Digital brand hijacking gets real

Digital fraud and brand hijacking are serious and growing threats to companies in South Africa and abroad. Over the past three years, incidents have increased with the grand-scale eruption of online social networking and eCommerce.

The evolving digital landscape is fertile ground for cybercriminals who siphon millions of rands from unsuspecting brands and people every year. Estimates are that cybercrime costs the world about $6 trillion annually. The real toll is likely much higher because most exploits go unnoticed or unreported.

“Conversations and transactions are happening in a dynamic and multi-directional environment where online reputation is influenced by third parties. When these are not monitored and there is no active engagement by brands in these transactions and discussions, it is impossible to control them,” says Charl Ueckermann, Group CEO at AVeS Cyber Security International.

According to Ueckermann, AVeS has worked with several companies to recover hijacked digital brands and restore lost data. For one business, an insurance company, the ripple effects are still being felt two years after a loan scam effected via WhatsApp and Facebook cost millions of rands in legal fees and damage control. Consumer complaints on social media as well as reports to authorities and regulatory bodies were the first signs of the scam. By that stage, numerous people had already been scammed out of money and untold damage had been caused to the company’s brand.

The story is not unique. On average, it takes security teams 287 days to identify and contain a data breach, according to a report by IBM and Ponemon Institute.

In a landscape that is rapidly shifting, with new techniques and attacks emerging every day, digital fraud is not limited to one type of attack and can range from phishing scams that trick users into providing personal information such as credit card numbers or login credentials right through to more sinister digital brand hijacking. These attacks can occur at any time, anywhere, and do not discriminate against large companies or small businesses.

Just a few years ago, email phishing was the primary channel used by attackers. Now, they are spoofing websites, copying social media pages, stealing identities, running fake Pay-Per-Click campaigns, and taking good brand names down.

“Domain squatting, impersonation of executives, and the sale of proprietary information on the dark web are real. The problem is that without proper monitoring, companies have no idea how or where their brands are being misused until a complaint is made, and by then, it is usually too late.  

says Ueckermann.

Given the magnitude of a brand’s online presence, multi-faceted, 360° strategies are necessary to find and remove fraudulent websites, misuses of brand assets such as logos and slogans, trademark infringements, employee impersonations, grey market sales, and social media scams.

“And it’s not just the web as most of us know it that should be watched. It has become critical to monitor the deepest, darkest corners of the dark web where cybercriminals share or sell proprietary, personal information. This includes websites, forums and chatrooms that are channels for data exposure, information leakage and corporate espionage. Without digital risk protection, companies can lose everything that they’ve worked so hard to establish,” he explains.

He describes an effective digital risk protection solution as one that encompasses anti-phishing, brand and trademark infringement scoping and protection, dark web monitoring, anti-pirating and anti-counterfeiting, digital advertising protection, grey market sales monitoring, and social media watching.

Tall order?

“Not really,” says Ueckermann, “AVeS Online Brand Security Services provides a proactive and powerful defence against online intellectual property fraud. The solution watches everywhere that is humanly not possible to watch all times, including online marketplaces, social media sites like Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp and Telegram, apps on Android and iOS, web domains, websites and chatrooms on the internet and dark web. Developed based on years of experience and robust tools, it hunts and disrupts threats before they become a problem.”

Ueckermann concludes by saying that the target audience for digital risk protection services (DRPS) like this will increase to 10% by 2025, up from 1% today, as companies rally to reduce the risk of phishing scams, customer fraud, information leakage, counterfeit product distribution, brand misrepresentation and reputational damage.

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