Overview

Captcha is a technology that was created to prevent programmatic submission of forms. Implementing a captcha on a page requires human interaction with the page to submit any data to the server and blocks bots and other programmatic submission of the data.

Patriot currently uses Google’s reCaptcha as a captcha technology. When implemented on pages in Patriot applications, the captcha will be required to “solve” before a form is allowed to be submitted. Furthermore, when a form is submitted, the server does a check to ensure that the captcha was solved before allowing the form’s submission.

In order to implement a captcha in Patriot applications, Patriot must first add the component to the target pages with the application. The organization must then obtain a set of public/private API keys from Google following the procedure below. Once implemented, the captcha should be a large part of the strategy to prevent programmatic submission of forms.

Procedure

1. Navigate to: https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/index.html

2. Click the “Get reCAPTCHA” button

3. Sign in with the organization’s Google account. If the organization does not yet have a Google account, one will need to be created.

4. If there are sites already registered with Google, select one. Otherwise, register a new site. Note: when registering a new site, you may consider opting to get alerts about the site to receive notifications about suspicious activity on pages where the captcha is implemented. Also note that each site (OP/MP) should be registered separately and have API keys generated separately.

5. Once the site has been created/selected and the API keys have been generated, these values need to be added to the OP/MP system settings.  Navigate to the OP/MP system settings area within the OP/MP and locate the settings “Recaptcha_Secret” and “Recaptcha_SiteKey”. Input the secret key into the “Recaptcha_Secret” field and the site key in the “Recaptcha_SiteKey” setting.

6. After this is complete, the captcha should be enabled where it has been implemented.

 

Conclusion

Once implemented, the captcha will play an important role in the overall strategy to prevent the unwanted programmatic submission of forms. If your organization does not have the captcha implemented in its Patriot applications and would like it, or if you have any questions or concerns, please contact Patriot Software Solutions for assistance (317) 573-5431.