Case Study: Belk Blocks reduces bot attacks and boosts performance with HUMAN Bot Defender

Belk Blocks Account Takeover Attacks and Gift Card Abuse

Belk Blocks, a leading retailer with a large e-commerce presence, was facing increasing malicious bot activity, including account takeover attempts and gift card abuse. As attacks became more sophisticated, the company’s in-house security team was spending too much time responding to incidents, while server workloads and site performance—especially during busy holiday periods—were being negatively affected. HUMAN’s Bot Defender and later Credential Intelligence were brought in to help protect the business.

HUMAN implemented behavior-based, machine learning-driven bot protection with low impact on critical server workloads, along with 24/7 onboarding support and detailed visibility through its management console. The results were significant: Belk saw a major decline in sophisticated bot attacks, an estimated 90% reduction in server load during attacks, and investigation times dropped from about four hours to just the time needed to read an alert. With HUMAN, Belk also achieved its highest ever online orders per second during the holiday period.

Belk Blocks

Richard Spencer

Chief Information Officer