Unpredictable Spikes in Phishing and
Fraud Campaigns
The openness of the Internet allows cyber criminals and fraudsters to create malevolent sites that illegally use trusted brands to fool users into divulging personal and financial information. These sites can be created overnight, and hundreds of copies can be made by a criminal working from anywhere in the world. The result is an unpredictable and often extraordinary volume of phishing and fraudulent sites that is sometimes timed to some external event such as a new product launch or holiday. Although the company had a robust reporting and investigation process in place, they experienced a surge in new phishing and fraudulent campaigns. The team was inundated with the increased activity and worked with its existing vendor to assess and take down these sites. However, the vendor was unable to scale its operations to absorb the additional workload. After comprehensive market research, they selected Bolster to perform brand monitoring and takedowns because its AI platform and automation allows the service to scale and work through any spikes in phishing and fraudulent activity.
Enforcement Speed as a Weapon
When a site illicitly uses the company’s trademarks and logos to commit fraud, speed is of the essence. Every day a bad site is active means that more users are being harmed, eroding the market’s trust in the brand and even potentially deterring purchase and use. The faster the takedown, the less profit a criminal makes, and it is the only effective counterattack a company has to disrupt the criminal activity and discourage it in the future.
Their existing vendor process for takedowns was over 30 days. By leveraging AI and automation, the Bolster service performed significantly faster and took down sites in less than 24 hours. In addition, the service continues to monitor the sites to ensure they do not come back. This included documenting the illicit activity, submitting the request to the hosting company, and confirming that the site has been taken down. By using AI and automation, Bolster was not only able to save hundreds of hours of work for the team every month, it provided them with the confidence that the illicit activity was being controlled.
Business Value Realized with Bolster
One axiom in brand protection is that criminals are opportunistic and adapt their tactics for the greatest profit. But like lightning, there is no way to predict when the next phishing or fraud campaign will strike next. Bolster has helped the brand protection team deliver better results faster and more efficiently. Some of the key business value benefits for the team include:
• Complete takedowns predictably within 24 hours
with zero human intervention
• Nearly eliminate the work required to document
evidence, review correspondence, and submit
takedown requests
• Reduce expenses by not having to hire local counsel
to coordinate enforcement actions
• Scale monitoring, discovery, and submission of
takedown requests to handle huge spikes in volume
allowing the service to scale and work through any
spikes in phishing and fraudulent activity.
