They say that 20 years of reputation can go down the drain in five minutes. In the online world, the danger of souring your brand’s standing is even greater because it doesn’t take much for cybercriminals to exploit the cracks in your cybersecurity armor.
A copy of a company logo and a $10 look-alike domain are sometimes all it takes to trick customers and/or employees into voluntarily handing over their login credentials. When bad actors set up fake login portals or upload cloned apps with relative ease, they directly (and often effectively) exploit your external trust perimeter.
It just goes to show how brand abuse has evolved into a frontline cybersecurity threat, and how dedicated brand protection through a threat exposure management (TEM) platform has become a necessity.
How attackers weaponize your brand, and how to neutralize them
There is no shortage of methods that threat actors use to get their hands on valuable data. The four most popular methods are:
1. Fake domains and look-alike websites
Scammers register web addresses that look almost identical to your website. They might swap a lowercase "l" for a number "1", add words like -login or -support to your brand name, buy a .co domain instead of a .com, or do a bit of URL hijacking. The last refers to the practice of typosquatting, which specifically targets common typing mistakes, such as “gogle” and other variations instead of “google”.
Typosquatting is a far more dangerous subset of cybersquatting (snatching up unregistered brand or executive domains to later profit from them), as it uses subtly similar domains to deceive misdirected visitors into falling for phishing scams, malware downloads, credential theft, and other illicit activities. After all, a typing error while entering a domain is a mistake we’ve all made at some point.
But what makes these efforts truly diabolical is that criminals even add security certificates so the address bar shows a secure connection with the trusted padlock icon. So, when a user lands on the page, it looks like your real login portal or checkout screen, ready to capture their credentials.
To combat these opportunistic practices, brand protection tools monitor global domain registries 24/7. The very moment someone registers a domain that looks or spells (dirty tricks and all) like your brand, the system flags it. Then, an automated takedown request is sent to the hosting provider to pull the fake site down before attackers can launch a scam.
2. Social media impersonation
Talk about scams on a shoestring budget. Fake social media accounts are not only cheap to make, but also quick and scalable since targets are plentiful.
Typically, a cybercriminal will create accounts using your and your brand’s imagery. They might intercept customer complaints on one social media (say, X), or pose as a C-suite exec on another (LinkedIn) to trick employees into sharing confidential files or wiring money.
Brand protection tools have a remedy for this as well, since they constantly scan major social networks using image recognition technology to spot unauthorized uses of your logos, executive photos, brand materials, slogans, and such. Once a fraudulent profile is caught in the act, the tool submits a verified report straight to the network’s security team to delete the account.
3. Search engine ad hijacking
If you’re thinking that hijacking is sort of a recurring theme, you’re right. In one of the more cunning scams, bad actors buy Google or Bing ads for your company name. Doing so gets the fake ad at the top of search results, and right above your actual website.
Not suspecting foul play, customers click on the top link and get redirected to a fake storefront or any other page designed to steal their account details. In some cases, it’s a legit third-party marketplace that sells cheap counterfeit knockoffs using a stolen brand name (think Facebook Marketplace channels operating without brand authorization).
Thanks to automated searches for your brand keywords that run around the clock, brand protection can uncover deceptive ads and put a stop to them. When a scam ad is discovered, the tool wraps up the evidence in a neat package and submits a trademark violation notice to Google or Bing to instantly pull the ad and ban the scammer's account.
4. Cloned mobile apps
In case your business offers a mobile app, you’re at risk of a hacker stealing an app's code, injecting it with spyware, and uploading the altered (cloned) version to unofficial third-party marketplaces and torrent sites. Sometimes, they’re distributed directly via phishing links and uploaded on official stores, where hackers have ways of bypassing initial security screenings.
Whatever the delivery method, the goal and outcome are the same: get the customers to download the app that seems and feels like the real deal, only it secretly logs their passwords or credit card details in the background.
Here, automated scanners sweep official and not-so-official app stores across the globe, comparing new listings against your app's code and branding. If an unapproved clone is found, the system issues an instant removal notice to the store operator.
Benefits of automated brand protection
Integrating brand protection into a broader TEM framework changes how security teams handle external risk, since it allows them to:
- Shut down phishing infrastructure before launch: Threat actors tend to register typosquatted domains days or weeks before pulling the trigger on an active phishing campaign. Automated registry scanning detects newly registered lookalikes the moment they appear on DNS servers, so security teams can initiate takedowns before the first malicious attempt ever gets its legs.
- Protected customer trust: When a customer falls victim thinking it came from you, they rarely blame the scammer. Chances are, you’ll get the short end of their stick. Proactively scrubbing fake sites and social profiles preserves your good standing and protects long-term customer acquisition costs.
- Consolidated external risk in a single dashboard: Despite their good intentions, standalone brand monitoring tools habitually create another data silo. On the other hand, most TEM platforms, such as NordStellar, consolidate brand protection alongside external attack surface management (EASM) and dark web monitoring. As a result, security teams get a unified view of their company’s perimeter, along with potential credential exposure and public brand assets within a centralized workflow.
What you can do now to minimize the threat
The harsh reality is that all your hard work can go out the window if you leave your brand reputation unmonitored. You may not stop keen cybercriminals from doing their thing, but you absolutely can - and should - control how quickly those threats are identified and removed.
If possible, prioritize these steps:
- Check your public digital footprint
- Automate 24/7 multi-channel surveillance
- Implement rapid takedown capabilities
As much as brand protection is about stopping threat actors from weaponizing your brand name and assets, it’s as much - if not more - about protecting the trust customers place in you. That is what’s keeping you moving forward, right?