Brand Protection as a Service

Brand Protection as a Service (BPaaS) is a comprehensive cybersecurity model that provides businesses with an outsourced, end-to-end solution for identifying and mitigating threats to their intellectual property, reputation, and digital presence. Unlike traditional security models that focus on internal network defense, BPaaS operates on the "outside-in" principle, monitoring the entire public internet—including social media, marketplaces, app stores, and the dark web—to detect and dismantle brand-abusive activities.

By combining artificial intelligence, automated scanning, and expert legal or investigative support, BPaaS enables organizations to maintain a clean digital footprint without building an extensive in-house brand security department.

Core Capabilities of BPaaS

A robust Brand Protection as a Service solution typically includes several integrated layers of defense designed to safeguard a company's identity and revenue.

1. Real-Time External Monitoring

BPaaS providers use automated "crawlers" and AI-driven image recognition to scan thousands of online platforms simultaneously. This includes:

• Marketplace Surveillance: Identifying counterfeit product listings on sites like Amazon, eBay, or Alibaba.

• Social Media Monitoring: Detecting fake brand accounts or fraudulent "verified" profiles that attempt to scam customers.

• Rogue App Detection: Scanning official and unofficial app stores for malicious mobile applications that use a brand's logo to distribute malware.

2. Digital Risk Protection (DRP)

This layer focuses on the technical infrastructure attackers use to impersonate a company.

• Anti-Phishing & Domain Defense: Monitoring for "typosquatted" domains (e.g., examp1e.com instead of example.com) used in credential harvesting.

• Dark Web Intelligence: Searching illicit forums for leaked corporate data, employee credentials, or early discussions of planned attacks against the brand.

3. Automated Enforcement and Takedowns

Detection is only the first half of the service. BPaaS providers act as a "force multiplier" by removing threats.

• Cease and Desist (C&D): Automatically issuing legal notices to infringing parties or hosting providers.

• Takedown Services: Coordinating with platform administrators (like Meta, Google, or registries) to shut down fraudulent websites and social media accounts.

Key Benefits of the BPaaS Model

Adopting a "service" model for brand protection offers distinct advantages over manual or purely legalistic approaches.

• Scalability: Automation enables the detection of thousands of violations that a human team could not track manually.

• Expertise on Demand: BPaaS provides access to a global network of legal and cybersecurity specialists who understand international IP laws and the technical tactics of threat actors.

• Cost Efficiency: By preventing "revenue leakage" to counterfeiters and reducing the legal costs associated with manual takedowns, BPaaS often pays for itself through recovered sales.

• Proactive Defense: Rather than waiting for a customer to report a scam, BPaaS identifies fraudulent sites the moment they are registered, often neutralizing them before they can launch.

Common Questions About Brand Protection as a Service

How is BPaaS different from traditional trademark law? Traditional trademark protection is often reactive and focused on legal filings. BPaaS is proactive and technology-driven; it uses software to detect infringements in real time and employs technical measures (such as reporting to ISPs) to stop them before a court is involved.

Is BPaaS only for large, global brands? No. While global brands are primary targets, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often use BPaaS because they lack the budget for a dedicated in-house legal and security team. For them, BPaaS is a cost-effective way to protect their growth.

Can BPaaS remove content from the dark web? While you cannot "take down" a site on the dark web through traditional legal channels, BPaaS providers use intelligence gathered from these areas to block malicious IPs, invalidate leaked credentials, and alert the brand to emerging threats before they hit the surface web.

Does BPaaS protect my internal network? Not directly. BPaaS is focused on External Attack Surface Management. It protects how the world sees your brand online, while other solutions, such as EDR or firewalls, protect your internal employees and data centers.

Safeguarding Your Identity with ThreatNG Brand Protection

ThreatNG provides a robust foundation for Brand Protection by automating the identification and neutralization of external threats that target an organization's reputation and digital presence. By operating from an adversarial, "outside-in" perspective, ThreatNG identifies impersonation attempts, fraudulent infrastructure, and data leaks before they can be weaponized against the brand or its customers.

The platform acts as a persistent sentinel, ensuring that the organization's digital identity remains secure and that brand-abusive activities are identified with precision.

External Discovery

The first step in brand protection is visibility into every corner of the organization's digital footprint. ThreatNG’s External Discovery engine maps the global internet to find the assets and artifacts that define a brand's presence.

• Domain and Subdomain Inventory: ThreatNG discovers all registered domains and subdomains associated with the brand. This includes identifying "Shadow IT" marketing sites or legacy development environments that may be using the brand name without proper security oversight.

• Social Media and App Presence: The solution identifies social media profiles and mobile applications that claim to represent the brand, providing a baseline for identifying fraudulent impersonators.

• External SaaS and API Discovery: ThreatNG identifies third-party services and APIs the organization uses to interact with customers, ensuring the brand's digital supply chain is fully documented.

External Assessment

Once the digital footprint is mapped, ThreatNG performs deep External Assessments to identify specific brand-abusive configurations or vulnerabilities.

• Detailed Example (Typosquatting and Phishing Defense): ThreatNG assesses the global DNS space for "look-alike" or "typosquatted" domains (e.g., brand-support.com instead of brand.com). If it identifies a newly registered domain that uses the brand's trademark and has an active mail server (MX record), it flags this as a verified Phishing Susceptibility. This assessment identifies the infrastructure of a future attack before it is launched.

• Detailed Example (Credential Leakage and Brand Integrity): The platform evaluates public code repositories and paste sites for leaked corporate credentials. If ThreatNG identifies the valid login of a high-profile executive or a social media manager in a public data dump, it validates this as a Brand Hijacking Risk. This assessment confirms that an attacker has the "keys" to take over the brand's official voice.

• Detailed Example (Ghost DNS and Brand Impersonation): ThreatNG identifies "Ghost" or "Dangling" DNS records that point to de-provisioned cloud services. If a brand-owned subdomain like help.brand.com points to an empty cloud bucket, ThreatNG validates this as a Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility, where an attacker could hijack the trusted name to host a fraudulent site.

Reporting

ThreatNG transforms complex digital risk data into actionable reports that allow both security teams and brand managers to respond effectively to threats.

• Brand Risk Scorecards: Reporting provides a quantifiable "Risk Grade" for the brand's external presence, highlighting the most critical impersonation attempts and infrastructure weaknesses.

• Evidence of Infringement: Reports include high-fidelity evidence—such as screenshots of fraudulent sites or copies of leaked data—which is essential for legal teams to initiate takedown requests or cease-and-desist orders.

Continuous Monitoring

Threat actors are persistent, and brand-abusive infrastructure can be spun up in minutes. ThreatNG’s Continuous Monitoring ensures that the organization's identity is protected 24/7.

• Real-Time Alerting for New Impersonators: The moment a new look-alike domain is registered or a fraudulent social media account appears, ThreatNG triggers an alert. This ensures "Day One" visibility into brand abuse.

• Drift Detection in Digital Presence: If a previously secure brand-owned site undergoes an unauthorized change—such as a shift in DNS records or the addition of a suspicious third-party script—ThreatNG detects this "Drift" immediately, preventing web defacement or e-skimming.

Investigation Modules

ThreatNG’s Investigation Modules enable analysts to conduct forensic deep dives into suspected brand abuse to understand the attacker's intent and scale.

• Detailed Example (Digital Risk Investigation): This module investigates the infrastructure behind a suspected phishing site. By analyzing the hosting provider, IP history, and shared SSL certificates, analysts can determine if the site is part of a larger, coordinated campaign by a specific threat actor group targeting the brand.

• Detailed Example (Dark Web Monitoring and Threat Hunting): This module searches illicit forums and marketplaces for mentions of the brand. If ThreatNG identifies an attacker selling "access" to the brand's internal systems or discussing a planned boycotting campaign, it provides the brand with critical lead time to prepare a defensive strategy.

• Detailed Example (Mobile App and SaaS Investigation): When a rogue mobile app is discovered, this module investigates the app's code and permissions. It determines whether the app is designed to steal customer data or distribute malware under the brand's name, providing the evidence needed to initiate a takedown from official app stores.

Intelligence Repositories

ThreatNG enriches brand findings with data from its global intelligence repositories to provide a 360-degree view of the threat landscape.

• Adversarial Exposure Validation: The platform cross-references discovered assets against known threat-actor TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures). If a brand-owned asset matches the profile of infrastructure currently being targeted by ransomware groups, ThreatNG elevates the risk level.

• Standardized Risk Context: ThreatNG integrates industry-standard threat data, such as CVEs and KEVs, to ensure that the risk assessment of brand-related infrastructure is grounded in the latest cybersecurity intelligence.

Complementary Solutions

ThreatNG serves as the "External Intel Engine," feeding clean, validated brand-risk data into other security and legal platforms to orchestrate a holistic defense.

• Complementary Solution (Takedown and Enforcement Services): ThreatNG identifies fraudulent sites and accounts and provides the high-fidelity evidence required by specialized Takedown Services. These services then work with ISPs and social media platforms to physically remove the offending content.

• Complementary Solution (Email Security and DMARC): ThreatNG identifies the "look-alike" domains used in phishing. It routes these domains to the organization's Email Security Gateway, which can proactively block incoming email from those suspicious senders, protecting employees and customers from fraud.

• Complementary Solution (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response - SOAR): ThreatNG triggers automated playbooks in SOAR platforms. If ThreatNG validates a critical phishing domain, the SOAR platform can automatically update the corporate firewall and DNS filters to prevent any internal user from accidentally visiting the malicious site.

Examples of ThreatNG Helping

• Helping Prevent a Major Phishing Campaign: ThreatNG identified a series of newly registered "look-alike" domains that use the brand's latest marketing slogan. The External Assessment confirmed that the domains were configured with mail servers. ThreatNG's alert enabled the security team to block these domains at the email gateway before the phishing campaign reached any customer.

• Helping Stop Brand Hijacking: ThreatNG identified credentials for a highly privileged employee in a dark web data dump. The Investigation Module confirmed the credentials were valid for the company's official LinkedIn page. ThreatNG helped the team reset the credentials and enable MFA before the account could be used to post fraudulent updates.

Examples of ThreatNG Working with Complementary Solutions

• Working with a SIEM: ThreatNG detects a rogue website mimicking the brand's login portal and sends the URL to the SIEM. The SIEM correlates this with internal logs to determine whether any employees have recently accessed that URL, helping the SOC identify potential victims of credential theft.

• Working with an IAM Solution: ThreatNG identifies "Ghost DNS" records that point to internal development environments. It pushs this intelligence to the Identity and Access Management (IAM) team, who can then verify that only authorized users have access to those specific subdomains, ensuring that the internal "choke points" are secure even if the external name is discovered.