Akamai Brand Protector Solves the Growing Problem of Impersonation Attacks
Brand impersonation phishing attacks have become an increasingly prevalent issue in recent years, as more and more businesses establish an online presence. (For context, read our recent blog post about the history of phishing attacks and recent phishing tactics.). For businesses, the problem of phishing is more complicated than just managing malicious links in their corporate emails.
The 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that phishing attacks were responsible for 36% of all data breaches, and that brand impersonation was the most common form of phishing attack. Organizations of all sizes are listing brand impersonations as a top security concern. In this blog post, we will explore the state of brand impersonation, its impact on businesses, and how Akamai Brand Protector — a security solution that detects and mitigates the risks of brand impersonation — can help.
What is brand impersonation?
Brand impersonation refers to the practice of creating a fake or misleading online presence that uses a brand’s name, logo, or other identifying characteristics to deceive customers. This scam can take many different forms, including fake websites, fake social media accounts, and phishing emails that are designed to trick people into giving away their personal information or money.
Watch the video
For readers who prefer to learn via video, Team Akamai breaks down phishing and brand impersonation, and introduces Brand Protector in this video. Solutions Engineering Manager Enam Rahman hosts this Q&A with Security Researcher Or Katz and Product Developer Ziv Eli.
Why is brand impersonation a problem?
The rise of brand impersonation is largely due to the increasing importance of the internet in our daily lives. As more and more people turn to the web to shop, socialize, and conduct business, cybercriminals have found new ways to exploit the vulnerabilities of online communication. Brand impersonation can have a number of negative impacts on businesses, including:
Financial losses: By impersonating a brand, cybercriminals can trick customers into making payments or providing personal information, which can result in significant financial losses for the business.
Damage to reputation: If customers believe that a brand is associated with fraudulent or misleading activities, it can damage the brand’s reputation and make it more challenging to attract new customers.
Legal issues: Brand impersonation can also lead to legal problems, as businesses may be held liable for any harm caused by fraudulent activities carried out in their name.
How can businesses reduce the risks of brand impersonation?
To reduce the risks of brand impersonation, businesses can take a number of different steps, including:
Monitor online activity: Many brands have a large online presence, with multiple websites, social media accounts, and other digital assets. This can make it difficult to monitor all online activity related to the brand and identify fraudulent activity. Akamai’s solution starts by addressing the hot spot where cybercriminals and your brand’s customers exchange data and payments — fraudulent websites.
Educate customers: Businesses should educate their customers about the risks of brand impersonation and provide them with information about how to spot fake websites, fake social media accounts, and phishing emails. Although marketing is not responsible for brand abuse, it can play a vital role in protecting a brand's reputation and assets. Brand communications should educate their customers about the risks of brand impersonation and provide them with information about how to spot fake websites, fake social media accounts, and phishing emails.
Take legal action: Businesses can take legal action against cybercriminals who engage in brand impersonation in order to deter future fraudulent activities. This is increasingly becoming a challenge as the majority of third-party–owned domains have their WHOIS information masked. Brand Protector offers the customer mitigation options to help close the loop in the protection against brand fraud.
How does Akamai Brand Protector help solve the problem of brand impersonation?
Akamai Brand Protector detects and offers mitigation of targeted attacks including phishing, impersonations, and trademark piracy. Most important, Brand Protector allows you to safeguard your trusted relationships with your customers.
More than 50,000 new phishing websites are created every week. Brand Protector inspects billions of digital activities a day, across internal and external sources, to discover abuse of your organization’s brand and brand elements with speed and efficiency — often before an attack campaign launches.
To accomplish all of this, Brand Protector addresses the problem of fraudulent impersonations with our four-step approach of intelligence, detection, visibility, and mitigation.
Intelligence
As the largest global edge and cloud platform, our proprietary view across the worldwide web traffic analyzes more than 600 TB of data a day. The depth of intelligence in Brand Protector is enhanced with third-party data feeds for holistic visibility into attacker actions.
Detection
Brand Protector delivers detections with accuracy and speed — keeping your team focused on detecting and taking down point-of-transaction websites meant to victimize your customers rather than sorting through the noise of multichannel brand mentions alerts.
Visibility
Akamai’s simplified user interface provides an instant understanding of real-time threats to customers via impersonations with detections ranked by threat score. Detection details cleanly organize the evidence and supporting information.
Mitigation
Integrated takedown services help close the loop to combat brand fraud. Brand Protector enables security teams to issue a takedown request of the abusive site right in the detection screen.
Industry-leading protection
Brand impersonation is a serious issue that can have significant financial and reputational consequences for businesses. With the launch of Brand Protector, your organization can now leverage our industry-leading detections to discover phishing and fake store campaigns that can damage your brand, products, and owned assets.
Learn more about Brand Protector on akamai.com.
