Brand Intelligence

What is Brand Intelligence?

Brand Intelligence is a type of threat intelligence that focuses on monitoring and analyzing online activities and mentions related to a brand.

This can include everything from tracking fake accounts and identifying unauthorized use of brand assets to detecting potential threats like active phishing scams or domain spoofing.

By leveraging brand intelligence, businesses can proactively prevent attacks before they happen.

Companies use this data to safeguard their reputation, protect customers, and reduce the risk of financial loss due to brand abuse.

Why is Brand Intelligence Important?

Brand Intelligence plays a critical role in protecting companies from malicious actors. Here are some of the main reasons why it’s so important:

Fraud Prevention: It helps detect fraudulent websites, accounts, and phishing campaigns that impersonate your brand, reducing the risk of scams that damage customer trust.
Threat Detection: By monitoring for emerging threats or vulnerabilities, Brand Intelligence allows organizations to take proactive steps to protect their assets.
Incident Response: Detecting threats in real-time enables businesses to respond quickly, minimizing the damage and recovery time after an attack.

The most common types of Brand Abuse

Brand abuse comes in many forms. Here are some of the most common:

Phishing Scams: Attackers create fake websites or emails that mimic your brand, tricking customers into handing over sensitive information.
Domain Squatting (Cybersquatting): Malicious actors register domain names similar to your brand’s official site, often to trick visitors, sell the domain, or host phishing sites.
Social Media Impersonation: Attackers create fake social media profiles to impersonate a brand to scam followers or spread misinformation.
Unauthorized Use of Brand Assets: Using a brand’s logo, images, or other intellectual property without permission, often to mislead consumers.
Typosquatting: Registering misspelled variations of a brand’s domain name to capture traffic from users who mistype the brand’s URL, often leading them to malicious sites.
Content Scraping: Copying a brand’s content and republishing it without permission, which can damage SEO rankings and credibility.
SEO Manipulation: Using black hat SEO techniques to boost fake or malicious sites higher in search results for brand-related keywords.
Counterfeit Products: Fake products sold under your brand’s name can damage reputation and lead to financial loss.

Real-world examples of brand intelligence in action

Netflix: In 2017, a phishing campaign targeted Netflix users by sending emails from a domain that closely resembled Netflix’s official domain. The fake domain included subtle changes, such as replacing an “i” with an “l”. The emails directed users to a fake Netflix login page to steal their credentials. Brand Intelligence could be leveraged to take down lookalike domains immediately after they’re registered.
Twitter: In 2018, a number of Twitter accounts impersonating celebrities, including Elon Musk were created to promote cryptocurrency scams. The fake accounts would reply to Musk’s tweets, claiming to give away cryptocurrency in exchange for a small initial payment. Organizations can use Brand Intelligence to continuously monitor social media for any accounts that are trying to impersonate their brand or C-level executives. By setting up alerts for specific keywords, names, and variations, brand intelligence tools can quickly detect fake accounts and suspicious activity.
Tangerine Telecom: In February 2024, Australian ISP Tangerine Telecom was breached, resulting in the theft of over 200,000 customer records. The breach was traced back to a single contractor’s leaked credentials. Brand monitoring, specifically monitoring your third-party vendors, is critical to protecting your organization’s assets.

What to look for in brand intelligence solutions

When choosing a brand intelligence solution, look for the following capabilities:

Comprehensive Monitoring

Domain Monitoring: Detect typosquatting, homoglyphs domains, and other look-alike techniques that could be used in phishing or brand impersonation attacks.
Social Media Monitoring: Track mentions of your brand across social media platforms to quickly identify misuse or fake accounts.
Dark Web Monitoring: Ensure the solution can track brand mentions and planned attacks on dark web forums and marketplaces.
Data Breach Monitoring: Monitor third-party breaches, stealer logs, and combo lists for leaked employee, vendor, and customer credentials

Threat Detection and Analysis

Phishing Detection: Identify phishing attacks, whether via email or fake websites, targeting your brand.
Impersonation Detection: Detect fake accounts, websites, or emails impersonating your brand, especially on social media.
Malware and Fraud Detection: Monitor for malware campaigns or fraudulent activity associated with your brand.

Data Integration and Correlation

SIEM Integration: Ensure the solution integrates seamlessly with your existing security tools like SIEMs, firewalls, and others to centralize monitoring.
Data Correlation Capabilities: The ability to correlate information from different sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape.

Real-time Alerts and Reporting

Real-time Alerts: Get notified immediately when a threat to your brand is detected.
Detailed Reporting: Provide detailed alerts that can be shared with stakeholders to asset and mitigate the risk.

Actionable Insights

Remediation Guidance: The solution should provide clear guidance on how to mitigate threats once they are identified.
Incident Response Support: Assistance or integration with incident response processes to speed up your ability to address threats.