September 21, 2021
Most brands have a humble beginning with a registered name, a logo and tagline, a mission and vision statement, a website and perhaps some social media pages. These are nothing but the building blocks for developing the identity of a brand. Over time, as the brand grows, all these founding elements evolve and help people identify the brand. It forms the base of the brand. With more time, when the brand gets established, it becomes much more than its identity. A brand’s ideology is what people start relating to or put their faith in. When a brand shares a positive relationship with the customers, it does go a long way – which leads to earning brand loyalty and repeat purchases of its goods or services.
Today, the world is heavily dependent on technology. With over 66% of the world’s population using the internet, building and maintaining a solid online presence is more than important. Brand monitoring does play a crucial role in the marketing strategy of any organization. However, with the rise of digital fraud and infringement, it has become increasingly common for companies to be the target of illegal copies and practices on the internet. This is precisely why Online Brand Protection is essential for businesses.
WHAT DOES BRAND PROTECTION MEAN?
In simple words, brand protection is the process or set of actions to prevent brand infringement. It means protecting the brand and its intellectual property (IP) against counterfeiters, copyright pirates, and infringers of other types of IP, such as trademarks, patents, design rights or color marks. Essentially, brand protection services are implemented to protect the loss of revenue as well as a company’s image, reputation and overall value.
Let us understand this through an example of a customer who is looking to buy one of your products online. As per your marketing strategy, the consumer journey begins with the right consideration. Right then they come across a tempting deal or cheap replica on a fake webpage. Whatever happens next, will not only impact your sales but can damage your years of reputation. It is something you’d never want your customers to experience. In fact, no brand would want their customers to be anywhere near this tawdry that can tarnish the reputation of their brand.
WHAT IS AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY?
Intellectual property is simply the legal framework that covers everything that a company or an individual originally produces. Anything that can be described as a ‘creation of the mind’ – an invention, artistic work, or a product. A brand’s intellectual property could be a four-word tagline, a thousand-page coffee table book, or a new range of products. Or it could simply be the logos that represent your brand.
There are many different ways and forms of Brand Infringement, including, but not limited to:
1. Counterfeiting is the act of unlawful duplication of something valuable with an intent to deceive. A counterfeit product imitates an authentic product from a reputed brand but is made unofficially. The fake products illicitly carry the logos and trademarks of the authentic brand, mainly to deceive customers.
2. Copyright piracy involves creative work which is subject to copyright laws. Piracy is the act of reproducing unauthorized copies of someone’s creative work.
3. Trademark squatting is the act of registering a trademark in bad faith. People secure the trademark while they don’t plan to use it. They keep squatting on that to get some financial profits.
4. Rogue websites are those websites created for malicious intent, either against a legitimate company or by infringing its IP.
5. Phishing attacks are executed by sending fraudulent emails or messages that look like coming from reputable sources. These types of cyberattacks aim to steal sensitive data or to install malware on the victim’s machine.
6. Patent theft There are patent laws that give the right to a patentee to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing their patented invention without their consent. Violation of a patentee’s right concerning some invention is known as patent theft.
7. Social media imitation or identity theft is a common type of digital flouting where fake accounts use the name, image, or other known elements of a person, company, or organization without their permission. These are different from other legitimate uses of a brand or person, such as fan accounts, parodies or criticism and information pages.
WHY IS ONLINE BRAND PROTECTION IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
It comes with no surprise that having a presence in the digital ecosystem leads to both opportunities and risks. When it is about risks, they are not limited to just one kind of threat. A digital threat can impact anything and everything in your business, which is a strong enough reason to adopt online brand protection.
- Social media fraud and attacks can impact your prestige and may cause people to disbelief in your brand.
- If personal data of an organization gets exposed, there is a threat of your employees or customers getting targeted for identity theft or fraud.
- Cyber-criminals with illegitimate access to your business operations can disrupt the network and may even ask for a huge amount of ransoms.
With all these and much more serious concerns, one needs to ensure the most efficient and comprehensive monitoring service for their brand. If a company does not take the correct measures, they risk counterfeiting, impersonation, piracy, or outright theft of IP and data. The big brands are aware of it and they strategize their move accordingly.
BRAND PROTECTION SERVICES BY OMAN DATA PARK
At The Data Park, we strongly believe your brand is so much more than just a logo and catchy tagline. To begin with, if that logo and tagline were not present, you would not have a brand at all. Your brand represents the values as well as the stance you take as an organization. Overall, it is a visual and verbal illustration of the journey you are on. Nearly every prominent global brand and business, in just about every sector of business, understand the interdependence between visual and verbal branding. Therefore, they invest in advanced cyber security infrastructure to protect their business practices and the millions of customers that trust them with their data.
With The Data Park’s Managed Brand Protection Service, monitor your brand across digital channels and manage results in one place, combining domain names, Internet content, trademark jurisdictions, and social media mentions.
Built with you in mind, the Brand Protection Service offers preventive and investigative monitoring of your Domain, Social Media, and Mobile Apps. We keep an around-the-clock watch on your digital assets in real-time. This enables us to take swift action at the first sight of any suspicious activity. It involves an innovative service that blocks malicious attacks before they can even launch. Furthermore, it stops live attacks in their tracks to minimize damage. Our systems consistently monitor for malware and phishing attacks and send you real-time alerts as soon as something malicious is discovered or suspected. Alerts are also sent for potential phishing sites and account takeovers. TDP offers an automated, quick and comprehensive solution to ensure your brand is protected against any unlawful online activities.
TOP 5 REASONS WHY TDP IS YOUR BEST PARTNER FOR BRAND PROTECTION
1. Real-Time Alerts on detection of external threats:
TDP Brand Protection services are specifically designed to identify potential fakes and malicious practices online, around the clock and across the globe. By proactive evaluation, we can identify vulnerabilities and intimate business teams with early warning and real-time alerts when a malware infection is discovered or suspected. In addition, alerts for potential phishing sites and account takeovers are also shared with the clients.
2. Identification and removal of malicious threats:
TDP employs advanced detection, machine learning technologies, and security analyst expertise; with this kind of solid infrastructure, we proactively discover, report and remove a wide range of online threats and malpractices that may target your customers and cost a bomb. Our technology doesn’t sleep only to ensure that our clients can.
3. In-depth monitoring of social media and app stores:
Our team of experts keeps a constant vigil over social media, official & third-party app stores. Their main aim is to catch cybercriminals who are trying to impersonate your brand. They also monitor new domain registrations for ones that may be imitating your legitimate URLs. This kind of in-depth monitoring helps us detect any fraudulent activity in the initial phase itself and we immediately start the takedown process. We ensure that it is removed before your customers accidentally run into them and take any further unwanted action.
4. Speed up ROI by reducing the detection-to-enforcement-time:
Our brand protection services like monitoring, identifying and enforcing infringements function effectively and swiftly. With the cutting-edge technology and top-quality equipment of TDP, brands can prevent 8,000+ potential cyberattacks that happen every day in Oman. We believe that only by delivering optimal quick results, a company can have a good return on investment.
TDP BRAND PROTECTION SERVICES ENABLE YOU TO
- Safeguard customers, employees and associates from unwanted scams on domains that are similar to yours.
- Ban and takedown suspicious links
- Identify and defend against impersonation attacks.
- Minimize the value of stolen data.
- Access a complete cybersecurity platform while increasing your ROI in technology.
- Better control the cost involved in brand analyzing
- Save time and efforts
- Support future business expansions
THE CRUX OF THE MATTER
Knowing how to keep the intellectual property protected is essential for all brands. Smaller brands, especially the ones who are expanding, are at risk from theft of intellectual property, counterfeit and impersonation of their identity. When a brand is in its growing phase, this is the time when it is at most risk. The fraudsters and fakes try to impersonate and piggyback themselves to gain some quick profits.
It is hard to dodge this persistent swarm of counterfeiters who keep conspiring as they target established companies with proper research and technology. They fish for big brands they think they can profit from, and use every tactic at their disposal. Another important fact is that the counterfeiting industry is estimated to be worth over $4 trillion. Industries clearly need a proper defence system to protect themselves from such offensive acts of fakery and negative customer experiences.
To that end, a brand can implement a number of strategies to fight against infringers, both offline and online. However, if one chooses to fight them off manually, it can be highly daunting in terms of time and money.
Data Protection Services by TDP is highly effective in defending a brand against various kinds of infringement. It has become the fastest-growing brand protection service which is being used most widely across nations. Moreover, the Cyber Security Award at Comex 2021 recognizes TDP’s efforts in Cyber Security Threat Intelligence, Detection, and Preventive services to keep Oman’s business entities safe from cybercriminals. The Data Park takes the lead in enabling the latest technologies needed to detect cyber threats and prevent its customers from such threats, while the 20 major services currently being offered in the market are a testament to these efforts of the company.
If your brand is facing such threats or might face something like that in the future, all you have to do is evaluate the brand protection services of TDP and leave the hard work to us. We will be happy to provide you a personalized walkthrough of the services and their trailblazing features that can help you protect your brand.
To know more, reach out to us via phone at +968 24171195 or email sales@omandatapark.com
