Four steps towards online brand protection

As the Web continues to become a more dynamic and vital part of every corporation, today’s enterprises need to become more proactive at anticipating exploits and abuses that can tarnish their reputation and negatively impact their business operations by consolidating their Internet domain names and putting in place a series of protective measures. This white paper for MarkMonitor shows you the steps you need to take to monitor your total online presence and strategically protect your various corporate brands, trademarks, and domains.

MarkMonitor Brandjacking Index Spring 08

I continue to author this series of white papers for MarkMonitor about brand abuses across the Internet. This report looks at the online travel industry as well as the purchase of commercial aircraft components. Both are experiencing plenty of fraud — you would think selling pieces of F16s wouldn’t have much of a market online, but you would be wrong. There is also a brisk trade in online airticket vouchers, most of which aren’t transferable. That doesn’t stop the bad guys from trying to sell one!

You can download the report here.

Brandjacking Report for MarkMonitor

My latest quarterly Brandjacking report for MarkMonitor can be found here. I summarize brand abuse trends from 2007. The bad news is that brandjackers have begun to target more mainstream packaged goods including food and beverages, automotive products, and consumer goods. The good news is that domain kiting and PPC activity has dropped off. Kiting threats actually dropped in the last quarter, and were below levels observed at the beginning of 2007. I also look at phishing and specific country trends, too.

Creating successful mashups and rich Internet apps

Today’s businesses are all about quickly adapting to changing conditions. Employees want prompt access to their data. They also want the ability to analyze and act upon changing situations and evolving markets, so they can seize strategic advantages and exploit opportunities. To make business more agile, IT itself must become agile—quick, resourceful, and adaptable. Today that means being able to create applications for the moment, what are often called agile applications.

In a white paper I wrote for SnapLogic, I talk about some of the challenges and opportunities for creating Web mashups and rich Internet applications, and how the company’s data tools can be helpful for corporate developers.

You can register and download the paper here.

Brandjacking report for MarkMonitor, fall 2007

I wrote the fall 2007 Brandjacking report for MarkMonitor, and it is now out today. It has a research focus on the consumer toy market and shows how recalled toy models are readily available at many online sites. Consumers who aren’t aware of the recalls may endanger their children by accidentally purchasing items containing lead paint or small parts. In addition, we found suspicious and recalled toys for sale in bulk by B2B exchanges of toy wholesalers, which is even more of a threat as large quantities of these dangerous toys could enter the retail stream.

This has not been a good year for toy retailers. A number of high profile toy recalls combined with a slower economy doesn’t bode well as the holiday shopping season begins. And shoppers will find an increasing number of online sites continuing to sell recalled toys.

You can download a copy of the report here.

Next Generation of Mobile Applications (white paper)

The days are long gone when corporations had a single wireless network that was used primarily for networked computers, running it from a series of access points mounted near the ceilings. Today’s wireless infrastructure is much more complex with different types of endpoints besides laptop PCs, operating across multiple radio frequencies, and serving many different purposes besides connecting PCs to file servers. In my white paper for MobileAccess that is posted this week, I talk about how today’s applications are changing the wireless landscape and describe in some detail some of the leading examples of this new generation of wireless applications to enhance productivity and integrate mobility into the workplace.

Symantec Endpoint Protection Reviewer’s Guide

I wrote this reviewer’s guide for Symantec’s newest endpoint security software.

Brandjacking report for MarkMonitor

I helped write this white paper for MarkMonitor which looks at what they call “brandjacking” or using the Internet to hijack well-known brands for criminal uses. MarkMonitor identified the potential threats to the world’s strongest brands and tracked millions of emails and billions of web pages to determine that exploits of all types are increasing, and some such as domain kiting have more than tripled since earlier this year.

As long as consumers are motivated to shop for cheap drugs, unscrupulous online pharmacies will continue to proliferate and take their money, risking consumer health and financial well-being. Overall, brand abuse is increasing, but more important than the sheer volume is the rise in the level of sophistication and the use of best practices by online criminals and fraudsters. Along with the increasing complexity of attacks is a continued increase in the number of phishing attempts, the number of brands targeted and use of multiple attacks from single domains.

You can download the report from their site here.

Tapping the Wireless Healthcare Opportunity

There has never been a better time than now to deploy wireless access in the healthcare industry. Technologies have matured, carriers are motivated to entice mobile-dependent hospital workforce with better deals, and demand to cut the cord is high. Hospitals have traditionally have been slow to invest in a wired network infrastructure, making wireless a more compelling proposition as they try to catch up and deploy new applications.

Deploying wireless healthcare solutions will require understanding several different aspects of technology, applications, and usage patterns before it can become a success. While none of these issues are showstoppers, taken together they can be vexing for even the smallest wireless rollout in a hospital.

In a white paper I contributed to, Jeff Kunst at MobileAccess talks about these issues in more detail.

How Network Forensics Can Help Human Resource Compliance

Something wrong is happening on your network. Call it human nature or simply a few bad apples, but unless your organization is miraculously different from all others, someone is leaking information, someone else is dabbling in porn, and someone else is probably doing a handsome business on eBay—on one of your servers.

Your organization has policies about this—and your industry may have regulations that pertain, as well. You need to ensure these policies are complied with—or you need to collect evidence to take action when they’re not.

When you suspect something is wrong, do you have the means to conduct an investigation? How do you collect evidence—digital evidence—when there are so many channels of communication (email, Web mail, IM, etc.), and so many places to look on your network?

I review these and other issues for a white paper for WildPackets that you can download here.