Glossary of Terms
B
Brand Impersonation
Brand impersonation is the unauthorized imitation of a company’s name, logo, website, visual identity, products, or communications. It can appear across websites, domains, social media, marketplaces, paid advertisements, mobile applications, and other digital channels. The objective is usually to exploit the trust associated with the brand to deceive customers, employees, or business partners.
BrandShield monitors external digital channels for unauthorized use of brand assets and suspicious activity connected to a protected organization. Detected cases are reviewed, prioritized, connected to related infrastructure, and submitted for enforcement.
C
Counterfeiting
Counterfeiting is the unauthorized production, promotion, or sale of goods that imitate a legitimate brand’s products, trademarks, packaging, or designs. Counterfeit products may be sold through marketplaces, standalone websites, social media accounts, paid advertisements, or messaging platforms.
BrandShield helps identify suspected counterfeit listings, sellers, storefronts, advertisements, and related digital assets. Its monitoring and enforcement workflows can support brands in documenting infringements and requesting removal through platforms, hosts, registrars, or other relevant providers.
Cybersquatting
Cybersquatting is the registration or use of a domain name containing, closely resembling, or referencing a trademark or brand name without authorization. It may be used for resale, traffic diversion, advertising revenue, impersonation, phishing, or counterfeit sales.
BrandShield monitors domain ecosystems for registrations that may infringe protected trademarks or create customer risk. Cases can be assessed according to their similarity, content, intent, technical activity, and potential legal or platform-policy basis for enforcement.
D
Digital Risk Protection (DRP)
Digital risk protection is the process of identifying, investigating, prioritizing, and addressing threats that exist outside an organization’s network and endpoints. These risks may affect a company’s brand, executives, employees, customers, digital assets, intellectual property, or revenue.
BrandShield provides external monitoring across channels such as domains, websites, social media, marketplaces, paid advertisements, mobile applications, the dark web, and emerging AI platforms. Its role is to help organizations understand which external threats are active, how they may be connected, and which cases may require action.
Domain Shadowing
Domain shadowing occurs when attackers compromise access to a legitimate domain account and create unauthorized subdomains beneath it. These subdomains may be used for phishing, malware distribution, redirects, or fraudulent campaigns while benefiting from the reputation of the legitimate parent domain.
BrandShield can identify suspicious subdomains, malicious content, redirects, and infrastructure associated with protected brands or active threat campaigns. Remediation may involve notifying the domain owner, hosting provider, registrar, platform, or other responsible service.
E
Executive Impersonation
Executive impersonation is the unauthorized use of a senior leader’s name, image, voice, title, or identity. It is commonly used in payment fraud, investment scams, fake interviews, social engineering, recruitment scams, and misleading advertisements.
BrandShield monitors external channels for fake executive profiles, deceptive websites, fraudulent advertisements, and other unauthorized uses of protected identities. Cases can be investigated and submitted to relevant platforms or service providers when there is a valid basis for removal.
External Attack Surface Management (EASM)
External attack surface management is the continuous discovery and assessment of endpoint, assets, such as cloud services, mobile phones, browsers, certificates, and exposed applications. The objective is to identify unknown assets, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and other exposures that attackers could exploit.
H
Help Desk / Customer Support Scam
A fake customer support scam occurs when attackers impersonate a company’s service or technical-support team. They may create fake social profiles, support pages, phone numbers, advertisements, or websites designed to collect passwords, payment details, remote access, or personal information.
BrandShield helps identify fake support accounts, pages, domains, advertisements, and related infrastructure. Confirmed cases can be documented, prioritized, connected to wider campaigns, and submitted for removal through the appropriate channel.
Homoglyph Attack
An (IDN) homoglyph attack uses characters that look similar but come from different alphabets or character sets. For example, an attacker may replace a Latin letter with a visually similar Cyrillic character. This technique can be used in deceptive domains, usernames, email addresses, and social media profiles.
BrandShield can detect visually similar brand references and domain variations that may not be obvious through exact-text matching. Suspicious assets are evaluated together with their content, behavior, infrastructure, and intended use.
L
Lookalike Domain
A lookalike domain is designed to resemble a legitimate company’s domain through misspellings, added words, substituted characters, alternative extensions, or misleading URL structures. It may be used for phishing, fake stores, malware distribution, payment fraud, or brand impersonation.
BrandShield monitors domain registrations and active websites for variations associated with protected brands. It can help determine whether a domain is inactive, defensive, legitimate, suspicious, or actively harmful before further action is taken.
M
Malvertising
Malvertising is the use of digital advertising to promote malicious or deceptive content. Attackers may purchase search, display, or social advertisements that redirect users to phishing pages, fake stores, malware downloads, counterfeit products, or impersonating websites.
BrandShield monitors paid-ad environments for unauthorized brand use and advertisements connected to scams or impersonation. It can support evidence collection and reporting to advertising platforms, landing-page providers, hosting companies, and other relevant services.
Marketplace Abuse
Marketplace abuse includes counterfeit listings, trademark misuse, fake storefronts, unauthorized sellers, manipulated reviews, misleading product claims, and other violations occurring on ecommerce platforms. The activity may harm customers, reduce legitimate sales, and weaken control over distribution.
BrandShield monitors marketplaces for potentially infringing listings, sellers, images, product descriptions, and storefronts. Cases can be reviewed and submitted through marketplace enforcement processes based on the available evidence and the brand’s rights.
Mobile App Impersonation
Mobile app impersonation involves the creation or distribution of an unauthorized application that copies a legitimate brand’s name, logo, interface, product, or service. Fake apps may collect credentials, distribute malware, generate fraudulent payments, or mislead users.
BrandShield monitors relevant app stores and external sources for applications that may misuse protected brand assets. Suspected cases can be documented and submitted to app stores or hosting services for review.
P
Phishing
Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to trick users into revealing passwords, payment information, personal data, or other sensitive information. Phishing campaigns may use email, SMS, messaging applications, social media, search ads, fake websites, or compromised accounts.
BrandShield focuses on the external infrastructure used in phishing, including deceptive domains, websites, social profiles, advertisements, and connected malicious assets. It helps identify and investigate these threats and supports removal where a valid enforcement path exists.
R
Reverse Proxy Phishing
Reverse proxy phishing places attacker-controlled infrastructure between a victim and a legitimate service. The fake page forwards information to the real website in real time, allowing the attacker to capture credentials, MFA responses, and authenticated session cookies.
BrandShield helps identify and investigate domains and websites used to host or distribute these phishing campaigns. It can support disruption of the external infrastructure, but it does not replace phishing-resistant MFA, endpoint protection, or session-security controls.
S
Search Engine Poisoning
Search engine poisoning is the manipulation of search results to increase the visibility of malicious, counterfeit, or impersonating websites. Attackers may use search engine optimization, compromised sites, paid advertisements, or misleading content to rank for branded and high-intent searches.
BrandShield can monitor search results and related digital channels for deceptive use of a protected brand. Identified threats may be investigated and reported to search engines, advertising platforms, website hosts, or other responsible providers.
Social Media Impersonation
Social media impersonation is the creation or use of fake profiles, pages, groups, or advertisements that falsely represent a brand, executive, employee, or customer-support team. These accounts may distribute scams, collect payments, promote counterfeit products, or direct users to malicious websites.
BrandShield monitors social platforms for unauthorized brand and identity use. It can help analyze related accounts, content, links, and campaign patterns before submitting eligible cases for platform review and removal.
Subdomain Impersonation
Subdomain impersonation uses a misleading URL structure to make a malicious website appear associated with a trusted brand. The brand name may appear in the subdomain while the actual registered domain belongs to the attacker, such as brand.secure-login-example.com.
BrandShield analyzes full domain and URL structures rather than relying only on visible brand terms. Suspicious subdomains can be evaluated based on ownership, content, redirects, technical infrastructure, and connections to other malicious assets.
T
Typosquatting
Typosquatting is the registration of domains containing common misspellings, missing letters, added characters, transposed letters, or alternative spellings of a legitimate domain. Attackers rely on typing errors or visual similarity to redirect users to fraudulent content.
BrandShield monitors domain variations associated with protected brands and identifies those that may create customer or security risk. Active threats can be investigated and, where justified, submitted for takedown or other enforcement action.
V
Vendor Impersonation
Vendor impersonation occurs when an attacker pretends to be a trusted supplier, service provider, distributor, or business partner. The attacker may use a deceptive domain, fake website, spoofed email address, or compromised account to redirect payments or obtain sensitive information.
BrandShield helps identify lookalike domains, fake websites, impersonating accounts, and other external assets used to imitate business partners. It supports external detection and disruption but should be combined with internal payment verification and supplier-management controls.