When anyone spends time online, they leave a trail. Any profiles, interactions they’ve had, or data that’s been posted formed a digital footprint. It’s the same for organizations; every organization has its own digital footprint. A strong, well-managed digital footprint can enhance a company’s reputation, improve brand visibility, and drive customer engagement. However, a negative or unmanaged footprint can harm your organization’s credibility and impact business success. For this reason, it’s important for organizations to learn how to investigate and manage their digital footprints.
An Overview of your Digital Footprint
What’s a digital footprint?
A digital footprint is the collection of all online data and activities associated with an organization. This includes its website, social media presence, online reviews, digital advertisements, and any mentions across the internet. It also includes the data trail left by the organization online, including any data, interactions, or mentions of the brand.
How can a digital footprint be exploited by threat actors?
Cybercriminals rely on a poorly managed digital footprint as a launchpad for certain types of attacks. They can research and misuse an organization’s digital footprint in several ways, which can lead to cyberattacks, reputational damage, and financial losses:
- Social engineering & phishing attacks: By examining a company’s details online, or the profiles of employees, criminals can use that information to create convincing spear-phishing attacks.
- Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Threat actors can use publicly available data (IP addresses, software versions, employee roles) to attack an organization, or find vulnerabilities.
- Reputation manipulation: By creating fake social media accounts and malicious websites, attackers can scam an organization’s customers and damage its reputation.
- Data scraping: Automated bots can scrape valuable business data (pricing, customer information, product details) for competitive advantage or fraud.
How can you investigate your organization’s digital footprint?
Investigating your digital footprint involves identifying all the online traces your organization has left online. Threat intelligence is essential to investigating your digital footprint. A good threat intelligence program continuously scans the internet for exposed enterprise assets, GitHub secrets, stolen credentials and other sensitive information. Flare, for example, monitors thousands of cybercrime channels across the dark web, the clear web, and prominent threat actor communities. Flare’s platform automatically collects, analyzes, structures, and contextualizes dark web data, prioritizing alerts so your team can take action in real-time.
Why is it Important to Learn About Investigating your Digital Footprint Now?
Why is it so important to understand digital footprints at the moment?
Digital footprints are a map of where we have been online. It’s crucial to understand them because they reveal valuable information about individuals and organizations. If you don’t know the extent of your digital footprint, you cannot protect it.
How do cybersecurity webinars help with training?
The cybersecurity industry is experiencing a skills gap. Webinars can help bridge that gap by providing outside training for security practitioners who want to build both their skills and their awareness of new threats. Some webinars also offer credit toward certifications for security professionals. For nontechnical learners, cybersecurity webinars can offer knowledge that may help give them a better understanding of security and cyber threats. Many webinars are also free or low-cost, giving your team a cost-effective way to obtain valuable training.
How can a cybersecurity webinar combat cyber attacks?
- Raising awareness about threats: Webinars help participants better understand cyber risks and their potential impact, and provide actionable tips to combat these risks.
- Technology updates: Cybersecurity webinars introduce participants to the latest tools, software, and frameworks used to enhance security as well as to the new tools and malware being used by attackers.
- Networking: It’s always important to interact with other cybersecurity professionals. Cyber criminals are constantly talking to one another. They meet up on the dark web or in private forums to discuss TTPs, trade information, and improve attacks. The more criminals communicate, the better they become at breaching your defenses. Cybersecurity professionals don’t always have the same opportunity to share knowledge and information. A cybersecurity webinar is a chance to network, learn, and work together to build knowledge. The result is an exchange of ideas and stronger security controls.
Integrate the world’s easiest to use and most comprehensive cybercrime database into your security program in 30 minutes.
How Does Flare Help you Learn to Investigate your Digital Footprint?
How does Flare help you learn about digital footprint investigations?
Flare’s new training series: Flare Academy Training is a series of free cybersecurity webinars covering topics that are of interest to cybersecurity practitioners. A recent Flare Academy session taught practitioners about information gathering and investigation, and future sessions will address topics that cover many different skills and areas of interest. The Academy also provides a Discord community where learners can meet, share information and resources, and discuss security issues with the experts who have appeared in our webinars.
Who can attend Flare’s webinars?
Everyone is welcome, but certain content may be more useful for cybersecurity practitioners. To help you differentiate which webinar may work best for you, we label each webinar as beginner, intermediate, or advanced. This helps you decide which sessions are a good fit for you and your security background.
What do you get with Flare’s free training?
- High-value training from cybersecurity experts
- Interactive learning with peers
- Actionable cybersecurity insights
- CPE credits toward security certifications
- A resource hub and learning community on Discord
I missed a webinar. What can I do?
You can watch it whenever you have time. Recordings of all the webinars are available for replay on our Discord community, as are additional resources, access to the experts who spoke in each webinar, and discussion and networking opportunities with other participants. This allows all our webinars to be watched by members of the Discord, or to be rewatched by participants who want to revisit certain content.
Digital Footprint Investigation and Training with Flare Academy
Flare Academy training provides security practitioners with highly relevant and highly engaging lessons on subjects like threat intelligence, operational security, investigation techniques, and more. Led by expert instructors, these free trainings combine on-demand video lessons with diverse learning tools. Students can also gain access to the Flare Academy Discord Community where they can ask questions, explore advanced topics, and continue their learning journey wherever it leads. Learn more about your organization’s digital footprint with Flare.
Find the right option at Flare Academy: sign up for the next training here.
