CSC - Your Brand: Secured!

Whether it is the website, online ads, social media, video, or mobile applications, brands are becoming increasingly dependent on the digital assets that make up their online presence.



So why is it that they pay inadequate attention to the ways those assets are managed and secured?



For one, brands have their assets spread across numerous digital channels, most of which they have little or no control. Secondly, given the length and breadth of the digital world today, coupled with the growing number and variety of fraudulent activities, companies, especially those with budget constraints, struggle to police brand abuse on their own. They find it extremely challenging to track all of their brand’s unsanctioned and infringing expressions that are diverting traffic, spreading misinformation and negative sentiments, distributing malware, and so forth.



Among these infringements, Domain Name System (DNS) hijacking is quite rampant. This has pushed stakeholders to increase their technical competence, bundled with legal expertise, to not only monitor the brands’ digital assets but also to effectively take corrective actions.

DNS hijacking is a critical issue because DNS is the infrastructure behind the internet—the fundamental building block for every company’s online presence. Every website has a unique numeric internet protocol (IP) address, and DNS translates human-friendly website names into IP addresses that are easier for computers to manage. While the holy grail for DNS is reliable uptime, a vulnerable DNS opens up a whole host of cyber risks alongside the costs associated with mitigating the resulting problems. Cybercriminals target DNS to redirect website visitors to a replica of the brand's site to harvest confidential information such as username and passwords, and other credentials. Reliable, comprehensive protections are necessary to block such threats to a brand’s DNS as well as mobile apps, social media and web presence, and secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates. Companies must emphasize the full security of digital assets, which implies going beyond the traditional firewall to safeguard them and protect every blind spot that can be exploited by a third party for cyberattacks.



In response to DNS hijacking risks and to help brand owners understand and ensure online asset security, CSC offers an all-encompassing portfolio of services that monitor brands across all digital channels, prioritize results, and take immediate action against the most serious infringements. Customized to fit every business, CSC’s brand monitoring software integrates domain names, internet content, social media, and marketplaces to provide thorough monitoring that helps organizations enforce their brand rights. Historically, there has been no offering on the market to show businesses the gaps outside their networks and firewalls—nothing to help a Chief Information Security Officer gauge what exactly is happening with their company’s digital assets. In this regard, CSC has launched the “CSC Security Center,” an online interface powered by advanced proprietary algorithms, to effectively expose all security blind spots and keep brands thoroughly informed about their assets.

CSC Security Center proactively identifies business-critical domains and monitors them continually to ensure they are protected. This includes checking for the registry- and registrar-level locks that prevent unauthorized changes, reviewing user permissions, and verifying that security-focused, enterprise-class DNS hosting and digital certificates are implemented. The constant identification and monitoring of vital domains not only alert companies about security blind spots but also allows them to take quick action against real-world online threats with the help of CSC’s enforcement team of legal experts.



Detect, Prioritize, Enforce, and Take Down 24/7



Brands can detect, prioritize, and deal with high-impact security threats, brand infringements, and content abuse across the entire digital spectrum with CSC’s monitoring and enforcement services. By combining domain names, internet content, trademark jurisdictions, marketplaces and social media, CSC empowers brand owners to manage their entire brand monitoring through a single pane of glass.



CSC’s team of analysts helps brands quickly assess risks, identify the highest priority infringements, and decide when to take enforcement action. “Prioritization is crucial. By minutely analyzing the circumstances, we advise clients about choosing the right battles and ensure they do not waste their money on cases with no success probability,” mentions Jayce Yeo, APAC regional director at CSC. The CSC value proposition lies in employing proficient human analysts alongside advanced technology to help legal professionals create relevant reports and in turn, enforce their rights. The company offers a wide range of online brand enforcement and domain name acquisition services. Its in-house “enforcement team,” comprising accomplished law school graduates, has exceptional success rates in recovering domain names and social media usernames and removing infringing content without the expense and time of judicial processes.



Bundled with brand monitoring and enforcement, CSC offers a 24/7 takedown service to act against fraudulent activities of all kinds. The company’s “takedown team” has the industry’s leading phishing takedown times, thanks to their in-depth technical expertise and international network of contacts in the legal, government, and internet service provider (ISP) communities. “For instance, if someone creates a false website and uses your corporate identity, logo, trademark, or sponsored links, and if we have sufficient grounds to go after them, we can instantly initiate a website takedown action. This is powerful and unique because most service providers that brands subscribe to merely deliver a multitude of results but help take no further action,” states Jayce. “Besides, 24/7 takedown service means even if it is 3 AM in your time zone, our team is still following up the case with various ISPs that hold the concerned infringing content.”



CSC also provides dispute resolution, where enforcement analysts review whether a brand’s website and domain name are being used in bad faith. For newly launched brands that have no trademark or other grounds to make an infringement case, CSC acts as a mediator to negotiate the sale of those domain names to its clients. Additionally, the enforcement team applies analytics to inform clients about the type of domain names they must focus on to optimally benefit from their target market. In the case of domain name monitoring, CSC helps brands take down domain names that are almost similar to theirs and thus mislead consumers.

“Legal professionals can choose to be notified weekly or monthly about the third-party registrations done using their brand’s keywords or trademarks,” says Jayce.



The Business behind Business



For more than 120 years, CSC has provided business solutions to the world's largest corporations, law firms, and financial institutions. The company was founded in 1899 by two Delaware attorneys, Josiah Marvel, and Christopher Ward, who saw an opportunity to simplify the way corporations were formed, operated, and managed to maintain compliance. Through the years, the dependability and inherent value of CSC's services helped establish Delaware as the legal home to thousands of major corporations. For more than a century, CSC has consistently expanded its offerings to include an impressive array of enterprise-specific services and tools to meet business challenges globally. CSC’s strategic acquisitions over the years has helped expand its global capabilities along with establishing its Digital Brand Services division as the partner of choice for organizations worldwide seeking to promote and protect their brands online.

Along with stronger online brand protection, CSC’s world-class services and technology enable smoother transactions, smarter knowledge-based decisions, better compliance, improved collaboration, and more efficient management of corporate and legal data. Rightly, the company’s slogan reads “We are the business behind business.” With 3000 employees at offices across all continents, CSC is a trusted partner for 90 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, more than 65 percent of Interbrand’s Best Global Brands, nearly 10,000 law firms, and over 3,000 financial organizations.



Success Stories and the Road Ahead



Leading companies around the world rely on CSC’s services to gain control of their digital assets, maximize their online potential, and strengthen security against brand risks. Bolstered by a multi-layered, “defense-in-depth” approach, security is indeed one of CSC’s biggest strongholds. No wonder the Renault Group and ABN AMRO, the third-largest bank in the Netherlands, endorse the numerous advantages and actionable insights that CSC Security Center offers.



The efficacy of CSC’s brand monitoring and enforcement services can be illustrated by how the company helped a client tackle its enforcement case in China involving its global toy brand. A Chinese third party had the toy company’s brand name within their domain name, making it a classic trademark infringement case. “However, the third party claimed to have owned the related Chinese trademark, thereby suggesting a legitimate use of the domain name in question,” adds Jayce. Predicting the jurisdiction’s inclination to rule in favor of the Chinese company, CSC prioritized the case and also uncovered solid evidence to argue that the trademark had only been registered to offer an alibi for infringement. Moreover, the Chinese trademark was dissimilar to the domain name despite containing the same brand keyword, which ensured that CSC’s client prevailed.



CSC continues to successfully serve a number of global brands along with continually enhancing its services and helping brands gain a more holistic view of their security blind spots. “Also, we will be championing our security messages to various markets to help every brand professional—CEOs, CFOs, as well as regular employees—understand that security should be top-of-mind,” remarks Jayce. With CSC, corporations can assuredly consolidate and secure, monitor and enforce, then optimize and promote brands to maximize their digital presence, secure the digital intellectual property, and reduce costs.