I recently had the opportunity to speak on a podcast with Dave Bittner at CyberWire to discuss how .AI is giving cybercriminals a new avenue to take advantage of some of the largest companies in the world based on research findings from CSC’s 2023 Domain Security Report.  Below is a summary of the key points discussed during this podcast. Lack of focus outside a company’s perimeter As a corporate domain registrar that also offers Brand Protection and Anti-Fraud Protection services, we’ve noticed that while cybersecurity professionals are doing a great job at defending within the perimete ..read more

On July 5, 2023, Meta’s Instagram released “Threads”—an online social media and social networking service offering users the ability to post and share text, images, and videos, as well as interact with others and join public conversations through posts, replies, reposts, and likes. Many companies began creating accounts on Threads as an extension of their existing social media and communications programs. Since its launch, the platform has garnered significant global attention with over 30 million downloads in the first 16 hours and 100 million users in the first five days. Due to this popular ..read more

Nima Attarzadeh, Merz’s senior manager of Identity and Digital Services, Group IT Services and Infrastructure, talked with us about how CSC helps Merz consolidate its digital portfolio and maintain domains and cybersecurity. Merz is a global, diversified company based in Frankfurt, Germany. Within the parent company, they have three businesses: Merz Aesthetics, Merz Therapeutics, and Merz Consumer Care. The company has been family-owned for more than 110 years, and is distinguished by its commitment to innovation, long-term perspective, and focus on profitable growth. The company employs more ..read more

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), intellectual property (IP) “refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.” Patents, copyright, and trademarks are all legal vehicles that enable IP owners to earn recognition or revenue from their inventions or creations. Unfortunately, IP owners are not the only ones who want to make money from their IP creations; bad actors use online methods, including brand impersonation, counterfeiting, phishing, and malware distribution, to take th ..read more

Like many brand, legal, and IP professionals, CSC is looking forward to attending the IACC Annual Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, April 2-4. This year’s agenda looks jam packed, and CSC is particularly interested to hear the “Your Brand Protection Team” sessions, where among other things, the panel will discuss measuring results of your brand protection program—a topic that we wrote an article about for WTR’s “Anti-Counterfeiting and Online Brand Enforcement Guide.” On top of the thought-provoking agenda, the IACC Annual Conference provides a great opportunity to network—and CSC is proud t ..read more

CSC spoke with Julia Jansen, senior specialist non-technical IP, at Paul Hartmann about domain management and brand protection challenges they face in this expanding online world. “In the area of product counterfeiting, we’ve seen an exponential increase, especially since the beginning of COVID-19. The number of counterfeits for Sterillium, one of our most important disinfection products worldwide, was hardly manageable during the pandemic,” says Julia Jansen. “We have already achieved a great deal by working closely with CSC in the area of brand protection. In our opinion, our internet networ ..read more

Brand impersonation happens much more often than people realize. In CSC’s latest Domain Security Report, we found that 75% of domains for the Global 2000 that contained more than six characters from the brand names were not actually owned by the brands themselves. The intent of these fake domain registrations is to leverage the trust placed on the targeted brands to launch phishing attacks, other forms of digital brand abuse, or IP infringement that leads to revenue loss, traffic diversion, and a diminished brand reputation. There are endless domain spoofing tactics and permutations that can b ..read more

In the first article[1] of this two-part blog series, we looked at how frequently domains were used by bad actors for phishing activity across individual top-level domains (TLDs) or domain extensions, using data from CSC’s Fraud Protection services, powered by our DomainSecSM platform. In this second article, we analyze multiple datasets to determine the highest-threat TLDs, based on the frequency with which the domains are used egregiously for a range of cybercrimes. In this deeper dive, we look at the following datasets: Spamhaus’ 10 most abused TLDs[2], reflecting information in its domai ..read more

A domain name consists of two main elements: the second-level domain name to the left of the dot—often consisting of a brand name or relevant keywords—and the domain extension or top-level domain (TLD) to the right of the dot. Domain names form the key elements of the readable web addresses allowing users to access pages on the internet and also allow the construction of email addresses. There are different types of TLDs, including generic or global (gTLDs), that were originally intended to provide a description of the site type, such as .COM for company websites or .ORG for charitable organi ..read more

Internet use has become ever more pervasive. With around five billion global users[1], it generates an economy of around 15%[2] of global gross domestic product (GDP)[3]; that’s around $15 trillion and is a figure that’s growing 2.5 times faster than GDP itself. This makes the internet an attractive channel for infringers. Phishing and other fraud tactics, selling counterfeit goods online, and digital piracy are primary areas of concern. Unauthorized branded content use, traffic misdirection, false affiliation claims, or negative comment and activism are also significant issues. All of these c ..read more