8 Useful Tips to Safeguard Your Brand from Online Threats

Attacks can permanently damage a brand’s reputation when successful. Yet many businesses still operate as if they were immune to them.

Extensive steps need to be taken to ensure that corporate data stays safe. To adequately safeguard one’s brand, here are a few tips and tricks.

1. Don’t Assume Data on the Cloud Is Automatically Secure

Before engaging the services of a cloud service provider, it’s essential to understand who is responsible for the various facets of protecting infrastructure and data.

Despite using the provider’s cloud infrastructure that it essentially secures, a company often remains responsible for keeping the stored data safe. That is because cloud services, just like other IT services, are not immune to attacks.

2. Safeguard Your Entire Domain

Many organizations fail to oversee the management of their domain names. Companies with several offices would do well to have a team that has an encompassing view of all its public-facing properties.

They could also rely on domain research and monitoring tools to ensure that their entire domain stays protected from threats at all times.

Monitoring suspicious domains, registrants, and brands can also guarantee that they won’t end up as potential phishing and cybersquatting victims.

3. Secure Even Mobile Devices

More and more threats are finding their way into corporate networks through unsecured mobile devices. That is especially true for employee-owned devices that connect to the office network.

If an organization doesn’t want to curtail personal device use for work, it can opt to implement bring-your-own-device (BYOD) security policies.

Those with bigger budgets can even resort to dedicating a separate network for personal devices to prevent threats from finding their way into corporate files and systems. Using mobile device solutions is also a must.

4. Know Your Infrastructure

Every organization needs to know what makes up its infrastructure. This knowledge helps it identify risks and access points. It should also know what kind of and how much data its network holds.

Any company that stores personally identifiable information (PII), whether big or small, is at risk of a data breach. Ensuring the protection of all the components of a network is critical in maintaining one’s brand reputation.

5. Look at the Big Picture

Brand protection works best when an organization uses a combination of detection, prevention, and incident response measures. This multilayered approach is especially effective when each mechanism complements all others.

The desired approach to brand protection is to assess every potential attack avenue and protect this so threat actors can’t take advantage of its weaknesses.

6. Security Is Everyone’s Business

Don’t leave security policymaking to a single team or department. Involve everyone in the organization when coming up with security policies and guidelines.

This approach gives a company more insights into all the potential risks it could face.

It also lessens the amount of time the IT security team would spend on enhancing employees’ security awareness. Brand protection is a company-wide concern; everyone should care about it.

7. Look Inside Your Network

Not all threats come from outside. Organizations also need to be wary of insider threats. Some scrupulous competitors could buy a disgruntled employee’s loyalty.

That’s why it’s an excellent idea to examine not just external but also internal traffic for malicious activity. Doing so helps a business stop secret information from getting into the wrong hands.

8. Think Past Hacking

Hacking isn’t the only probable cause of a breach. Several organizations have lost customer data and suffered brand damage due to faulty backups and other human errors.

As such, a company always needs to ensure that it looks at all potential threat sources and address weaknesses to minimize risks.

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Companies today must always keep in mind how harmful a cyber attack can be against their brands. Following the best practices mentioned above brings them a step closer to better protection.

About the Author

Jonathan Zhang is the founder and CEO of Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)—a data, tool, and API provider that specializes in automated threat detection, security analysis, and threat intelligence solutions for Fortune 1000 and cybersecurity companies.

TIP is part of the WhoisXML API Inc. family, a trusted intelligence vendor by over 50,000 clients.

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