Digital Risk Monitoring is the continuous practice of monitoring digital channels to identify, understand, and remediate risks to enterprises, people and assets, and data across public attack surfaces. With Digital risk monitoring, enterprises can gain visibility into the open, deep, and dark web and anticipate threats.
The importance of Digital Risk Monitoring is that it allows a business to react rapidly to digital dangers by helping to safeguard an organization from cyber, brand, and physical threats, as well as monitoring social media, domain registrations, and the digital attack surface.
A general guide to achieving reliable digital risk protection:
Risk Assessment
A comprehensive risk assessment to understand the potential threats and vulnerabilities to digital assets, which involves identifying all digital assets, including websites, social media accounts, email addresses, mobile apps, and any other online presence.
Threat Intelligence
Gather information about emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and malicious actors targeting your organization or industry. This could include subscribing to threat feeds, monitoring dark web forums, and analyzing trends in cyber-attacks.
Monitoring
Implement continuous monitoring mechanisms to track activities across your digital footprint. This includes monitoring social media mentions, domain registrations, brand mentions, and other relevant online activities that could pose a risk to your organization.
Incident Response
Formulate and implement an incident response plan to effectively respond to digital risks and security incidents.
Security Awareness Training
Foster a culture of cyber awareness focusing on educating employees about security best practices and recognizing and responding to threats such as phishing attacks, malware, social engineering, and more. Regular training sessions and awareness campaigns reinforce security awareness across the organization and can prevent cyber incidents.
Third-Party Risk Management
Assess and manage any risks associated with third-party vendors, suppliers, and partners who have access to your digital assets or sensitive information. Conduct due diligence assessments, implement contractual agreements, and monitor third-party activities for any security issues.
Data Protection
Implement robust data protection measures to safeguard sensitive information and prevent unauthorized access, theft, or misuse. This includes encryption, access controls, data loss prevention (DLP) solutions, and regular data backups.
Compliance and Regulations
Ensure your firm’s compliance with all relevant regulations and government and industry standards related to data protection and cybersecurity, such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, etc. Stay updated on regulatory changes and incorporate them into your digital risk protection strategy.
Technology Solutions
Invest in technology solutions such as security information and event management (SIEM) systems, threat detection tools, endpoint security solutions, and digital risk protection platforms to automate and streamline the monitoring and mitigation of digital risks.
Continuous Improvement
Digital risk protection is an ongoing process requiring continuous improvement and adaptation to evolving threats and technologies. Review and update your risk management strategy, policies, and controls on a regular basis to stay ahead of emerging risks.
How do Digital Risk Monitoring Solutions work?
Digital risk monitoring solutions play a crucial role in helping organizations proactively identify and mitigate digital risks, protect their brand reputation, and safeguard their digital assets from a wide range of online threats.
Data Collection:
Digital risk monitoring solutions gather data from a wide range of sources such as social media, websites, blogs, forums, news sites, dark web forums, and other publicly accessible sources.
Data Aggregation and Analysis:
This step involves aggregation and analysis of data using advanced algorithms and analytics techniques. This analysis involves categorizing and prioritizing the data based on factors such as relevance, credibility, sentiment, and potential impact on the organization’s reputation or security.
Threat Detection:
Threat intelligence feeds, machine learning algorithms and pattern recognition detect various types of digital risks and threats. This includes identifying indicators of compromise (IOCs), malicious actors, phishing attempts, data breaches, brand impersonation, intellectual property violations, and other suspicious activities.
Alerting and Reporting:
By generating alerts and notifications, the security team is informed of the organization’s security. These alerts may include detailed information about the nature of the threat, the source of the threat, and recommended actions for mitigation.
Incident Response:
By integrating with incident response platforms or ticketing systems to facilitate the management and resolution of security incidents, this includes automating workflows for incident triage, escalation, investigation, and remediation.
Customization and Configuration:
Organizations can customize and configure digital risk monitoring solutions to align with their specific requirements and risk profiles. Like setting up custom search queries, defining alert thresholds, specifying monitoring parameters, and adjusting analytics models to optimize detection accuracy.
Compliance and Reporting:
By assisting organizations in meeting regulatory compliance requirements by providing comprehensive reporting capabilities. This includes generating audit trails, compliance reports, and documentation to demonstrate adherence to relevant regulations and industry standards.
Integration with Security Ecosystem:
These solutions often integrate with other cybersecurity tools and platforms, such as SIEM systems, threat intelligence platforms, vulnerability management tools, and security orchestration platforms. This integration facilitates seamless data sharing, correlation of security events, and coordinated response efforts across the security ecosystem.
Continuous Improvement:
Digital risk monitoring solutions continuously evolve and improve over time through feedback loops, machine learning algorithms, and updates to threat intelligence feeds. This ensures that the solution remains effective in detecting and mitigating emerging risks and threats in an ever-changing digital landscape.
4 Digital Risk Categories that Should be Monitored
Organizations can proactively identify threats, mitigate potential damage, and protect their brand reputation, intellectual property, and sensitive information in an increasingly digital world by monitoring these categories of digital risks.
Brand and Reputation Risks:
Brand impersonation: Monitoring for fake social media accounts, phishing websites, or fraudulent domains that impersonate your brand.
Negative mentions: Tracking online mentions, reviews, and comments that could damage your brand reputation.
Trademark violations: Monitoring for unauthorized use of your brand name or trademarks by third parties.
Cybersecurity Risks:
Phishing attacks: Monitoring for phishing emails, fake login pages, and other social engineering tactics used to steal sensitive information.
Malware distribution: Tracking websites and online platforms distributing malware or hosting malicious content.
Data breaches: Monitoring for signs of data breaches, leaked credentials, or unauthorized access to sensitive information.
Financial Risks:
Fraudulent activities: Monitoring for online scams, financial fraud, and fraudulent transactions targeting your organization or customers.
Payment card fraud: Tracking for instances of payment card fraud, unauthorized transactions, or carding activities.
Intellectual Property (IP) Risks:
Copyright infringement: Monitoring for unauthorized distribution or use of copyrighted content, such as images, videos, or software.
Counterfeit products: Tracking online marketplaces and websites selling counterfeit or pirated versions of your products.
Patent infringement: Monitoring for unauthorized use or replication of patented technologies or designs.
Types of Channels to Monitor for Digital Risk
Organizations can stay vigilant and proactive in identifying threats, mitigating vulnerabilities, and protecting their digital assets and brand reputation by monitoring these channels for digital risks.
Social Media Platforms:
Monitoring for brand mentions, customer complaints, phishing attempts, and unauthorized account access.
Websites and Web Applications:
Monitoring for website defacements, malware injections, data breaches, and vulnerabilities.
Search Engines:
Monitoring for search engine results related to your organization, including brand mentions, news articles, and negative reviews.
Email and Communication Platforms:
Monitoring for phishing emails, spam, malware attachments, and unauthorized access to email accounts.
Dark Web and Underground Forums:
Monitoring for discussions, listings, and sales of stolen data, exploits, malware, and other illegal activities.
Mobile Apps:
Monitoring for fake or malicious apps, vulnerabilities, and unauthorized data collection.
Mitigating Digital Risk:
To implement measures to reduce the likelihood and impact of potential threats and vulnerabilities to an organization’s digital assets, here are some key strategies for mitigating digital risks:
Risk Assessment and Management:
Conduct regular risk assessments to identify and prioritize digital risks based on their likelihood and potential impact.
Security Awareness Training:
Create a culture of ongoing training and awareness programs to educate employees about digital risks, cybersecurity best practices, and recognizing and responding to potential threats such as phishing, malware, social engineering, etc.
Strong Authentication and Access Controls:
Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for accessing sensitive systems and data to prevent unauthorized access, especially in remote or cloud-based environments.
Patch Management:
Maintain up-to-date software and security patches for all systems, applications, and devices to address known vulnerabilities to help reduce the risk of exploitation.
Data Encryption and Protection:
Encrypt sensitive data, regardless of whether it is in transit or at rest, to prevent unauthorized access or interception.
Implement data loss prevention (DLP) solutions to monitor and enforce policies for protecting confidential information and preventing data leaks.
Network Security Controls:
Deploy firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS), and network segmentation that can help monitor and control network traffic, detect suspicious activity, and limit the spread of malware or unauthorized access.
Endpoint Security:
Use endpoint protection platforms (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to secure endpoints such as desktops, laptops, and mobile devices against malware, ransomware, and other threats.
Implement device encryption, remote wipe capabilities, and application whitelisting to enhance endpoint security.
Incident Response Planning:
Develop and regularly update an incident response plan that outlines procedures for detecting, responding to, and recovering from security incidents.
Conduct regular tabletop exercises and simulations to evaluate the incident response plan’s effectiveness and ensure readiness to handle security incidents.
Vendor and Third-Party Risk Management:
Analyze and monitor security practices that third-party vendors, suppliers, and partners that have access to your organization’s systems or data implement and use.
Establish contractual agreements and service-level agreements (SLAs) that define security requirements and responsibilities for third-party relationships.
Continuous Monitoring and Improvement:
Implement continuous monitoring mechanisms that can detect and accordingly respond to emerging threats and vulnerabilities in real time.
Best Practices for Digital Risk Monitoring
Organizations can establish a robust digital risk monitoring program that helps identify, assess, and mitigate digital risks effectively.
Here are some best practices for effective digital risk monitoring:
Define Clear Objectives:
Determine what types of risks you want to monitor, which assets are most critical, and what outcomes you aim to achieve.
Comprehensive Coverage:
Ensure coverage across all relevant channels where your organization has a presence or is vulnerable to threats.
Continuous Monitoring:
Implement continuous monitoring processes to detect risks in real-time or near-real-time. Automated monitoring tools can help streamline this process and provide timely alerts for potential threats.
Threat Intelligence Integration:
Integrate threat intelligence feeds and services into your monitoring program to stay informed about emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and trends relevant to your organization.
Contextual Analysis:
Apply contextual analysis to understand the severity and potential impact of identified risks. Factor in the credibility of the source, the relevance to your organization, and the likelihood of the threat being realized.
Customized Alerts and Reporting:
Customize alerting mechanisms to prioritize and categorize risks based on their level of severity and relevance.
Cross-Functional Collaboration:
Foster collaboration between different teams within the organization, including cybersecurity, IT, legal, compliance, marketing, and communications. Encourage sharing of information and coordination in responding to identified risks.
Regular Review and Analysis:
Conduct regular reviews and analyses of digital risk data to identify patterns, trends, and areas for improvement. Use historical data to track changes over time and reevaluate the effectiveness of any risk mitigation efforts that were implemented.
Digital Risk Monitoring & Management with Cyble
Cyble’s comprehensive database and deep visibility into the surface, deep, and dark web allows it to effectively gauge your Digital Risk with details, context, and risk scoring. Along with a dedicated 3rd party risk monitoring module, this allows you to identify, prioritize, and remediate any risks in your digital risk footprint and secure your organization. To learn more about how Cyble helps manage digital risks, click here.
