In the lush tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia, the Orchid Praying Mantis has evolved to look less like a dangerous predator, and more like a beautiful flower. Its bright colors routinely fool bees and other pollinators, who, if they venture too close, are quickly put on the lunch menu.
What does this have to do with cyber security? Well, just like this amazing little trickster, fraudsters go to great lengths to imitate our brand every day via emails, calls, texts, and now more than ever, social media. Some of their go-to “social-engineering” tactics include:
- Direct messaging (DM’ing) users from fake Facebook or Twitter accounts to lure them into giving away social security numbers, account numbers and passwords
- Posing as employees on LinkedIn to collect information from real associates; some even go so far as pretending to be our CEO; bold move, guys, but psssst, he doesn’t live in Buffalo
- Using our brand name to coax people into making cash investments for supposedly huge returns, money they’ll never see again
Seeing through the disguise
As you can imagine, all this impersonation causes major headaches for a lot of innocent people and damages our reputation. Which is why we have a dedicated team of Cyber Brand Defense professionals who carefully comb the platforms to spot and shut down scams.
The goal is simple: to build trust in our brand and give users confidence. We want people to know that whenever they see our brand pop up on their feeds, that it really is us. They don’t have to worry about being swindled by a phony impostor.
Keep an eye out
Even if you aren’t a member of the Cyber Brand Defense team, we need your help to identify brand imitators on social media. If you see something fishy or get a message that seems off, email Cyber Brand Defense. Together, we can stop mantis-like masters of deception—no matter how crafty.