How to protect your brand on the internet

Being present on the internet is vital when it comes to opening a business, whether we’re giving information on our products and services, explaining who we are or even selling online. Because of this, as soon as we set our minds on starting a project, we need to think about registering the domain we will use as our name on the internet. This is because the domain name will be the one people know us by online. These names are globally unique and there can be no duplicates. Users identify the domain with the business and/or products and services being offered. Because of this it’s essential to choose a good domain name which matches each profile. If you’re unsure where to begin, here are some tips to help you get started.

What many people are unaware of, is that while we might have a registered business name, this does not guarantee the right to use that same name online. This makes it very important to check first to see if the name is available, in other words that nobody else has taken it, and to register it in our company’s name as soon as possible.

It’s also very important to bear in mind the date that the domain registration period expires, as if we don’t renew it within a few days the domain will become available again and anyone could register it.

When it comes to protecting a brand on the internet, it is common to register other domains which are similar, or which have other terminations. This way we avoid many searches taking users to other websites, and we prevent other parties from registering them in a bid to harm our brand. For instance, if our website is lamevabotiga.barcelona, the best way to protect our brand would be to register labotiga.barcelona or latevabotiga.barcelona.

This might initially seem an unnecessary investment, as perhaps we only use one or two of the domains we register, but it is a minor cost compared to the headaches it could save us. Shielding our internet brand is as important or even more important than physically registering it.

Cyberattacks up during the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a digital transformation in all spheres: schools found themselves having to conduct classes and all interaction with pupils via internet, while a large number of companies introduced teleworking between their teams and continue to work remotely or combine this with on-site activity at their offices.

But it doesn’t stop there. A study confirms that the creation of new domains in Europe is up by 20% because of the pandemic, an increase most likely stemming from the fact that most businesses have had to undergo a transformation and get online to be able to keep offering customers their products and services.

Yet the digital transformation has its downside too, with cyberattacks mushrooming in 2020 and half of them attributable to the increase in teleworking caused by the pandemic: “Over half of organisations weren’t ready for the digitalisation needed to implement teleworking”, affirms a study by ACCIÓ and the Cybersecurity Agency of Catalonia.

The same study states that “on a global scale estimates put the rate of cyberattacks in 2021 at one every eleven seconds. This figure has risen considerably in recent years: in 2016 the average was 40 seconds”.

One of the most common forms of IT attack is ransomware, with malicious software or a virus encrypting the whole content of a computer and demanding a ransom to decrypt it. Another is phishing, involving the fraudulent supplanting of identity and aimed at businesses and individuals alike: recipients get an email or mobile phone message requesting data or passwords. One of the most common scenarios is where a bank is imitated, with the recipient getting a message asking them to confirm a user ID and password which are then used to access the account.

How to spot internet fraud?

A quick check of the domain the message is trying to direct us to is one way to detect this. With both ransomware and phishing, it’s likely they’re trying to supplant the identity of recognised organisations to either get us to download a virus or to get access to our user data. But one important datum they can’t supplant is the domain of the real organisation.

Carrying on with the bank as an example, imagine you’re contacted by your bank, “Bank Segur”, and you know their website is bancsegur.barcelona. If you get a message from the bank asking you to access a page with the domain bancsegur.xxxxx.barcelona, here’s your clue that this is a fraud. Why? Because in this case the domain is xxxxx.barcelona, and bancsegur.xxxxx.barcelona is a subdomain. In other words, we should always look at what comes just before .barcelona (or .cat, .com, .es etc.).

If you’re still unsure, the best thing to do is not to reply to the message and to contact the organisation another way, via their customer service phone line, social media or the email address on the website you usually use.