Online Brand Protection:
What is it and what does it include?
Online Brand Protection is still largely unknown to most organizations. However, it is key to avoiding cyberattacks and online fraud. In this article we explain what it consists of, what fields it covers and what departments should be involved.
What is Internet Brand Protection
Online Brand Protection (or Internet Brand Protection) safeguards the intellectual property rights of the brand in its presence in the online environment. It includes all the strategies, measures and actions that we carry out to prevent, anticipate and deactivate abuses and illegal uses of the brand or its assets, the unauthorized sale and distribution of brand products, as well as copies and counterfeits, and online infringements and fraud, such as phishing and scamming attacks, impersonation of the brand’s identity or social media profiles, or email spoofing and other deceptive techniques.
In other words, Online Brand Protection defends the brand from unauthorized uses by third parties, playing an essential role in protecting users from online fraud.
Brand usage
If applying Online Brand Protection to our brand means knowing what use is made of it, we must understand the different uses that we are going to be monitoring. Here are some examples of the use of our brand:
- Mentions of the brand in content (text or image) for lucrative, harmful or fraudulent purposes.
- Uses of the figurative trademark (logo).
- Uses of the brand styles or look & feel: colors, patterns, typography, etc. that may give users the impression that it is our brand.
- Uses of protected content, such as official photographs of your products.
- Mention of the brand in domain names.
- Mention of the brand in the sender of emails from third-party domains.
- Mention of the name or figurative trademark in social media profiles.
These uses may or may not be legitimate depending on the agreements and licenses agreed with third parties. Therefore, when defining our actions in Brand Protection, we must always keep in mind our whitelist of third parties and permitted uses of the brand.
We must also bear in mind that not all mentions of the brand represent illegitimate uses or abuse of the brand, and that users are free to mention it as long as they do not incur in any infringement. Therefore, we must take these scenarios into account when defining our actions and methodologies in Online Brand Protection, and derive these cases to the protocols, for example, of reputation crises.
What fields Online Brand Protection works with
Having answered the what and why, it is time to take a look at the where and who.
Our Brand Protection strategy must address all those fields related to the online presence of the brand or, in other words, where we can find illegal uses of the brand:
- Online communication channels: starting from the domains where web pages and applications are hosted and from which emails are sent, through to apps, social networks and forums and other spaces for sharing content.
- Online sales channels: eCommerce, social networks, marketplaces and app stores.
- The distribution network: the spaces where our distributors can or cannot sell our products, such as third-party eCommerce, marketplaces or social networks.
- The different online advertising networks: all advertising platforms on search engines, web pages, social networks, apps, etc.
- Dark and Deep Web: these are the spaces where we can find sensitive data stolen from the organization through cyberattacks or from users/customers through deception techniques, so it is crucial to detect the presence of this data and avoid the consequences of it falling into the hands of cybercriminals.
We must bear in mind that in all these fields we are talking about both our own and third-party content and assets. And it is precisely the latter that is the object of our Online Brand Protection strategy.
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What teams should be involved in Online Brand Protection?
Each organization is a world and is structured based on different factors. Therefore, we cannot do anything other than propose the ideal scenario for Online Brand Protection, that is, what is advisable and most efficient.
In general terms, the areas involved in Online Brand Protection are those directly involved and impacted not only by the actions, but also by the lack of them. If we want to define an internal Online Brand Protection team, we recommend that it has at least one profile from the following departments:
Legal
As the department directly in charge of protecting Intellectual Property and the uses of the brand, and taking legal action against abuse, its involvement is obvious. However, not all organizations have an in-house Legal department or one specialized in Online Brand Protection.
In these cases, we recommend having a legal services partner that is capable of dealing with the needs that arise through our Online Brand Protection actions.
Marketing
Customers and users falling victim to scams that use our brand to deceive them has a huge impact on the image and reputation of the brand and the business, which can last for years or even lead to a loss of business from which it is difficult to recover.
Although it may seem incredible, not all organizations give the same importance or have the same sensitivity to possible brand image crises and, often, a very high price is paid for not applying preventive strategies such as Online Brand Protection. That is why Marketing departments are essential in our team.
IT
A key aspect of Online Brand Protection is protecting communications to customers, users, partners and suppliers. This means implementing and managing certificate and domain portfolios that prevent illicit communications.
The IT department is generally the one in charge of this. Therefore, it is vital that the technical knowledge to deal with these measures is part of our team.
Cybersecurity
Online Brand Protection is closely related to Cybersecurity, since it prevents and anticipates potential cyberattacks, such as phishing, website cloning or brand impersonation.
If our organization has a Cybersecurity team, it will be essential for it to be part of our Online Brand Protection team.
Outsourcing the team
If the necessary resources and knowledge are not available in-house, we recommend having an Online Brand Protection provider who can help us take off in this area in a guided manner and following a logical strategy according to the needs of the business.
Getting started in Online Brand Protection can be overwhelming if we do not have an average knowledge, which can result in two scenarios:
- We give up because we do not know how to adapt the available solutions to our needs.
- We oversize the proposal, which in the long run will not be profitable and we will end up discarding it, putting our brand at risk.
Our recommendation is to always have an audit and advice from an expert provider, who will give us defined and tailored guidelines to help us take the first steps, avoiding these scenarios.
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