External threat takedowns involve the identification and removal of malicious threats that target an organization from the outside to mitigate the potential damage that cyber attacks can have on data and operations. From understanding what constitutes an external threat to the lifecycle of a takedown, the process is complex and requires strategic planning and execution.
External Threat Takedowns: Brief Overview
What is an external threat?
External threats are malicious actors or attack methods that come from outside an organization to impact data security and integrity. As part of the larger threat landscape, some examples of external threats include:
- Phishing: fake emails that prey on people’s emotions to trick them into doing something against their – or their organization’s – best interests, like sharing usernames and passwords
- Account takeover (ATO): unauthorized access to accounts, typically arising from leaked or stolen credentials or session tokens
- Executive impersonation: pretending to be an organization’s senior executive on social media or in an email as part of a phishing attack
- Spoofed domain: malicious websites that look like a legitimate one, tricking people into sharing sensitive information
- Social media spoofing: impersonating a corporate social media account, like an Instagram or LinkedIn, to trick people into sharing sensitive information
What is a takedown?
A takedown is a formal process focused on removing harmful online resources, like:
- Phishing sites
- Fake accounts
- Spoofed domains
Takedowns help protect organizations from external threats like brand impersonation and counterfeit activities by rapidly removing sites that distribute malware or pretend to collect sensitive information.
Takedowns operate under strict guidelines and often involve intellectual property laws because the fake assets infringe on copyrights, trademarks, or patents. The benefits of a takedown include:
- Protecting against brand impersonation
- Reducing fraudulent activities
- Limiting exposure to malicious content
- Supporting intellectual property rights
Security teams work closely with domain registrars to disable malicious domains after they receive reports of suspicious or harmful activity. These activities are part of a company’s proactive threat exposure management program.
Why do external threat takedowns matter?
External threat takedowns are part of the organization’s larger continuous monitoring and automated threat detection capabilities because they help mitigate the impact that a cyber attack can have on digital assets, finances, and reputation. By systematically removing harmful and fraudulent content, the security teams help reduce risk and maintain brand integrity.
Swift and effective takedown measures help prevent harm to brands, customers, and employees when considered part of the organization’s digital risk protection management. For a proactive approach to external threat monitoring and mitigation, security teams often leverage automated threat detection and cyber threat intelligence so they can manage threat exposure more effectively across a wide and complex digital landscape.
Why should security teams know about external threat takedowns?
What is the process of taking down external threats?
External threat takedown is all about removing harmful content that targets brands online. This process often begins with identifying malicious content, such as fake social media profiles or phishing URLs. The goal is to reduce the time and effort needed to remove these threats by centralizing requests and automating repetitive tasks.
Here’s a step-by-step process:
- Detection: Use automated threat detection to find suspicious domains or harmful content.
- Analysis: Involve expert analysts to understand the threat.
- Takedown Request: Submit takedown requests to relevant domain registrars or platforms like Google Web Risk.
- Monitoring: Continuous monitoring ensures threats are swiftly neutralized across many devices.
Why does security struggle with external threat takedowns?
External threat takedowns can be challenging for both technical and staffing reasons. Some of the struggles that security teams face include a lack of:
- Visibility: Without comprehensive visibility across the digital landscape, security teams have no insight into phishing, impersonations, or social engineering threats.
- Automation: Monitoring the digital threat landscape manually is time consuming and often requires specific technical skills that limit a security team’s ability to respond quickly and systematically.
- Data: Without real-time threat intelligence data, security teams are unable to cover all the critical threat scenarios.
What are the key features of an external threat takedown solution?
An external threat takedown solution is a powerful tool for protecting organizations from online threats. Some key features to consider include:
- Integration with security controls: Easily connects with the current security stack, like security information and event management (SIEM) tools.
- Automation and expert analysis: Combines artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) with human expertise to identify threats effectively.
- Relevant data: Provides targeted insights that reduce false positive and alert fatigue so security teams can respond as quickly as possible to identified threats
Flare Provides Insights that Enable External Threat Takedowns
How does Flare support external threat takedowns?
With Flare’s Threat Exposure Management (TEM) platform, security teams can automate the threat intelligence gathering and analysis process so they can quickly detect and respond to external threats. For example, with Flare, teams can identify lookalike domains to automate the monitoring, evaluation, and domain takedown processes.
Why do security teams use Flare’s platform to help with external threat takedowns?
With Flare’s platform, security teams can leverage our vast database that monitors over 8,000 cybercrime communities and 2 million threat actor profiles for mentions of their organization across the clear, deep, and dark web as well as illicit Telegram channels. With access to this data, they can automate and scale threat detection with context-rich events that include remediation actions, like autonomous takedowns.
What are the key benefits of using Flare to help with external threat takedowns?
- Respond faster: Flare provides tailored insights so that security teams can detect targeted external threats and maintain a dynamic map of their external threat exposures.
- Make informed decisions: Flare’s AI event contextualization enables security teams to gain more insights into an external threat, reducing human error risk.
- Understand risks better: Flare’s threat actor analytics give security teams a way to continuously monitor for external threats the same way they monitor for internal threats and technical vulnerabilities.
External Threat Takedowns and Flare
The Flare Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution empowers organizations to proactively detect, prioritize, and mitigate the types of exposures commonly exploited by threat actors. Our platform automatically scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities 24/7 to discover unknown events, prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Flare’s easy-to-use platform cuts down on threat intelligence investigation times by up to 95% by giving security analysts context-rich insights so they can takedown external threats faster.
Flare integrates into your security program in 30 minutes and often replaces several SaaS and open source tools. Learn more by signing up for our free trial.
