SCAYLE

SCAYLE protects online fashion retailers against ecommerce attacks with Cloudflare

Founded in 2014, ABOUT YOU is the number one online fashion platform in Europe for Generation Y and Z. Its generational appeal stems from an innovative use of celebrities and other influencers to help showcase collections and recommend outfits for consumers to try.

ABOUT YOU has been a technology-driven company from the very beginning. When the company was founded, ecommerce platforms on the market lacked the capabilities to bring to market applications quickly using modern development methodologies. As such, ABOUT YOU built their own ecommerce platform, which has propelled fast growth for the company.

Building on the success of their ecommerce technology stack and go-to-market approach with the ABOUT YOU fashion ecommerce shop, ABOUT YOU’s parent company, decided to make the ecommerce platform and industry expertise available to other brands and retailers, and founded SCAYLE. SCAYLE also offers consulting services to the brands running on its platform, both on the technology itself and on how to market and sell online to different markets around the world. The company now supports over 100 European online shops including Marco Polo, Tom Tailor, Depot and many others.

Challenge: Rapid growth increases exposure to cyber threats

Ecommerce retailers face a variety of cyber attacks, including credential stuffing, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, malicious bot activity, and more. As SCAYLE expanded their reach and more brands adopted the platform, their exposure to cyber attacks also increased.

In the past, SCAYLE primarily relied on a web application firewall (WAF) to protect clients from cyber threats. However, as these attacks grew larger and more complex, SCAYLE needed a more robust threat defense to safeguard their platform. To manage these risks, SCAYLE turned to Cloudflare.

“We decided to bring on Cloudflare to ultimately have the best possible security tech stack in place to protect our brands and retailers,” explains Tobias Ring, Consulting Director Growth Service at SCAYLE and ABOUT YOU.

Protecting online fashion retailers from prominent industry threats

Before turning to Cloudflare, SCAYLE’s clients were targeted by credential stuffing attacks two to three times per week. When successful, a credential stuffing attack allows attackers to access client accounts and fraudulently order products.

According to Morten Gade, Circle Manager Information Security at SCAYLE: “With Cloudflare WAF, Bot Management, and Rate Limiting, we don’t see credential stuffing attacks on our platform anymore. This helps to keep shoppers’ accounts safe and reduces load on our clients’ sites.”

DDoS attacks posed another serious concern for SCAYLE. If a brand’s site is flooded with illegitimate requests, it can disrupt service — leading to downtime, a frustrating customer experience and tarnished brand reputation. Before implementing Cloudflare mitigating DDoS attacks often took significant time and resources.

“In the past, it took a security engineer 30 minutes to an hour to investigate and block a DDoS attack,” says Gade. “Cloudflare automatically handles them for us, saving time and eliminating the impact of these attacks.”

Delivering a seamless shopping experience for clients and their customers

For ecommerce sites — like those on SCAYLE’s platform — the impact of malicious scripts and bots is not limited to direct attacks on the site. Bad bots can also abuse legitimate site features, strain underlying infrastructure, and ultimately cause e-tailers to lose customers and revenue.

The ABOUT YOU fashion platform, like other brands running on SCAYLE, commonly runs promotions and campaigns for certain products, investing significantly in advertising and getting the word out. Scalper bots target these campaign products, buying them up within a few seconds for resale. Such attacks can significantly increase the traffic load on the infrastructure and degrade the customer experience.

When customers respond to a campaign and discover that the inventory is sold out, they often turn to resellers to purchase the item — so the original seller loses both customers and revenue as a result. With Cloudflare Bot Management, SCAYLE is able to fight back against these attacks, working to fingerprint and block scalper bots before they can compromise sales.

As SCAYLE continues as an innovation leader in the commerce technology space, Cloudflare will be there to deliver solutions to protect the company from emerging cyber threats. This allows SCAYLE to focus on their mission of empowering brands and retailers to transform their online presence and creatively serve a global clientele.