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Community bank attacks phishing
away from home with BrandProtect
(...continued. Community bank attacks phishing away from home with BrandProtect)
“That minor situation really showcased BrandProtect’s capabilities,” he says. “The bank’s IT department was extremely impressed with BrandProtect’s success.”
When this latest phishing attack surfaced, the first thought was to bring BrandProtect on board to deal with it. “We realized that we could either assist the other bank or wait for them to fix it,” says the Security Director. “This very well could have been us, so we looked at how we would deal with it ourselves and what resources would be available to deal with the attack. We knew right away that we needed to get BrandProtect involved.”
Phished out
Within a day of putting BrandProtect on the problem, “It was absolutely amazing,” he says. “All of a sudden the phishing emails just stopped. It was like someone turned off a faucet. The change was so obvious that our IT department executives were checking internally to see if anyone had received any additional phishing reports - they thought something was wrong.”
When he contacted BrandProtect, the Security Director discovered that it was already in the process of taking the sites down. Within a week, the targeted phishing sites were a thing of the past. Today, BrandProtect continues to monitor for any new sites to ensure that the attacks do not resurface.
He notes that while the bank’s IT department has been successful in managing activities of this type that are US-based, “We learned from the Korea incident that when the phishing attack is from overseas, it becomes quite a problem for us to disable a site. BrandProtect on the other hand has the experience and the connections to understand where the attacks are coming from and is able to negotiate with other regions to deal with these sites.”
What also impressed the bank’s management team is the fact that BrandProtect “has the ability to deliver on what they say they can deliver. They have the resources, the quality staff and the expertise behind them. A lot of vendors out there promise everything but can’t always deliver. BrandProtect can – and does.”
As the relationship evolves, the bank plans to use BrandProtect for more extensive domain monitoring and link checking. “They offer so many options beyond just phishing services. We’ll definitely be looking at more opportunities as we continue to grow.”
He adds that approaching the latest phishing crisis from their end was in the best interests of the bank and its customers. “We decided to undertake the job because of the reputational risk. That is extremely important in our industry. If a customer is concerned about how we are conducting business and safeguarding their information, they will go elsewhere. We certainly didn’t want that to happen.”