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The Ultimate Guide to Trusted Calls

What Is Brand Protection Management, And How Does It Affect Your Organization?

Brand impersonation attacks affect everyone. The fact is 85 percent of all organizations have been targeted by phishing attacks. It’s no surprise considering that 97 percent of users are unable to recognize sophisticated phishing emails. Enterprises are manned by humans after all; people who are as just susceptible to their biases, fears, and aspirations as anyone else. Bad actors know this — 1.5 million new phishing sites pop up every month to take advantage of vulnerabilities that have led to a $170 billion global information security market. If your organization isn’t paying attention, it is likely to be the next victim.

In this article, we cover:

Brand attacks take all forms, including counterfeiting, piracy, patent theft, and brand impersonation. Counterfeiting is when an outside entity produces and sells a lower-quality copy of a popular product using the brand name of the original product. Similarly, brand piracy occurs when a counterfeit product infringes on the original’s intellectual property, such as naming, imagery, etc. (commonly known as “knock-offs”). Considering displaced economic activity, investment, public fiscal loss, and criminal enforcement, counterfeiting and piracy is projected to cost the global economy $4.2 trillion.

In other words, for organizations that don’t invest in brand protection management, the stakes are high.

What Is Brand Protection Management 

Enterprises must protect themselves from the adverse impacts of unwanted robocalls including unauthorized brand name usage over the voice channel (brand piracy). Brand protection services detect and eliminate imposter traffic to protect brand image, company reputation, and customer relationships.

Full-spectrum brand defense provides critical security against vishing (voice phishing) attacks perpetrated by bad actors. Fraud management should mitigate enterprise damages and deter recurrence of brand abuse. Comprehensive solutions also incorporate alerts and reporting, and enforcement including support for litigation against bad actors.

Effective brand protection management provides surveillance of brand identity over the voice channel. It monitors explicit unauthorized brand name mentions in vishing scams as well as implied references to brand relationships. Enterprises should be notified of detection of potential trademark infringement or inappropriate brand mentions including incidences involving unlawful behavior or ill intent. It’s all the more better if your service reports on impersonation incidents such as call volume of bad actor campaigns.

Why Aren't FCC-Mandated Protocols Enough?

Though the FCC’s own measures are effective in their own right, they aren’t a silver-bullet solution. While STIR/SHAKEN is highly effective at detecting certain types of spoofing, it can be ineffective at determining spoofing that is conducted in conjunction with unwanted robocall campaigns. STIR/SHAKEN-enabled networks originating calls must set the attestation level, which is passed through transit network providers (if any) to the terminating network. Telephone number treatment options (normal, block, label, or redirect) hold the responsibility of terminating networks, and service providers typically rely on number scoring from analytics engines vendors to assist them with decision-making.

A more holistic approach to brand protective management is recommended — one in which STIR/SHAKEN is coupled with analytics for what we call Know Your Customer Behaviors. KYCB provides the additional intelligence needed in determining the difference between wanted and unwanted robocalls, legal versus illegal spoofing, and spoofed and/or unwanted calls.

YouMail Protective Services’ enterprise identity and brand reputation solution provides that additional intelligence. Its patented technology provides zero-hour identification of unwanted robocalls for enterprise protection against the impact of bad-actor campaigns.

Brand protection from YouMail Protective Services:

  • Reduces risk from voice phishing impersonation
  • Reduces the risk of bad press and lost customers
  • Saves IT resources by outsourcing to subject matter experts
  • Provides greater accuracy through millions of data points

YouMail’s Intelligent Sensor Network is the backbone of its protective services. We leverage data from protecting more than 350 million phone numbers, answering well north of 10 billion consumer calls, and stopping over one billion robocalls. It’s not insignificant, considering the FTC received nearly 985,000 imposter scam complaints in 2021 — fraud that cost victims more than $2.3 billion. YouMail Protective Services technology prevents attacks at the last mile by accurately detecting robocalls in real time. That’s why we are trusted by consumers and voice service providers alike.

Take the next step in circumventing brand impersonation attacks. Learn the difference audio analytics makes in a robocall threat mitigation program by downloading this free white paper today.