When we mention brand protection, we are referring to protecting your product, service, and brand image from plagiarism. Business owners invest time, effort, and money to brand and grow their company to then be victimized by cybercriminals who counterfeit their brand and their products. In turn, they steal a part of their revenue and, more often than not, tarnishing their reputation.
Modern consumers rely on the internet to buy items they need from the most well-established brands on the web. According to statistics, 91% of consumers buy products from trusted brands only.
On a daily basis, the internet is overwhelmed with advertisements for products and businesses. Everywhere you click, there are endless brand names. Among these brands, it is easy to identify the most well-known, and use their online identity for your own purposes. Let’s look at what brand protection is, why it matters, and how it can help your business.
Online Businesses and the Threats They Face
In the internet era, online businesses face many threats and dangers lurking around the digital business realm. Cyber-attacks marked 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak, and it has never been more important to protect your brand from hackers than it is today.
Since the current situation has forced some businesses to stay indoors, there is no alternative to remote working models. This means the number of devices connected to the web has increased significantly. This connected business approach gives cybercriminals more opportunities than ever to manipulate their way to valuable assets.
Cybercriminals will seek out and find any vulnerability they can to exploit for their benefit. There are new forms of adware, scareware, spyware, malware, and ransomware every day. These threats are among the biggest concerns for businesses in 2021.
Then, there are new forms of threats that target cloud-based solutions. Cloud migration exposed countless businesses to entirely new forms of cyber threats, including new phishing attacks, malicious apps, etc.
With all these dangers and potential threats lurking, it can be hard to focus on your core mission. However, you can tackle your company’s security by including brand protection in your cybersecurity strategy.
Brand Protection as the Number One Concern
Brand protection is just as the name implies, a way of protecting your brand and everything else that goes with it. Brand protection can be described as a safety or security strategy that involves a range of protective measures used to safeguard your brand against any attempts of infringement, counterfeit, fraud, or pirating of your intellectual property.
Brand protection keeps your brand, sensitive data, your products, your logo, and so forth fully protected from losing its value, brand reputation, image, and ultimately revenue. Essentially, protecting your brand means preventing the abuse of everything your brand stands for.
This also includes brand exploitation by third-parties, or cybercriminals, who use your brand’s intellectual property as their own and take advantage of your already established brand reputation, image, and credibility. Brand exploitation includes:
- Fake websites
- Patent thievery
- Social media impersonation
- Product plagiarism
Suppose you don’t take measures to prevent the counterfeiting of your brand. In this case, you risk your sales and reputation decreasing, and your partners and customers losing their trust in your brand. You don’t want this proverbial set of dominoes to start falling. Hence, the utmost importance of doing everything you can to protect your brand and making brand protection one of your top priorities.
The Top Threats Modern Businesses Need to Mitigate
While brand protection essentially safeguards your brand from any form of abuse, it also prepares you for dealing with all types of threats by teaching you how to mitigate the risks and deal with the consequences.
When it comes to the biggest threats modern businesses are facing today, the top 5 are as follows:
- Phishing attacks
- Malware
- Ransomware
- Weak passwords
- Insider threats
- Brand integrity
Techniques and Approaches to Ensure Brand Protection and Safety
Cybercriminals will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Therefore, you need to be ready to act accordingly to ensure your brand is safe and protected at all times. You can begin to ensure brand protection and safety by using these techniques below.
- Monitor your Brand Online Presence: Data gathering and extensive analysis allow you to level up your brand protection strategies from reactive to proactive. Here’s how you you can start protecting your business online with data-drive decisions.
- Register Intellectual Property: If your brand isn’t formally registered, there’s little you can do should something happen to your intellectual property. However, if your products have a registered trademark, no one has the right to use them without your consent. This is the very first step towards protecting your brand.
- Create Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA) with Partners/Vendors: This type of agreement prevents your partners/vendors from abusing your brand, products, and/or services and is especially essential for businesses that work with patent-protected products.
- Strengthen Social Media Account Security: Social media is where most brand exploitation takes place. Having a strong level of protection on social media networks significantly reduces the risk of having your brand abused.
- Create Customer Awareness: This makes faking your brand exceedingly difficult being that your customers know your business well. Your customers can become an additional layer of protection if you educate them properly.
Conclusion
Your brand represents your business, and it is your business’ identification online. Hackers and cybercriminals will try to infringe upon it; the good news is that you can stop them at their efforts and mitigate damage before it escalates beyond repair.
If you really want to showcase your brand as authoritative in your business niche, industry, and marketplace, you’ll need to work on your brand protection solution and research how to keep your brand protected, safe and secure at all times.
Karolina Kazlauskaite
Tags: best business practices, Brand Protection, Cybersecurity, Security, Threats
