Digital Risk Protection – Is Your Data Secure?

As the title of this post suggests, here we’re going to be talking about digital risk protection and outlining exactly why it’s needed in today’s digital landscape.

Without spoiling too much, the short answer as to why you need digital risk protection is it helps monitor threats, indicators of risk, and provides remediation recommendations that help keep your cybersecurity posture as straight as possible.

It’s an overarching solution that keeps your organization safe from digital threats, essentially.

To help strengthen your overall understanding of digital risk protection we will be splitting each section up, with each covering a different area of the topic at hand. For example, there are sections dedicated to:

• Examples of digital risk protection
• Key features of digital risk management
• Who needs digital risk protection
• Our digital risk protection solution

Let’s begin with a definition of the term to ensure that you have a complete understanding.

What is Digital Risk Protection?

Digital risk protection (DRP), sometimes referred to as brand risk protection (BRP), is all about safeguarding digital assets – safeguarding them via cyber threat intelligence (CTI) to proactively protect organizations from cyber attacks.

Data intelligence plays an important part in this cyber security method – data intelligence being the name given to the practice of AI and machine learning to analyze and transform massive datasets into intelligent data insights.

Please note that these solutions are a lot more than a database of intelligent information. You see, DRP platforms use intelligent algorithms alongside multiple recon methods to find, track and analyze threats in real time.

Moreover, this solution not only keeps cyber attacks at bay, but it also provides remediation recommendations, as mentioned, that assist in bringing about well-informed suggestions.

Four Main Areas of Digital Risk Protection

This type of cyber protection is just as multifaceted as many other digital solutions you currently have at your disposal. Like these solutions, digital risk protection has multiple processes that aid in its overall effectiveness, these include:

• Mapping: The discovery and mapping of all digital assets to establish a foundation to monitor all cyber activity.
• Monitor: Monitoring involves searching the public and dark web for references to your digital assets. Everything is then translated into actionable data intelligence.
• Mitigate: Automating actions help to block and remove any and all identified threats to your digital assets. Mitigating typically integrates seamlessly with existing security infrastructure.
• Manage: This oversees the entire DRP process. After all, how you manage this process is just as important as the process itself.

Managing DRP is easily the most important aspect of this process, which is why so many organizations choose to go with a dedicated DRP services provider – like us here at TLR Global (more on our approach to DRP later).

Sure, data intelligence can handle the majority of the work, but there will be some level of human interaction required.

Examples of Digital Risk Protection

One of the most effective ways of understanding digital risk protection is to look at examples of it in practice. You might be aware of some of the examples mentioned, others, not so much.

Do keep in mind that these solutions are constantly evolving to meet the latest hacker trends. Hackers are always looking for new ways to cause harm, which is one of the main benefits of having digital risk protection in that DRP tries to think multiple steps ahead.

Here are some real world examples of digital risk protection:

• Domain protection
• Social media protection
• Data leaks and breaches
• Phishing detection
• Disinformation campaigns
• Fake mobile apps

Domain Protection

Domain protection covers you should cyber criminals try to impersonate your online presence using near-identical domain names. DRP services automate this process, ensuring that you can intervene early to stop these dummy sites from causing harm.

You might think that your domain is completely free from these types of issues, but you’d be surprised at how crafty some hackers are. One slight character change in the URL can make a world of difference from a security standpoint.

Social Media Protection

Similar to the domain protection example mentioned above, social media protections cover you should anyone try to use a fake account to damage your reputation by selling fake merchandise, sharing links to other sites, or doing something else that would cause your organization harm.

Digital risk protection will monitor for these fake accounts, not to mention, any hijacked accounts that have been compromised by the wrong sort. How this happens has a lot to do with data leaks and breaches.

Data Leaks and Breaches

Data leaks and breaches are of significant concern to organizations, and it’s not that difficult to see why. Stolen credentials could be used by hackers and others to infiltrate your organization from within, setting off no major alarm bells, and have complete access to your data.

DRP is that alarm bell, and will scan for any leaked credentials on the dark web and any other sources it might appear in. It goes without saying that these types of leaks can be very dangerous to organizations – especially if they’re left to linger for too long.

According to IBM, the average cost of a breach with a lifecycle over 200 days is $4.87 million. If that doesn’t stress the importance of digital risk protection, nothing will.

Phishing Detection

Another benefit of implementing digital risk protection is how it handles phishing. DRP uses threat intelligence to give customers a heads-up on any potential phishing campaigns targeting its brands – this includes those targeting employees and executives.

Phishing is one of the most common attack vectors used by cybercriminals. Meaning you should always have safeguards in place to catch any attempts to run this type of attack early. DRP, when used accordingly, can identify, and encourage the takedown of imposter addresses and sites.

Disinformation Campaigns

Disinformation and misinformation is growing in popularity, despite the negative effect it has on people overall. Some sectors are more prone to this type of cyber attack than others – take the healthcare market, for example, and the wave of misinformation on Covid vaccines.

It can feel like there is a mountain to climb as far as containing this false information goes, which is where DRP helps. Digital risk protection can monitor these campaigns, giving organizations the ability to contain it before they get a chance to develop.

Fake Mobile Apps

Lookalike apps are another pain in the side of many organizations. Again, like with domain protection, cybercriminals often duplicate and then pose as the original businesses they mimic.

In the case of fake mobile apps, criminals will create lookalike apps and then steal data from those who download and engage with the app. Digital risk protection monitors third-party and mainstream app stores for these apps, and alerts you should they find something suspicious.

Key Features of a Digital Risk Management Solution

Software tools for managing and mitigating risks come in many different variations, depending on the digital risk protection provider you choose to go with, or what your in-house security team decides upon ahead of time.

That said, here are some of the most important features needed in a solution for this type of cyber security issue:

• Risk Prioritization: The solution needs to include the ability to calculate risks and determine the correct solutions to those risks accordingly.
• Risk Reporting: Solutions should integrate seamlessly with real-time data feeds, which might include data such as system outage notices, credit risk reports, and any other industry-specific data points.
• Compliant Solutions: A successful solution should comply with any and all compliance regulations. It should also keep in mind any future regulations.
• Accessible/Intuitive: Technical staff should be able to collaborate with the technology without worry. Anyone engaging with this solution should be able to set triggers, respond to alerts, gather analytics, and more.

Who Needs Digital Risk Protection?

The majority of businesses will come across some form of digital threat, impersonation, or attack at least once, making this form of protection more of a requirement than a suggestion.

You’ll know this first hand if you’ve ever been subject to any of the cyber attacks mentioned up until this point.

Simply put, if your business:

• Has an active and visible internet presence
• Has been previously defamed or threatened on the internet
• Are prone to cyber attacks on a regular basis
• Has valuable assets to protect…

Then you need to leverage digital protection services, or risk leaving your organization defenseless. Implementing these services sooner rather than later will only strengthen your cyber security, and the confidence of those within your team, as a result.

TLR Global’s Approach to Digital Risk Protection

We here at TLR Global are no stranger to digital risk protection services. We’ve aided many of our partners in the past, empowering them to go about their business as usual without the fear that is typically associated with these types of cyber threats.

We offer a risk-driven approach that aligns with your organization. Our data intelligence solution continuously monitors for threats, indicators of risk, and provides actionable remediation recommendations.

The problem we see is that the intelligence space is filled with great search tools, feeds, reports, and briefings. Only none of these are relatable to your business or are immediately actionable. Any intelligence you gather won’t be as relevant, meaning you will have a much weaker risk mitigation system.

Critical risks could be missed which can’t happen for obvious reasons. Our solution is fully-curated, is great at acquiring data, features cutting-edge insights, and it covers all notable sources:

• Deep web
• Pasta sites
• Code repositories
• Blacklists
• Breached datasets
• Malware sandboxes
• Social media
• Chat channels
• Domain feeds

And more

Be sure to visit our dedicated DRP solutions page for more information.

Digital Risk Protection – Is Your Data Secure?

With more business operations embracing digital practices, the number of threats and potential attack avenues are constantly increasing. It’s why many organizations treat DRP as more of a requirement and less of a suggestion, as mentioned.

We hope we’ve given you more than enough information here. To recap, we’ve looked at the definition of digital risk protection, looked at examples of DRP, outlined some of the key features needed in your solution, covered who needs DRP, and even provided our own solution.

There’s a lot we didn’t include about our solution, for example, one of the main features of this solution involves operational security that is built into our systems and processes, allowing us to put ourselves between you and hackers.

Doing so adds an additional layer of shielding, keeping your data a lot more secure. Again, do check out the dedicated DRP page we have on the site, or better yet, why not get in touch and we can discuss this directly?