You Know the Bot Problem. Here’s How Cloudflare WAF Solves It for Good.

Takeaway: If you’re tired of chasing bots and surprise overages, there’s a better way. A properly deployed Cloudflare WAF stops fake traffic before it ever reaches your Drupal site, turning unpredictable bills into a thing of the past.

Sign up for our free Drupal Bot Protection Playbook

If you manage state and local government websites, you’re probably asking yourself questions like:

Is this bot traffic really the thing eating up our Acquia entitlements—or is it something else?

We’ve tried blocking IPs and installing bot modules. Why isn’t that stopping the overages?

How do I prove, once and for all, that bots are responsible for our insane traffic spikes?

Data Dome’s 2024 Global Bot Security Report found that nearly 2 in 3 organizations were unprotected against even simple bot attacks, which means your team could be paying the price in surprise invoices, stress, and endless firefighting.

Couple that with the findings of the 2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report that automated bot traffic comprised 51% of web traffic in 2024, and you could see just how bad things can get from here on out.

We’ve spoken with IT managers who have already checked the obvious boxes: Firewall rules, Drupal bot modules, even Acquia’s own guidance.

Yet the fake traffic—and the eye-watering overages—keep coming.

The problem isn’t just technical.

It’s deeply organizational:

• When budget overages pile up, leadership wants answers—fast.
• When fake traffic eats up entitlements, your team is stuck reacting instead of focusing on mission-critical projects.
• And when the standard fixes don’t work, it’s your credibility on the line.

Today’s bots are a different breed—evolving too fast for old-school blocklists and modules.

Here’s what I’ll break down in this post:

• Why standard fixes (IP blocking, bot modules) can’t handle modern bots—or stop overage bills
• How edge-layer filtering with Cloudflare WAF works, and why it’s the only scalable defense for public-sector Drupal sites
• What makes a “typical” Cloudflare setup different from a truly effective, turnkey solution built for Acquia and Pantheon
• What you can expect when you get it right: Lower costs, less stress, and real operational breathing room
• Your next steps: Download the technical playbook, or request a custom audit—no disruption, no risk

If any of this sounds like your last few months, you’re exactly where you need to be. Let’s get your Drupal site and your budget protected once and for all.

Why standard fixes fall short against modern bots

Let’s be honest: You and your team have put in the work.

• IP blocklists? Updated—again and again.
• Drupal bot modules? Checked and configured.
• Acquia’s built-in filtering? Active and robust.

But the bills keep rising, the analytics never quite add up, and the “bot problem” feels like a game of digital whack-a-mole.

Here’s why: Today’s bots are playing by new rules.

• IP Blocking: Bots rotate through huge pools of residential and cloud IPs, often switching faster than your firewall can keep up. Even the most diligent blocklist is obsolete within hours.
• Bot Modules: Many modules catch the obvious, noisy bots. But the sophisticated ones mimic human users, switch up their fingerprints, and slip right through your defenses.
• Acquia’s Filtering: Acquia does its best to filter out common bots (think Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.). But modern, aggressive bots don’t always declare themselves. If they bootstrap Drupal or hit your backend endpoints, they’re counted—and you’re billed.

What does that look like in the real world?

• A sudden spike in “Views and Visits” in certain seasons, but no corresponding increase in real users.
• Search or API endpoints hammered by automated requests, silently draining your quotas and pushing you toward overage territory.
• After-hours emails from leadership: “What’s going on with our traffic?”

The reality is that manual blocking and application-layer fixes are both inefficient and fundamentally outmatched.

Today’s bots are engineered to evade, adapt, and keep your team stuck in a cycle of reaction.

We’ll break down how edge-layer protection changes the game—and why Cloudflare’s WAF, when deployed right, is the only scalable, cost-effective answer for public-sector Drupal teams.

What a Cloudflare WAF Does

Imagine your infrastructure as a secure office building.

• Application-layer filters are like checking visitor badges once people are already on your floor—by that time, your elevators and hallways are already crowded.
• Cloudflare WAF’s edge-layer filtering is like having a professional receptionist and security team in the lobby—verifying everyone before they ever get to your floor. Only approved visitors get through, and your workspace stays safe and productive.

What does Cloudflare do differently?

Cloudflare sits “in front” of your Drupal site at the network edge.

Every single request—whether human, bot, or API call—passes through Cloudflare’s global network before it ever touches your Acquia or Pantheon servers.

It inspects, challenges, or blocks traffic before it can trigger expensive “Views & Visits,” slow down your site, or put sensitive endpoints at risk.

Cloudflare WAF uses constantly-updated threat intelligence, AI-driven pattern matching, and behavioral analysis to stop known and emerging bots—including bots that rotate IPs, spoof user agents, or mimic human clicks.

Why is edge filtering effective for Acquia and Pantheon?

• Overages start before you see the threat: Acquia and Pantheon bill for every server-side request that reaches your Drupal app, even if it’s from a bot that never shows up in analytics.
• Edge filtering blocks bots upstream: By inspecting requests before they reach your servers, Cloudflare prevents those bots from ever being counted against your usage quota.
• No impact on real users or SEO: Properly tuned, Cloudflare WAF lets through legitimate users, search crawlers, and API partners—while bots, scrapers, and credential stuffers get blocked, challenged, or rate-limited.

What happens if you stick with application-level filters?

• Resource drain: Your Drupal site, and by extension Acquia or Pantheon, still has to process every single request—even if it’s just to say “blocked.” You pay for the privilege, and your site still feels the load.
• Manual catch-up: Application-level filters require constant tuning, manual IP blocks, and ongoing maintenance. Bots using residential proxies or new fingerprints keep slipping through.
• No true cost control: You’re always playing defense. By the time you catch the spike, the bill has already landed on your desk.

The bottom line is that edge-layer filtering with Cloudflare WAF is the only practical way to control costs and risk at scale for public sector Drupal sites. It’s proactive, automated, and stops threats before they become a problem for your infrastructure or your budget.

Typical Cloudflare setup vs. Promet’s turnkey solution

A lot of organizations say, “We’ve already got Cloudflare.”

But what most teams actually have are the free tier or they’re running with default settings—sometimes with a few generic Cloudflare WAF rules toggled on. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Out-of-the-box rules: They catch the obvious, low-hanging fruit, but miss bots mimicking real users or targeting non-standard endpoints.
• Generic settings: These aren’t tuned for Drupal’s quirks, high-risk pages (like search, APIs, directories), or Acquia/Pantheon’s unique traffic/billing models.
• No real-time adaptation: You’re on your own for updates, tuning, or troubleshooting.
• DIY implementation: This often means hours lost to trial and error, accidental outages, or rules that block the wrong traffic.

What makes Promet’s Cloudflare Protection & Performance for Drupal Sites different?

Promet Source is the only company to offer a turnkey Cloudflare solution. Our deployment unlocks the most important Cloudflare WAF features—from advanced bot management to detailed analytics and page shielding—so you’re protected on every front..

You get all the performance and security Cloudflare is known for—plus expert, ongoing management tuned for public sector Drupal websites on Acquia or Pantheon.

What’s included?

• Comprehensive DDoS & Edge-Level Bot Protection: Always-on mitigation at every global edge, no surprise charges, with real-time analytics and hands-off management.
• WAF with Managed & Custom Rules: 100+ custom firewall rules, tuned to the real threats facing your high-risk pages—far beyond what you get with a default setup or even most enterprise hosting add-ons.
• Bot Management: Cloudflare’s AI-driven tools block the automated traffic that old-school modules can’t touch—while letting legitimate search engines and users through.
• SSL/TLS & Compliance: Industry-best encryption, always-on HTTPS, and Page Shield for client-side attacks—fully configured, tested, and monitored by Promet so you’re never exposed.
• Performance Optimization: CDN, image compression, Brotli/HTTP3, smart routing—all customized for your actual content, user base, and budget goals.
• Advanced Control & Insights: 1,000 page rules for granular control, exportable logs for audits, custom caching/rate limiting, priority 24/7 support.
• Promet’s Promise:
  • No headaches: We do the setup, tuning, threat monitoring, reporting, and even escalation to Cloudflare’s engineers.
  • No busywork for your team: Your IT staff isn’t reading docs or babysitting dashboards—we handle everything.
  • Immediate, measurable impact: Billable traffic drops, performance improves, and your site is safer from day one.
  • Transparent cost: Our turnkey Cloudflare WAF cost is fixed at $7,500 for the first year and $4,500 for the annual renewal.

You’re not just licensing a tool—you’re getting a unified solution that replaces multiple vendors (WAF, CDN, DDoS, SSL), delivers leadership-ready reporting, and gives your team back their time and focus.

Our turnkey Cloudflare WAF impact: 72 hours, one client

Here’s what edge-layer protection with Cloudflare Protection & Performance for Drupal Sites looks like in the wild—using real data from one client’s environment:

Over the course of just three days:

• 10.44 million requests targeted their site
• 1.24 million requests—12% of all incoming traffic—were automatically blocked, challenged, or dropped by Cloudflare’s security rules before ever reaching Acquia or triggering billable events
• 7.66 million requests were served instantly from Cloudflare’s cache, bypassing the server and reducing infrastructure strain
• Only 1.54 million requests ever reached the client’s Drupal/Acquia origin server

What this means:

Every one of those 1.24 million blocked requests could have been a bot, attack, or abuser—each one a potential overage charge, a performance issue, or an incident that would have landed on the IT team’s plate.

And every time there’s a traffic spike (just look at those orange peaks!), Cloudflare absorbed and neutralized the threat before it could impact budget, uptime, or user experience.

Why this matters

• Budget protection: 1.24 million requests never counted against Acquia quotas—a direct reduction in overage risk and surprise bills.
• Performance boost: More than 70% of total traffic was handled at the edge—keeping your infrastructure fast and available, even during spikes.
• IT time savings: No late-night scrambles to react to traffic surges or manual blocklists.

The bottom line?

This isn’t a hypothetical—this is how real government agencies and higher ed teams are cutting risk, cutting costs, and finally getting ahead of the bot problem with Promet’s turnkey Cloudflare solution.

How to take action: Playbook & next steps

You don’t have to tackle bot traffic and budget risk alone—or guess whether the problem is worth fixing.

Here’s how you can get clarity, prove value to your leadership, and take the next step with zero disruption.

1. Sign up for the Drupal Bot Protection Playbook waitlist

Get a step-by-step, technical director’s guide to:

• Quickly identify and measure the bot traffic that’s inflating your Acquia bill—even if it’s invisible to Google Analytics.
• Use proven techniques and open-source tools to find suspicious activity and pinpoint where bots are hitting your site.
• Learn how to allow beneficial bots (like Google) while blocking the bad actors that drive up costs and degrade performance.
• Apply a practical security checklist to reduce vulnerabilities before layering on advanced bot protection.
• Follow our recommended strategy to set up Cloudflare’s WAF and smart traffic filtering.
• Safeguard your search pages, APIs, and contact forms from being abused by bots, using tools like reCAPTCHA and honeypot modules.
• Set up monitoring, alerts, and quarterly review processes to stay ahead of evolving threats—without manual firefighting.
• Use clear benchmarks and real examples to demonstrate ROI and turn unpredictable overages into fixed, predictable costs.

Sign up for our free Drupal Bot Protection Playbook

2. Request a free bot traffic cost assessment

What happens in a bot traffic cost assessment?

• We do the heavy lifting: Promet engineers compare your hosting usage to your real user analytics, identifying exactly how much fake traffic is costing you—and where it’s coming from.
• Clear, defensible numbers: We give you a plain-English, leadership-ready report you can take straight to your director or CFO.
• No disruption, no obligation: The audit is 100% read-only and advisory—no code changes, no site downtime, no pressure. You decide if and when you want to move forward.

Request your free cost assessment

Solve your bot problem for good with Cloudflare Protection & Performance for Drupal Sites

Cloudflare WAF, deployed the right way, is the single most effective step you can take to stop bot spikes from busting your budget and protect your public sector Drupal investment.

You don’t have to settle for “just okay” protection or play endless catch-up with bad traffic.

With Cloudflare Protection & Performance for Drupal Sites, you get proactive defense, predictable costs, and peace of mind—so your team can finally focus on what matters most:

Delivering digital services, not fighting fires.

The stakes for government and higher education teams are higher than ever. But with the right strategy and the right partner, you can get ahead of bot traffic, rein in overages, and make your budget—and your leadership—happy.

Ready to see what’s possible?

Sign up for the Playbook or schedule your free audit today. The fastest, safest path to a protected, cost-controlled Drupal site starts right here.