Companies can spend decades building a vibrant, engaged, and trusted brand—all to have it devastated and stripped away in mere moments by the fallout of online fraud. In this era of identity theft, data hacks, and virtual crime, your customers trust you to protect their private information and go above-and-beyond to defend them from being victims of online crooks.
What is online brand protection?
Online brand protection is the “offensive” defense against loss of revenue, customer trust and loyalty, and organizational stability that inevitably happens in the wake of criminal elements using your brand for their personal profit.
This is why online brand protection is so critical. Every organization must be vigilant to ensure their brand is not being misrepresented, used as a vehicle for fraudulent messages, or impersonated in order to cause massive financial ruin. When virtual fraud comes in an ever-evolving array of forms, from phishing to malware to brand impersonation to identity theft and more, comprehensive online brand protection is a cornerstone of securing your organization’s ongoing operational viability, maintaining customer loyalty, and avoiding the crippling loss of a long-term customer base.
Online brand protection goes beyond just setting up firewalls and antivirus software. It requires having employees who are aware of cybersecurity threats and know how to react to virtual fraud attacks. It means proactively scanning public domains and Dark Web servers alike for evidence of your brand being maligned or used to propagate online fraud schemes. It means finding and shutting down fake social media profiles using your logo and messaging to steal login credentials and access your secure networks.
Brand Protection Defense Tactics
Without bringing in an outside party to handle your cybersecurity and online brand protection, there are several steps you can take to secure your virtual presence.
- Two-factor authentication– Integrate higher-level access security measures for all of your online network portals and accounts. Keep criminals from infiltrating your database with two-factor authentication, drastically decreasing the chance of a successful direct attack on your servers.
- Website SSL– Help customers more easily determine whether they’ve landed on a legitimate, official website belonging to your brand with website SSL certification. Any website that handles private data of any sort should have this implemented, so customers know all information processed through that site is encrypted and authenticated.
- Domain monitoring – Many fraudsters will try to buy numerous variations of domain names that seem connected to your brand’s official websites, but might actually host fake eCommerce platforms, phishing schemes, or otherwise divert traffic away from your established channels. By occasionally reviewing website domains that are similar or related to yours, you can discover content masquerading as yours and have it removed via copyright laws before too much damage is done. Do note, though, that this can require ongoing manual effort if you don’t have the right tools to automate this type of scanning.
How to Choose Corporate Online Brand Protection Services
It is wise to find an outside agency that can step in and provide a comprehensive online brand protection service. Corporate Brand threats can come from practically anywhere, anytime online, and unless you have the resources to dedicate a large, full-time team to brand defense, you simply won’t be able to cover all your bases.
But how to know which online brand protection services are the right ones for you? It’s important to determine how broad the offered protection is and whether the agency is able to craft a customer brand defense strategy for you, rather than relying on a default approach that will overlook your key vulnerabilities.
Does your corporate brand protection service platform take everything from emails to phishing to social media impersonation and even text message fraud into account? Does it have the capability to directly get in touch with web service providers and account managers in order to quickly take down fraudulent content when it is discovered?
Even more importantly, you need an agency that doesn’t rely on a “set it and let it run” approach. As cybercrime and brand attacks become more sophisticated by the year, you must constantly adapt your protective measures to counter new fraud strategies and schemes. This requires a protection service suite that consistently reviews the data and refines its methods, studying how criminals work online and incorporating their findings into increasingly more potent defense infrastructures.
If you wish to learn more, FraudWatch International offers the world’s leading online brand protection services, with aggressive online watchdog protocols, employee security training, virtual crime analysis, and the fastest fraud takedown times in the industry.
However, you wish to keep your brand safe, make sure that online brand protection is a core part of your company’s digital fraud planning and response program.