Case Study: GuideStar achieves 99.7% uptime and blocks bad bots with Imperva Bot Management

GuideStar Stabilizes Website Availability by Blocking Bad Bots

GuideStar, the world’s largest source of information on nonprofit organizations, was seeing increased bot and scraper activity that caused monthly brownouts and threatened its 99.7% uptime guarantee. Existing on‑prem packet‑inspection tooling couldn’t stop automated scrapers, forcing IT to spend roughly 20 hours a month chasing IPs and responding to alerts; GuideStar needed signature‑based, real‑time blocking that would stop bad bots without cutting off legitimate users and be quick to deploy.

GuideStar deployed Imperva Bot Management’s cloud solution, enabling signature‑level blocking, real‑time updates and an easy web portal for administration. The result: bad bot traffic was stopped, site stability was restored to 99.7% uptime, about 20 hours per month of IT effort was saved, and the team gained visibility to distinguish legitimate users from abuse—letting GuideStar protect its data while serving intended audiences.

GuideStar

Shane T. Ward

Data Architect