HOW A GLOBAL FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANY STOPPED BRAND IMPERSONATION ATTACKS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

AT A GLANCE OBJECTIVE

OBJECTIVE

• Remove social media profiles impersonating the brand and executives

CHALLENGE

• Limited visibility into impersonation attacks targeting their brand and customers across the web and social media
• Lack of proven method for removing deceptive social media profiles

SOLUTION

• ITx brand protection-as-a-service detected and mitigated more brand impersonations on social media more quickly before customers fell victim

RESULTS

• Dozens of malicious social media profiles identified within one hour
• Hundreds of deceptive profiles identified and removed before customers fell victim
• Reduction in fraudulent transactions and customer complaints

CHALLENGE

BRAND & STAFF IMPERSONATIONS
ON SOCIAL MEDIA

A renowned international financial services organization became aware of fraudsters impersonating their brand and employees on social media platforms around the world. The scammers fooled a number of the organization's customers into believing these social media profiles were legitimate and ended up stealing personally identifiable information and money from the victims.

At the outset, the organization lacked visibility into the extent of the problem. They didn't know how to find these brand impersonations across the entire internet. Even if they could find the scams, they didn't know how to efficiently and effectively stop them. Each minute that passed further damaged their brand and credibility and led to more customers falling victim. For help addressing the problem and its magnitude, the financial services organization approached ITx.

Al-POWERED ONLINE BRAND
IMPERSONATION DETECTION

The ITx team sprang into action immediately, training its Al-based detection engine to recognize legitimate and illegitimate uses of the brand name, brand imagery, brand messaging, executives' names and photos, and more. Within an hour, the engine had identified more than three dozen deceptive social media profiles impersonating the brand and its executives' likenesses on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Because ITx delivers brand protection as a managed service, the financial services organization immediately increased their visibility into brand impersonation attacks with little-to-no effort on their part.

PREEMPTING FRAUD WITH
PROACTIVE DETECTION

In addition to the three dozen malicious profiles originally discovered, ITx detection engine found more than 200 additional Twitter and Facebook profiles using variations of the company's logo, taglines, and other branding. Scammers had created these deceptive accounts, but not yet made use of a majority of them. ITx identified these scams before they lured a single victim - saving untold amounts of time, effort, and customer goodwill.

DILIGENT RESPONSE, FOLLOW-UP
& TAKEDOWN

As the ITx detection engine scoured the internet and social media platforms for more impersonations, our security operations team began its work to remove the deceptive profiles from the platforms. With a history of successful removals of fraudulent social media profiles, the team followed its proven social media profile removal methodology:

• Packaging up evidence to substantiate the claim that the impersonators were violating the relevant social media platforms' terms of service
• Properly documenting ITx role as an authorized representative of the financial services organization and our authority to request removals on behalf of the company
• Submitting deceptive profiles and following-up digitally with the social media platforms to ensure the content was taken down and remains inaccessible