Across many channels and platforms today, video takes center stage. It has become a new standard in broadcasting and viewers have come to expect high-quality, uninterrupted content. As such, streaming performance is no longer just a technical concern; it is a non-negotiable factor that affects business reputation, customer satisfaction and even revenue. But beneath the surface of every smooth playback lies a growing, often invisible threat: bots. While many associate bots with click fraud or social media spam, video platforms are now grappling with far more insidious attacks, such as bots that silently sabotage streams, distort metrics, and overwhelm infrastructure. This means that real audiences experience buffering, degraded quality, or may even get locked out altogether. 

In this article, we take a closer look at this emerging phenomenon to see whether your streaming performance is threatened by bots, what can be done to protect streams, and how System73’s robust security framework can help mitigate this growing threat. 

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Is your streaming performance threatened by bots?

Since the launch of the internet, bots have always existed in one form or another. Historically, they tend to cause disruption by spamming websites, scraping content, inflating ad metrics, or launching denial-of-service attacks. But in the context of video streaming, their tactics have evolved, now targeting the very infrastructure that delivers content, degrading performance, and manipulating platform behavior in ways that are far more covert. According to Fastly’s Q1 2025 Threat Insights Report, bot traffic is surging, accounting for over a third of all web requests, with 89% of it classified as malicious. 

Today’s bots are more sophisticated, capable of mimicking user behavior, bypassing detection, and launching stealth attacks that undermine real-time streaming performance. Unfortunately, streaming platforms seems to be the second most targeted industry, receiving about 21% of sophisticated bot attacks, especially around high-traffic live events, where malicious activity can easily hide amid legitimate spikes. In short, bots are growing in sophistication, and as such, pose a serious challenge to the stability, scalability, and credibility of modern video streaming platforms.

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What can be done to protect streaming performance?

Protecting streaming performance from bot-driven disruption calls for a layered and adaptive defense strategy. One way to help prevent attacks is by implementing intelligent bot detection tools that detect suspicious patterns, such as repeated cache bypassing, rapid segment skipping or irregular playback behaviors. Signal-based detection systems can flag request anomalies across video players, APIs, and delivery infrastructure, helping to evaluate how requests are made and not just where they come from. 

By partnering with System73*, streaming platforms benefit from a robust line of defense against bot attacks thanks to our centrally orchestrated peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Unlike decentralized P2P models that are vulnerable to manipulation and resource abuse, System73’s architecture ensures that every connection is orchestrated via a secure, centralized control system. What’s more, access to the network is gated through SDK integration and authenticated via unique session keys, making it far more difficult for bots to spoof client behavior or hijack streaming performance.

As well as controlled access, real-time monitoring and behavioral detection are a core feature of our bot mitigation capabilities. Thanks to our integrated Edge Analytics solution, content providers gain unprecedented visibility into traffic patterns and node behavior, enabling early detection of anomalies. These kinds of insights allow for fast detection and deactivation of malicious actors without compromising user experience. At System73, we also offer other security features such as session UUID tracking, WebRTC encryption, and compatibility with traditional CDN-based content protections, providing a layered and adaptive security strategy. 

For more insights into trends in live streaming and content consumption or to find out more about our content delivery solutions, visit system73.com.

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*Download our white paper Edge Intelligence: Ensuring watertight security across P2P networks to read more about how the probability of malicious activity being detected and shut down is much greater with System73. 

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