How to Protect your Website in 2026

Protecting your website in 2026 means defending against both classic attacks and modern automated abuse. Bot traffic now represents a large share of global traffic, and scrapers, crawlers, and abusive bots can drain resources, skew analytics, and cause downtime. Here are four actionable layers, plus what to prioritise by industry.

1. Protect at the edge (server or CDN check)

Before serving the page, evaluate each request from your server or CDN. Send client IP, requested path, and optionally headers (excluding sensitive ones) to a check-request API (Bot Protection). Get a decision: allow, challenge, or block. Apply it immediately - redirect to a challenge or block page when needed; otherwise serve the page. Use a short timeout (e.g. 400 ms) and fail open on timeout or error so real users are never locked out. This stops many bots and scrapers before they reach your origin, reducing load and abuse. OWASP defines scraping as an automated threat (OAT-011) - a request-level check is a direct control.

2. Detect crawlers and scrapers on the page

Add a lightweight script on your pages that sends behaviour and device signals (Bot Detection) to your security or analytics backend. This improves real-time classification: human vs bot, good crawler vs scraper. Use it together with the edge check: the edge check gives a fast allow/challenge/block; the on-page data refines future decisions and powers dashboards. You can run in detection-only mode first, then enable blocking/challenge when ready.

3. Challenge only when needed (invisible CAPTCHA)

When the request check returns “challenge,” send the visitor to a challenge page (e.g. proof-of-work or a text challenge). Choose a solution that is invisible or low-friction for real users and only shown to suspicious traffic. That way you avoid annoying legitimate users while still filtering bots and scrapers. taCAPTCHA offers proof-of-work (Frictionless) and Code Captcha (text challenge), with no cookies or tracking - good for compliance and accessibility.

4. Harden your APIs

Secure API endpoints with authentication, authorization, and rate limiting. Validate input and log security-relevant events. Consider calling the same check-request (or a dedicated API abuse) logic for sensitive or high-value endpoints to block bots and automated abuse. This ties into OWASP API Security - e.g. unrestricted resource consumption (API4) and automated abuse of business flows (API6). For more detail, see Professional API Security Best Practices in 2026 and OWASP API Security: What you should know.

What to prioritise by vertical

• News and publishers – Crawler management and availability. Block bad scrapers; allow good bots; protect paywalls and feeds.
• Ecommerce – Checkout and analytics. Protect payment flows and keep bots out of analytics for accurate attribution.
• Marketing – Click fraud and landing pages. Protect ad clicks and ensure analytics reflect real users.
• SaaS – Forms and trials. Protect signup and trial flows; secure APIs and billing from bots.
• Community – Moderation and fake accounts. Stop bots at signup/post; use user validation and moderation for the rest.

Summary

Layer edge checks, on-page behaviour, optional invisible challenges, and API hardening to protect your website in 2026. Align with OWASP Automated Threats and API Security Top 10 where relevant. For a full-stack view, read Application Security: Protect your Website and APIs from Modern Attacks.

Trusted Accounts offers bot and scraper protection with a check-request API (allow/challenge/block in under ~50 ms) and a frontend SDK, plus optional taCAPTCHA (proof-of-work and Code Captcha) - so real users stay unaffected.

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