A scraping cluster is a coordinated group of automated clients used to collect data at scale. Each client may look like a separate user, but the system is usually controlled centrally and designed to send repeated requests, harvest content, or probe services without obvious manual interaction.
This matters in cyber security because scraping clusters can overwhelm services, bypass rate limits, and hide abusive collection behind distributed IPs, rotating proxies, or mobile-like traffic patterns. Defenders look for shared browser fingerprints, timing similarities, repeated navigation paths, and inconsistent device signals to distinguish automation from genuine users. In practice, a scraping cluster is not just a volume problem; it is an attribution problem, where many addresses mask one organized operation.