OpSec Security’s Comprehensive Online Protection Ensures that Peer-to-Peer Payment Company Retains Integrity
For any leading brand of digital peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, reputation is crucial to ensure that customers continue to entrust the company with money transfers and payments. However, the pervasiveness of online bad actors has meant that P2P brands are frequently misused in relation to the sale of counterfeit goods, gambling sites, phishing sites, and bad internet purchases.
OpSec Security has been assisting a global leader in the P2P space which specializes in cross-border payments and money transfers. The client’s services enable family and friends to send money quickly and affordably in more than 200 countries and territories, with over 70 countries now digitally enabled. Before the relationship with OpSec Security began in 2013, internet users searching for the provider had a high chance of instead encountering illegitimate online presences which tarnished the brand’s identity and exposed consumers to risk.
With such brand infringements extremely harmful to the credible reputation built up over its many years in business, the firm realized it needed to take action to remove any unsolicited associations to the brand online. Protecting its customers from entities falsely masquerading as the company became top priority. However, such an extensive threat landscape required expert intervention, where OpSec was selected as the trusted brand protection partner.
Using proprietary techniques to identify threats
To gain a better understanding of how its brand was being used online, the client first engaged OpSec’s services in 2013 to shut down those misusing it. With several solutions and services on offer, the initial focus was to detect fraudulent websites. OpSec provided services that could both detect and enforce on organic search results worldwide – locating hidden domain names employing an imitation trademark. To end this abuse, OpSec enforced at scale, and could provide services which detected and enforced on malicious phishing sites distributed through email channels.
Regarding the ease and flexibility offered by OpSec’s modular services, the firm commented, “The wide range of OpSec services has made it easy to increase our coverage over time and review the additional online areas we’ve wanted to search, allowing us to cover every base as bad actors employ new ways to misuse our brand.” The impact OpSec had was remarkable for the firm’s notable brand.
By using proprietary techniques to mimic what the average internet user finds when looking for the company online, these solutions ensured comprehensive coverage and protection. This included searching not only for the brand name itself, but also misspellings and homoglyphs, and identifying any online entities claiming affiliation with the organization for either traffic diversion or malicious account takeover intent.
Due to the success of the initial partnership between the two companies, the P2P firm continues to increase its retainer, taking on additional OpSec services and extending its cover across multiple channels, including social media platforms. Working with OpSec allows the customer to shut down parties that post misleading or inaccurate content about the brand and gives them the power to remove violations of its trademark. OpSec eliminates falsely branded pages on social media platforms, and prevents advertising of outdated or fraudulent versions of the company’s app.
Comprehensive online protection
OpSec Security prides itself on its collaborative approach, ensuring that any threats are identified quickly so the infringing or malicious content can be enforced upon. In order to safeguard the brand’s existing partnerships, OpSec ensures its own team has a sound understanding of the customer’s network of partners to guarantee that these organizations aren’t sent cease and desist letters.
A spokesperson for the P2P company added, “OpSec is the full package, with its analysts giving us access to up-to-date research and insight into misuse of our brand. The team also sends out cease and desist letters on our behalf and follows up with a tiered approach to enforce on infringements. We’re very appreciative of OpSec’s service offering in this area as without it we would need at least an additional three internal team members to be able to handle the volume of cease-and-desist letters we need to send out.”
In addition to identifying brand infringements, OpSec has automated the enforcement of certain keywords to make the process faster and more efficient. With an in-depth knowledge of the types of activities that the brand does not want to be associated with, such as X-rated products and the sale of pets and drugs, infringements of this nature are taken care of rapidly.
Stopping threats in their tracks
While the threat of online abuse to the P2P brand remains, the power to quickly identify and enforce upon any new infringements is possible with OpSec® Online Brand Protection. This solution can be layered with other brand protection solutions such as OpSec® AntiFraud and OpSec® AntiPhishing to provide a comprehensive brand protection approach.
“The speed with which OpSec responds is great, helping us to shut down brand infringements as soon as they’re identified. This ability to monitor the online world and enforce on them minimizes the multitude of brand infringements we could be subjected to and ensures we retain our good name. The landscape of brand infringements would be very ugly for us without OpSec’s services,” the client commented.
Over the previous 12-month period, OpSec Security’s program resulted in enforcement upon:
- 3,863 websites with 68% compliance
- 671 posts or pages on social media with 92% compliance
- 32 mobile apps with 82% compliance
- 78 phishing sites with 100% compliance
As the P2P company sees the results of its strengthened its online protections, it is now increasing its coverage by adopting additional services offered by OpSec: “Collaboration has been key to the success of this relationship. Both ourselves and OpSec are very flexible, and we’re willing to change and try new things as needed. This has allowed us to adapt to different threats that have been identified and ultimately enabled us to protect our brand. Trust is such a fundamental part of our business model and by working together, we’ve been able to shut down online bad actors as soon as they have materialized to maintain our brand integrity and protect our customers.”
Over the course of four decades, OpSec has adapted to the changing threat landscape to continuously protect and ensure the integrity of brands, institutions, and governments around the world. It is committed to offering a superior and ongoing service to maintain the exemplary reputations of brands and ensure that customer confidence remains intact. For more information on how OpSec’s forward-thinking technology and end-to-end solutions could play a vital role in safeguarding your brand’s products, reputation, and revenue, contact the experts at OpSec today.