By AI agents are now executing purchases autonomously, routing through commerce APIs without a human ever touching a browser. Security controls built to flag non-human traffic as malicious are failing because a growing share of that traffic is legitimate. With 85% of commerce companies reporting API-related attacks in the past 12 months, defenders are operating in a threat environment that has structurally changed.
In this interview on TFiR, Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO at Akamai, breaks down findings from the Akamai’s State of the Internet report on Securing the Agentic Storefront: Attacks on Commerce, covering how agentic AI shoppers operate, why legacy bot detection logic no longer holds, and what new controls security teams need to protect machine-to-machine commerce infrastructure.
Guest: Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO at Akamai
Show: TFiR
Here is what every security architect and e-commerce platform team needs to know.
Technical Deep Dive
Q: What is the agentic storefront and how do AI shoppers interact with commerce sites?
Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO at Akamai, explains that the agentic storefront describes a commerce model where AI agents, rather than human users, perform product research and purchase execution through APIs. Instead of a consumer navigating a website manually, they instruct an AI like ChatGPT to research and buy on their behalf, meaning the storefront never interacts with the human directly. The store receives a synthetic customer and loses visibility into browsing behavior, product comparisons, and decision signals it previously used for both personalization and fraud detection.
“The store is not interacting with me. Sure it’ll get my credit card, but it’s not seeing all the decisions, it’s not seeing what shoes I looked at. All of that is suddenly gone.” — Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO, Akamai
Q: Why are APIs the primary attack surface in modern commerce security?
Winterfeld notes that commerce storefronts, along with finance and healthcare, increasingly deliver their customer experience through APIs rather than human-facing web pages. An API is a machine-to-machine interface by design, optimized for programmatic interaction rather than human browsing. As revenue concentrates on API-driven channels, that is precisely where attackers focus their effort.
“If they’re making the most money on these APIs, that’s where the criminals are going to go.” — Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO, Akamai
Q: How widespread are API-related attacks against commerce companies?
According to the Akamai API Security Impact study cited by Winterfeld, 85% of companies responding from the commerce sector reported experiencing API-related attacks within the last 12 months. Commerce leads all verticals as the primary target, reflecting the concentration of transaction value in API-driven infrastructure. Finance, healthcare, and any organization that interacts with customers over the web through APIs faces the same exposure.
“85% of all the companies responding in commerce said they’d had API-related attacks in the last 12 months.” — Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO, Akamai
Q: Why does agentic AI shopping break traditional bot detection controls?
Legacy bot detection relied on the assumption that non-human, synthetic traffic was inherently suspicious and could be blocked. Winterfeld explains that Akamai’s data now shows 19% of synthetic traffic on commerce platforms could represent legitimate agentic shoppers acting on behalf of real consumers. Blocking all synthetic entities indiscriminately would block valid customers, making the old binary of human versus bot no longer operationally viable.
“I used to be able to say that’s not a legitimate shopper, that’s not a human. Well now I can’t do that anymore because we’ve seen this increase in 19% of these could be legitimate shoppers.” — Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO, Akamai
Q: What is the core security challenge defenders now face with agentic commerce traffic?
Winterfeld frames the core challenge as a three-way classification problem that defenders did not previously have to solve: distinguishing a real human, a synthetic agent acting legitimately on behalf of a real person, and a malicious actor. Because the attack surface spans any organization that interacts with customers digitally, including e-commerce, healthcare, and finance, the problem is not confined to retail. New controls are required that move beyond human versus non-human detection toward intent and authorization verification at the API level.
“It is now becoming a challenge to understand what’s a real person, what’s a synthetic representation of a real person, and what’s a malicious activity.” — Steve Winterfeld, Advisory CISO, Akamai
Resources & Documentation
- Akamai Security Platform, edge and API security platform referenced throughout the interview as the data source for State of the Internet findings
- Akamai’s State of the Internet report on Securing the Agentic Storefront: Attacks on Commerce
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👇 Click to Read Full Raw Transcript
Swapnil Bhartiya: Can you walk us through this new agentic storefront? Who exactly are these AI shoppers and how are they interacting with commerce site? Then we’ll talk about what threats they pose.
Steve Winterfeld: And so today what we’re going to do is we’re going to share some insights from the Akamai state of the Internet report. And this one is called, you know, attacks on commerce. And it really is interesting because we see this growth of 0 clicks or the Gentix shopper. And so what we’ve done is we’ve looked across all of our security platforms here at Akamai, protecting the edge and the web page, protecting AI instances. And across all that we’re starting to see some themes. One of these is the storefront for more and more commerce is by far in the lead. But finance and so many other industries are interacting over the web through APIs. And so again an API is a machine to machine designed interface. You know, if, if, if I go to a web page, it should be designed for my eyes. If an API goes to a website, it’s designed for that machine to machine interaction. And so the storefronts are no longer having me come to it, it’s having one of the apps on my phone or really what we’re talking about here for that gentic shopper is let’s say I’m in, I’ll pick a flavor Chat GPT and I want to buy a pair of shoes. Well, I’m not going to do my research about the best hiking shoe inside of ChatGPT and then leave it and then go to the store and buy it myself. I’m going to tell Chat GPT to do the research and then to go buy the shoes themselves. And so this has caused a couple things. One, the store is not interacting with me. Sure it’ll get my credit card, but it’s not seeing all the decisions, it’s not seeing what shoes I looked at. It’s not all of that is suddenly gone. And now the source just getting this synthetic customer. And so, you know, now turning from the shopper to the defender. I used to be able to say okay, well that’s not a legitimate shopper, that’s not a human. Well now I can’t do that anymore because we’ve seen this increase in 19% of the these could be legitimate shoppers. And, and so I can’t just block these synthetic entities anymore. And so as we’re doing this I need new controls and need to understand this because again we’re Talking about these APIs interacting it and the Akamai API Security Impact study found that 85% of all the companies responding in Commerce said they’d had API related attacks in the last 12 months. So now it’s, you know, again, go where you can make the most revenue. So if you, if, if they’re making the most money on these APIs, you know, that’s where the criminals are going to go. And so that’s kind of what we’re talking about is, is commerce is a leading boat to what you said. Anybody in E Commerce, is anybody interacting with customers, healthcare, finance, anybody? It is now becoming a challenge to understand what’s a real person, what’s a synthetic representation of a real person, and what’s a malicious activity.
