Organizations and enterprises across all industries must keep their brand identity protected at all times. However, not all businesses know this, leaving them vulnerable to fraudulent acts, especially online.
When this happens, businesses risk damaging their credibility and losing the trust of their customers. In this blog, you’ll learn how to protect your brand identity from theft online to safeguard your customers’ information and business reputation.
What is Business Identity Theft?
Personal identity theft and business identity theft are somewhat similar. In personal identity theft, a person or group impersonates another person for financial gain.
Business identity theft targets an entire organization. Here, a person or group of people with vicious intent can create websites like yours to victimize people.
These sites may make your customers believe they are transacting with you when they are not. Fraudsters create pages with the same attributes as yours, including the tone of communication and site interface.
Cybercriminals can also woo your customers in by imitating your interactions with customers and how close their products and services are to your original offerings.
6 Ways to Protect Your Brand Identity from Theft Online
While it’s challenging to eradicate fraudulent behavior completely, there are ways to protect your brand identity from online theft.
1. Educate your employees about cybersecurity practices
Fraud protection begins within your organization. Given this, it’s crucial to ensure internal controls are in place to protect your sensitive business assets.
Hold training sessions for your employees about cybersecurity procedures and best practices. They should know the following:
- Password management
- Business protocol implementation
- Secure internet browsing
- Fraud identification
- Phishing scams
- Reporting a cyberattack
2. Register your trademark
Another effective way how to protect your brand identity from theft online is trademark registration. While it takes time to apply for and receive trademark rights, the efforts are worth it since infringement by others can be dealt with severely.
3. Build and strictly implement brand guidelines
Brand guidelines help businesses maintain uniformity across all communication channels. If you’re handling several platforms, these guidelines serve as a reference to ensure your communications are following a single voice.
When developing your brand guidelines, remember to keep them short, clear, and full of visual detail. Also, designate a person to review the guides regularly, update elements as necessary, and communicate changes to the rest of the team.
4. Be consistent with your logo
Your logo plays a pivotal role in your brand identity. It’s one way for your customers to connect with your brand.
For this reason, you have to be consistent with your logo and not change it too often. Doing so will make your brand more susceptible to fraud since your customers will be confused about your brand’s ‘look.’
Always think about the message you want to convey when designing your logo and if they have similarities to any existing brands. Once you’ve come up with your final logo, use it across your channels, campaigns, and products.
5. Strengthen your brand presence
Building a solid brand presence is one way to protect your identity from fraudsters. Once you’ve created a consistent customer experience across all your touch points, imposters will find it more difficult to imitate your brand.
Stay consistent with your customer engagement and communications. This way, people can quickly identify whether someone is trying to pose as your company.
6. Take immediate action against brand infringement
If your efforts aren’t enough and you still fall victim to brand identity theft, take appropriate and quick action. First, it’s crucial to identify which country your perpetrator is from. However, expect it to be a long battle if they reside in a different country.
Your legal team can send out a Cease and Desist order, wherein legal course may follow if the perpetrator doesn’t reply to such request. Countries like Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, and Finland have the strongest IP laws.
Strengthen Your Defense Against Brand Identity Theft
As in many things, prevention is better than cure. Preventing fraud is still the best way to combat brand identity theft.
You can keep this guide handy if you’re curious to know how to protect your brand identity from theft online. Also, partner with trusted IT solutions providers like Yondu.
Expert providers can guide you properly and help you with your digital security and presence. Get in touch with us today to learn more.
