Domain brand monitoring may not be as mainstream as brand monitoring but it is just as essential. And that’s because despite its age, phishing remains a threat to many organizations. Run-of-the-mill phishing attacks still managed to attain a 47% volume growth from 2020 to 2021, putting companies in danger of data and identity theft.
You may be wondering how the two differ, though. You can think of domain brand monitoring as both a part of and step up to brand monitoring. Apart from enabling you to keep track of how well your brand is doing online compared to your competitors, you get the added benefit of keeping your domain (not just your brand) safe from threats.
What harm can come to your domain and brand in today’s digital world? This post names at least three that domain brand monitoring could help you address. But first, let’s talk about what domain brand data is.
What Is Domain Brand Data?
Roughly speaking, domain brand data refers to domain registration, update, and expiration information that is tied to a specific brand. This data could be associated with the brand in a legitimate manner in that the brand itself is the owner of one or more domain names that are part of its web presence. Association to that brand could also be illegitimate in that the domains and associated websites are owned by someone else and possibly aim to create confusion.
Variations of and strings that make up a company‘s brand name in domains and subdomains, both of legitimate and illegitimate usage are also part of domain brand data.
Now that you know what domain brand data is, let’s dive into the reasons why monitoring it is important.
Keep Phishers at a Wide Berth
By now, most people know that a successful phishing campaign always relies on a convincing social engineering ploy ‘using a very good fake login page preferably of a brand with tons of users. Among the most phished brands are Microsoft, DHL, and Amazon. And it’s not surprising why, given that each brand has millions of daily users worldwide.
Becoming the bait for a phishing attack is avoidable through domain brand monitoring, which helps organizations monitor the registration of domains that contain their brands. In a sense, they can control how their brands are used.
A short study of three of the most phished brands published in March 2021 featured the malicious domain abusing Amazon‘s good name amazon-kb[.]best. A domain brand monitoring tool could have informed you or Amazon of its existence as soon as it was registered.
Don’t Be the Next BEC Attack Target
Targeted attacks require targeted measures like domain brand monitoring. Regardless of your business size, so long as your network and employees are vulnerable to being tricked into paying a substantive sum for a fake invoice, you may end up becoming the next business email compromise (BEC) victim.
BEC scams have cost organizations worldwide millions of dollars. And attackers do not discriminate when it comes to company size.
As with phishing, domain brand monitoring can also help mitigate BEC attacks. And it takes practically two simple steps to do that. First, users key in their brand names into a brand monitoring tool and start tracking domains that contain it, including misspelled variants should they wish to. Those that are in use and clearly infringe on your trademark rights or have been found malicious by different malware engines can be reported for takedown.
These steps are good additions to your brand protection strategy, as they can help ensure that should any of the domains turn out to belong to attackers, they can’t be used against you.
Don’t Let Cybersquatters Drag Your Name through the Mud
While a good mud bath may be enjoyable for most people, we can’t say the same thing about having your brand name get dragged through the mud. That could spell disaster for your organization‘s reputation but is what could happen if cybersquatters get their hands on a domain containing your brand name and use it for a malicious campaign.
As with phishing and its more targeted kind, BEC scams, monitoring domain brand data can help you keep your eye out on all potential cybersquatting domains. In the same vein, just key in your brand to a domain brand monitoring tool and create a tracker for it. You’ll get a list of all the newly registered and dropped domains with your brand name, alerting you to web properties that could put your reputation at risk of abuse online. You can easily warn customers not to access them, especially if they’re dubbed malicious on blocklists.
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This post hopefully shed some light on why you need to raise the bar when it comes to brand protection by moving at least a step up. While brand monitoring may be enough for keeping up with the competition and infringement prevention, the ever-growing threat landscape makes domain brand monitoring more of a must than just good to have.