← Back to Case Studies
Political Marketing / Security

Pop Acta

Enterprise WAF & Rate Limiting That Stopped Bad Actors and Protected Marketing Endpoints

90%+
Spam Reduction
Real-time
Threat Blocking
Scalable
Infrastructure

The Challenge

Pop Acta, a political and nonprofit marketing company managing millions of donor contacts across email, SMS, and data marketing channels, was under attack. Bad actors were hammering their endpoints, bots were polluting their data, and they had no way to distinguish legitimate users from malicious traffic.

  • Bad actors continuously hammering API endpoints with automated requests
  • No mechanism to validate whether users were humans or bots
  • Spam submissions polluting donor and activist databases
  • Limited visibility into traffic patterns and visitor behavior
  • No rate limiting or access controls on critical endpoints
  • Infrastructure unable to scale efficiently under attack conditions

Our Solution

We designed and implemented a comprehensive security infrastructure using AWS WAF, custom rate limiting, and intelligent user validation to protect Pop Acta's marketing platform from abuse while ensuring legitimate users had seamless access.

Security Implementation:

  • AWS WAF: Custom rule sets to detect and block malicious traffic patterns
  • Rate Limiting: Intelligent throttling to prevent endpoint abuse without affecting legitimate users
  • User Whitelisting: Endpoint-specific access controls for trusted users and partners
  • CAPTCHA Integration: Bot validation to ensure human users on critical forms
  • Real-time Monitoring: Traffic analytics and threat detection dashboards

Infrastructure & Automation:

  • Terraform: Infrastructure as code for reproducible, version-controlled deployments
  • CloudFormation: AWS-native stack management for seamless integration
  • AWS Lambda: Serverless functions for dynamic rule processing and response
  • Python: Custom logic for traffic analysis and automated threat response

Results & Impact

90%+
Spam Reduction

Dramatically cleaner data across all marketing channels.

Better Insights
Visitor Analytics

Clear visibility into legitimate traffic and user behavior.

Corrected
User Usage Data

Accurate metrics with bot traffic filtered out.

Scalable
Infrastructure

Ready to handle growth without security compromises.

Technologies Used

AWS WAFAWS LambdaTerraformCloudFormationPythonRate LimitingCAPTCHACloudWatchAPI GatewayIAM

"Our endpoints were getting hammered by bots and bad actors. Dasnuve built us a robust WAF solution that stopped the abuse, cleaned up our data, and gave us real visibility into our actual user traffic. The spam reduction alone has been transformational for our marketing operations."

— Pop Acta Technical Team

Need to Protect Your Endpoints from Abuse?

Let's discuss how AWS WAF and intelligent rate limiting can secure your platform like it did for Pop Acta.

Get Your Free Security Assessment