasada not only detected and blocked bots but also provided proactive guidance on emerging threats and how best to respond. The CISO at a travel company noted: “Kasada’s threat intel is top-notch. I can also call Kasada at any moment and ask what they see with our security, and they always have good help for us. It’s just what they do as a company.”

• Interviewees explained that with improvements in detection accuracy, actionable insights from Kasada account teams, and overall reduction in bot volume, their organizations reduced the number of account takeovers. The manager of security at an electronics company stated: “We use Kasada to reduce credential stuffing, which is essentially when bad actors get lists of reused passwords and they run automated attacks across our web authentication endpoints to see what passwords match. … We have seen a 20% reduction in credential stuffing [compared to the previous provider].”

• The engineering lead at an apparel company estimated that Kasada reduced their organization’s fraud costs by between $15 million and $30 million per year. The interviewee described how Kasada defended against specific attack types, including:  

  • Automated scraping and inventory hoarding. The interviewee stated: “We used to experience attacks with hundreds of millions of check-out attempts against product that would lock out our inventory so our real consumers couldn’t actually purchase anything. Those sorts of attacks are completely unsuccessful now. That’s a nonissue ever since we’ve had Kasada.”
  • SMS toll fraud. The interviewee described how Kasada blocks automated abuse of authentication and verification workflows: “SMS toll fraud or SMS pumping is an attack vector that we have really seen ramp up over the last few years. Just on SMS fraud alone, there’s a multimillion-dollar-a-year risk surface, that if we did not have this protection [from Kasada], we would be experiencing at scale.”
  • Promotion abuse. The interviewee said: “[Previously,] there were huge, automated, AI voice-based attacks against our consumer services to sit and tie them up until they would give discount codes, and then those discount codes were being used to purchase huge amounts of product at a discount. We then implemented Kasada, and [instances of] that went down. Kasada was hugely helpful there.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Without any sort of bot management solution, the composite organization would experience $8 million in bot-driven fraud per year on applications migrated to Kasada in Year 1. These costs grow by 5% each year.

• The composite organization’s legacy CDN and bot management tool filters out 70% of bad bot traffic.

• Kasada detects and blocks 85% of bad bot traffic.

Risks. Cost savings from reduced fraud will vary depending on the following factors:

• The share of bad bot traffic the organization filters out before migrating to Kasada.

• The specific types of automated attacks the organization faces.

• The number and types of applications protected by Kasada. 

• The organization’s baseline fraud costs.

• Maturity of the organization’s bot management toolset.  

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.5 million.

Infrastructure Cost Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that Kasada helped reduce infrastructure costs by blocking malicious traffic before it reached their organizations’ applications and back-end systems. They said that by blocking automated requests at the edge, Kasada lowered unnecessary compute consumption, reduced load on authentication, SMS, and checkout services, and minimized downstream processing triggered by bots.  

• The CISO at a travel company shared: “We saw a reduction in [bot traffic] growth, which then prevented us from having to increase infrastructure costs. I don’t have to scale up [content delivery network or cloud compute] costs as I can reduce the bot traffic before it gets back to my servers.”

• The engineering lead at an apparel company shared: “Our tech spend with our cloud providers has dramatically reduced due to the fact that Kasada mitigates fraud or arbitrage campaigns that require huge data scraping infrastructure. Over the last few years, that is tens of millions of dollars of additional value.”

• The security specialist at an airline noted that Kasada led to a drop between 50% and 90% in bot traffic on the organization’s endpoints, and they said Kasada helped rightsize infrastructure spend: “When we see a 90% drop in bot traffic for a critical endpoint, we can save money on spinning up resources on that surface.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Without any bot management solution, the composite organization would incur $18 million in web or API infrastructure spend in Year 1. These costs grow by 5% each year.

• Of those costs, 40% is driven by bad bot traffic.

• The composite’s legacy CDN and bot mitigation solution filters out 70% of bad bot traffic.

• Kasada detects and blocks 85% of bad bot traffic.  

Risks. Infrastructure cost savings will vary depending on:

• The organization’s baseline infrastructure costs and compute-intensity of the applications protected by Kasada.

• The share of traffic from malicious bots. Whether the organization starts from a less-mature bot management toolset.  

• Maturity of the organization’s bot management toolset.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.4 million.

Security And Fraud Labor Cost Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees said Kasada significantly reduced the time their organizations’ security and fraud teams spend responding to automated attacks and managing bot defenses. They explained that by automatically detecting and neutralizing sophisticated automation without constant rule-tuning, Kasada offloaded management tasks and cut the need for reactive investigations during attack spikes.  

• Interviewees reported less time is needed to investigate and remediate account takeovers and other fraud incidents because Kasada blocks credential-based attacks before accounts are compromised. The CISO at a travel company said: “We are not responding to account takeovers and having to notify customers day after day anymore… There are definitely labor savings and breach cost avoidance.”

• The engineering lead at an apparel company said Kasada freed more bandwidth for security and fraud employees: “Before bringing Kasada in, a lot of [bots were] getting through. We have a production support team, a site reliability engineering team, and core analysts who each spend some of their day in the bot mitigation space. If we didn’t have Kasada, their workloads would easily double or triple, and that would be at a lower efficacy than what Kasada provides.”

• Interviewees said their organizations spend less time responding to customer complaints and internal escalations caused by legitimate users being incorrectly blocked, freeing teams from repeated manual reviews. The engineering lead at an apparel company said: “With our legacy solution, there were three people who were responsible for managing it. There was a lot of overhead for the data analytics and false positives or negatives, and we’d have to meet with the provider weekly to go over the issues. Nowadays, it’s one person’s job [to manage Kasada].”
  The CISO at a travel company stated: “Kasada just works, so we don’t have to do any governance over it. … Previously, we had at least half an FTE dedicated to governance.”

• The manager of security at an electronics company said Kasada’s ability to integrate with their organization’s existing environment led to further time savings: “[Regarding architecture,] it’s much easier to manage Kasada because we integrate it with our CDN. My team was able to almost self-serve this, which was very helpful. [The Kasada team] is also just much easier to work with as far as their [level of] expertise [over] our previous provider.”

The same interviewee estimated that the three employees dedicated to automated fraud detection at their organization experience time savings of 50%.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has 10 security and fraud employees involved in responding to automated fraud.

• Each security and fraud employee spends 25% of their time on bot detection and response.

• With Kasada, these employees experience time savings of 40% when responding to bot attacks.

• The fully burdened annual salary of a security and fraud employee is $169,000.

• The composite has a productivity recapture rate of 80% because not all time saved is redeployed productively.

Risks. Security and fraud productivity savings will vary depending on:

• The amount of bot-driven account takeovers and fraud instances that the organization experiences in its legacy environment.

• The amount of FTE time dedicated to remediating bot attacks, including working with legacy bot vendors.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for a security and fraud employee.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $303,000.

Legacy Solution Cost Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that implementing Kasada allowed their organizations to reduce their spend with legacy bot management tools. Some interviewees reported their organization fully retired legacy costs, whereas others reported their organization was in the process of moving more applications from its legacy tools to Kasada.

• The manager of security at an electronics company said: “We are in the process of removing our legacy solution from specific areas on our platform. Now that we have Kasada, we are letting the contract phase out. … Kasada is much more cost-effective than our previous vendor. Kasada pricing is about half of what we were paying for [the legacy solution].”

• The engineering lead at an apparel company said Kasada is more effective and dramatically less expensive than their organization’s legacy bot management tool: “When we dropped our prior provider, the data analytics showed us that Kasada was covering everything they would cover and more, and at a lower false-positive rate and at a cheaper price.”

• The CISO at a travel company reported that their organization’s legacy provider priced comparably to Kasada, but they said Kasada is more effective and praised the company for not charging for its professional services: “[The Kasada team] told us: ‘You shouldn’t have to be an expert. That’s our job. Let us be the experts.’ To me, that makes so much more sense. Whereas with our other provider, [I have to be an expert on] every bell and whistle and train and teach people.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• With its legacy solution, the composite organization would pay $900,000 in bot management solution costs in Year 1. These costs grow by 5% each year.

• During the implementation process, the composite organization layers Kasada on top of its legacy bot management solution.

• In Year 1, the composite retires 50% of its legacy costs.

• In Year 2, the composite fully retires the legacy tool.

Risks. Legacy solution cost savings will vary depending on:

• The specific bot management tools in the organization’s legacy suite.

• The speed at which the organization retires its legacy costs.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.6 million.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Smoother customer experience from CAPTCHA-free sign-in process. Some interviewees shared that prior to Kasada, their organizations were dependent on CAPTCHA-based sign-in and checkout experiences. The interviewees shared that Kasada made both processes noticeably smoother, reducing friction during account access and making it easier to complete purchases without interruptions. The manager of security at an electronics organization reported: “Our user experience is a lot better now that we use Kasada because people are not being challenged by CAPTCHAs. Kasada is basically invisible, so users don’t have to solve a puzzle or select pictures of cars to sign in. It’s a huge benefit to us.”

• Improved data quality from reduced bot traffic. The interviewees noted that because Kasada filters out bot activity, data is cleaner and more representative of actual human users. They reported greater trust in key performance metrics (e.g., authentication success rates, engagement trends, conversion performance) and said the improved data quality makes it easier for their marketing, product, and analytics teams to identify meaningful patterns and evaluate the impact of changes. The CISO at a travel company said: “It definitely improved the quality of our data. When we turned on Kasada, we had a reduction of traffic coming to the website. … What happened was the metrics for conversion started to become much cleaner because the noise [and] the unnecessary traffic just started to go away. It’s really helped us understand our true conversion rates of actual people, not just website traffic.”

The engineering lead at an apparel company noted that Kasada provided better insight into customer behavior: “One of the insights that we got with Kasada’s help is determining which accounts matter and which accounts are bad accounts or negative lifetime value. That allows more efficient marketing campaigns, demand sensing, and better KPIs on conversion. If that data is muddled by bots, your business can make the wrong decision.”

• Time savings for customer support staff. Interviewees noted a drop in the number of fraud-related incidents reaching customer support, particularly those tied to account takeover attempts. They said that with fewer compromised accounts, support teams spend less time handling password resets, identity verification cases, and remediation workflows. Additionally, reducing the number of false positives leads to fewer instances of genuine consumers contacting support teams when they are blocked from accessing their accounts. The manager of security at an electronics company reported, “We have seen a reduction in customer service tickets because every time someone’s account gets taken over and the hacker changes their password, it would result in a customer service contact.”

The CISO at a travel company stated: “The guest is happier when they don’t have to worry about their account being compromised. Previously, we would get many, many phone calls from guests saying: ‘I’m missing these [rewards] points.  What did you guys do?’”

• Additional value from Kasada account support. Interviewees emphasized that Kasada’s account support plays an important role in maximizing the platform’s effectiveness. They cited proactive monitoring of evolving bot threats, regular reviews to assess performance and coverage, and responsive escalation when new attack patterns emerge. The engineering lead at an apparel company said: “[I appreciate the account team’s] attention to detail, their attention to urgency, and their transparency. When things do go wrong, their speed of recovering is incredibly fast.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Kasada and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Account-level fraud detection with Kasada’s Account Intelligence solution. The engineering lead at an apparel company reported that their company was in a POC for Kasada’s Account Intelligence solution, a fraud detection layer that links persistent device identity with account behavior to detect human-driven fraud risks (e.g., account takeover, multi-accounting, abuse) in real time. The interviewee noted that Account Intelligence can deliver a dynamic risk score for each user, which helps their organization decide which users to trust, block, or limit. They said: “[Account Intelligence] uses their machine learning model to correlate data and see if this particular session on your website has downstream risk. We’re seeing some really great lifts, even from their core bot offering.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).