A brand representatives everything you believe your brand to be when setting it up. From its logo, designs, the way it engages with prospects, all accommodate to represent it to become a brand. 

Brands are numerous hence it takes one single factor to help your prospects identify your brand from the crowd. It could be anything, the design, the statement which defines your brand, the image, the features, the emotional connect in videos or visual, to secure a brand in the eyes of the prospects, trust and the development of connection is required for a prospect to indulge investing in your brand. 

But with the rise in online attacks, ‘’In 2018 hackers stole half a billion personal records’’ and this number just keeps increasing, which is the main reason why brand protection is required.

Brand protection refers to the process of safeguarding, securing and protecting your brand from any threats that could cause harm to your business and the way your identity.

The market gets tough and change is a feature no one likes to adapt to. In order to eliminate the need for such changes, many brands and sources tend to hack their competitors' strategies to out power them without their knowledge. For instance, if you have a strategy that you know will place well in the market and if your competitors get a hold of it, the qualified leads will shift their attention to the latter.

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Brand protection is crucial, in fact it needs to be maintained all the time not just from outside but within also. Today, even a minor mistake could transform your brand under the risk of getting hacked and you know quite well what it means to lose your hard earned identity within just minutes.

‘’Every day, around 230,000 malware samples are created by hackers. The amount of malware created will continue to grow in the coming years and the creation of trojans, potentially unwanted programs and other threats would continue to enter targeted PCs and cause more harm than ever.’’

To highlight better for your understanding, we have covered the top 4 reasons why brand protection is necessary. 

1. TO AVOID ANY MISHAPS

As mentioned earlier, even one careless mistake is enough to set your hackers into your system to begin their activity. ‘’Destructive cyber-threat activity is becoming more common and attribution is getting harder. Information loss is the most expensive component of a cyber attack, with 43% of costs involved in it ’’.

Safeguard your brand so that you can eliminate any errors, any effective plans that can grow your brand and also unauthorised users from preventing your business to grow higher. Secure your brand with the highest solution so that hackers can find themselves in a tough spot to crack open your business success.

2. AVOID UNNECESSARY EXPENDITURE

When you identify that another brand is selling the strategy that you had planned to conduct for your brand, the next would be to sue them. This process might seem keen to your mind now, but when you see it in the long term, it accumulates all the money you have keeping you away from investing in what actually matters, your brand.

Securing your brand would be efficient when you instead invest that money into secure applications that can cater to your brands privacy and security. 

3. LOSS OF IDENTITY IN THE MARKET

Nothing is worse for a brand when its identity soon fades away from the minds of its clients.  With the high increase in threats and the news spreading that your brand has been caught in the trap of hackers, it isn’t a very trustworthy moment for your existing clients. Fear of being tampered forces them to leave you and have doubt on your security measures. Eliminating this can make the reverse happen.

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4. KEEPS YOU AWAY FROM THREATS

The number one reason why brand protection is required is because you need to stay away from the threats, malicious activities and other risks surrounding the online world. When you take the right precautions to create a barrier, you make it easier for your brand to grow in a healthier space.

For instance, if you invest in a good brand protection practice, you can concentrate on growing your brand whilst the program supports your actions with a protective shield even when you are away. 

The threats will never stop, ‘’today's organizations are struggling to secure their endpoints and paying a steep cost for each successful attack. A successful cyber attack costs over $5 million or $301 per employee’’, but does that mean you don’t begin taking precautions?

Especially in 2020 and the years to come, brand protection should be your priority, let’s understand this better.

Today hackers have become brilliant in what they do, with just a minute mishap from your end can lead them to enter your system and drive so much information which is enough to tamper your branding image.

It’s not just hackers, even we commit mistakes that give rise to hackers interruptions in our system, ‘’95% of cybersecurity breaches are due to human error’’ it could be keeping passwords open, not securing online information, not closing tabs, saving information without deleting them later and much more.

Such small mishaps give rise to hackers to enter in your system. Brand protection means safeguarding your brand from the above activities and any other acts that can damage your brand in the eyes of your leads. Apart from this brand protection is also necessary for another way.

Let’s understand this with an example:

Brands want to grow bigger and better and the only way to do so is to extract the right data which can help make this happen. With so much information which is relevant to bands are not accessible. 

The reason being incorporating strict measures to safeguard data. But when you want to outsell your competitors, it is the data that will help you outsell them better. 

Let’s understand this with an example:

Brands can view their competitor's pricing strategies and improvise on their current pricing strategies also, with the information available online, brands can easily monitor and improve their solution with the way prospects expect them to which in turn can help bands to sell even better hence impacting the conversion rates.

So how can you protect your brand in a better manner?

Our next category will help you understand better.

1. GET YOUR IP ADDRESS REGISTERED

So that no one can use your IP address, it’s better if you register your IP address so that it becomes easier for your brand identity to be revealed. When your IP address will be exhibited, it will be confirmed that that is from your brand. 

2. LET YOUR PROSPECTS KNOW ABOUT YOU

It’s always great to inform your prospects about your brand and the fake brands that will try to use your name. Explain them rather educate them on how they can identify your true brand for example with the logo, your brand taglines, your actions, and more. This will help your audience find you better through the crowd. 

3. HAVE A WIDER SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

When you're active on social media, you're making your brand more aware of your audience. A higher social media presence will also educate your audience about your brand in detail, understand what your brand is, how you can cater to their needs, and more. An active presence on social media can also help build trust between you and your prospects. 

Let’s understand this with an example:

If you suggest to your prospect to invest in your new products, due to the trust they have with you, they will go on to invest. 

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4. ELIMINATE SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITIES/WEBSITES

If you believe that the traffic that you receive on your website is coming from a suspicious source, eliminate them on spot. Ensure that you are not advertising on the wrong platforms and that you are away from any risks being attached. 

5. SPEAK MORE ABOUT YOUR BRAND

The more you exhibit your brand, the better your prospects will learn about you which will help them understand your brand in depth. This will help them to understand between your brand and the imposter brand out there. Showcase your testimonials, case studies, and more similar information that will help your audience understand a clear picture of your brand. 

Apart from this, there is another way to protect your brand better. 

Our next category has covered this.

Proxy servers are software that helps to create a protective shield whilst you continue your online activities. It’s an impactful solution that can help your brand to prevent such errors and threats.

Proxy servers work in this manner:

You use any device to request access to any content from a restricted website, without a proxy server your request would be banned and blocked. But with a proxy server, you can easily access it because the server hides your identity. 

Let’s understand this with an example:

Say the website is only allowing users from its location to view the content. What the proxy server will do here is that it will change your IP address into the format that it will look as if you are the user from their location. Once the website approves, you get your data.

When it comes to brand protection with proxies, there are many reasons how the use of reliable proxy servers can be a great solution to help protect your brand against such dangerous threats:

1. ADDING EXTRA SECURITY

Proxy servers as you are aware, act as a shield when you send requests to the website and when they approve and come to you. This is a great process taking place because with the growing information online, not every website you see is genuine. 

You might not be able to identify hence with a proxy server all the suspicious websites are kept far away from reaching you hence safeguarding anything that falls in your traffic.

his is crucial because many things unknowingly can enter your traffic, you may consider it as harmful since it is easy to create a fake website today and appear genuine looking, proxy servers add an extra strip of security ensuring that you don’t fall under any risk.

2. KEEPS YOU ANONYMOUS

To outsell your competitors, your brand requires the complete information of what your top competitors are doing. To retrieve such information isn’t easy, which is why a proxy server can help you. When you want to retrieve information and if your IP address doesn’t match the rules of the content accessibility fixed by a website, chances are you can be blocked. 

To avoid this, you can use a reliable proxy server to continue conducting this action whilst your identity remains hidden. While you grasp more information to grow your business well, proxy servers ensure that your online activities are safeguarded.

3. CONTROL TRAFFIC ACTIVITIES

It is very annoying and frustrating when one has to wait for a website to load. It not only diverts attention but also sparks a furious emotion to walk away. This is the same case with your clients. With a proxy server, this can be prevented. 

The reason why your website slows down is that many hackers want to access and reach your traffic or some of them will start copy-pasting the information that you have which in turn is another reason for slower growth. 

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The proxy server eliminates this and ensures that no such activities are being conducted. Reliable proxy servers ensure complete brand protection for business by focusing more on driving genuine and real traffic.

4. MONITOR INTERNAL ONLINE ACTIVITIES

‘’21 percent of all files are not protected in any way.’’

The reasons could be numerous. Just like how you monitor and are preventing the outside world from tampering your current system, you need to apply the concept internally as well. You need to ensure that a few websites are blocked or restricted so that your team wouldn’t be able to access it. 

When you conduct this, you are not just allowing your team to grow and learn in a healthier space, you are conducting a good brand protection technique. With reliable proxies, this action can be conducted without any hassles.  

5. FILTERS RISKS

Your brand engages with clients on different levels, it could be email management, social media management or content marketing management. Whilst you conduct all these actions you need to understand that this all takes place online which brings you under the risk roof. 

To conduct this activity efficiently without any fear requires you to make use of convenient proxy servers available. With reliable proxy servers, for example, you can eliminate any spam emails or hacker's account requests. You can even whitelist or blacklist them with proxy features. Brand protection with proxies isn’t just helping you conduct safe online activities, it is creating a secure barrier from every possible dangerous threat.

There are multiple brands in the market that are selling reliable proxy servers, but how do you know which ones to choose and what are the factors that are required.

The complete list has been shared in our next category.

1. STATIC PROXIES

If a user aims to have access to the internet via a specific computer or device, static proxies ensure it takes place. These proxies are supported with the help of the Internet Service provider (ISP). 

In case the device chosen fails to perform static proxies duties, the proxy would then be disabled, the device name you selected will be eliminated and the user will receive an error message which will be understood that the static proxies requirements didn’t cater to the set factors. 

This can be done in brand protection. Any device can be used for instance your desktop or laptop whilst you are at home to access any information which can help enhance the branding strategies. 

Pros:

1 . More reliable

2. Quicker in its action

Cons:

1 . To set up static proxies can be a hassle

2. If all the requirements are not met in static proxies, the proxies will not function

2. ROTATING PROXIES

As the name suggests it rotates the IP address. So when you request for access, the IP addresses get changed every time. 

This is fruitful in branding protection because any source of information can be accessed no matter the device or the number of times to conduct this action. Every time you conduct this action to grow your brand better through quality data rotating proxies ensure that it happens without any errors.  

Pros:

1 . No shortage of IP addresses

2. Speed is faster

Cons:

1 . If rotating proxies are used for free, the security can be tampered with and the traffic and the speed of the process will slow down

2. Too many IP’s can carry a small risk of the process getting stuck or being caught in the act

3. DATA CENTER PROXIES

Data center proxies are widely used to serve the purpose of brand protection conducting market research, brand protection, SEO monitoring and much more. Data center proxies work as a regular proxy, they hide the IP address so that your anonymity is hidden while surfing the internet. 

What makes them stand out is that they don’t require the need for an ISP (Internet service provider) or an internet connection. When you request to view a website instead of your information (IP address), data center proxies will send theirs.

Pros:

1 . Cheaper in cost

2. Provides faster speed in its action

Cons:

1 . Doesn’t hold a reliable position when it comes to securing anonymity 

4. RESIDENTIAL PROXIES

Aims to retrieve data without the fear of being blocked when conducting online data retrieval activities. Whether it is information on prospect preferences and choices or any other relevant information, get any data you want without having the fear of your IP address being subjected to high risk. 

Residential proxies have IP addresses attached to a physical location. The IP address is provided to users from the ISP itself. When you access information from any location, your ISP will give you an IP address.

Pros:

1 . It is a brilliant measure for data harvesting

2. Offers high anonymity

Cons:

1 . Only if the residential proxies are of good quality will the chances of not getting blocked while conducting online activities will stand secure. So a risk will always be there. 

5. WEB SCRAPING

Web scraping is the process of extracting information online through the method of scraping. Say you want to scrape through your competitor's websites to view their pricing plans or want your prospect's recommendations or feedback, you can conduct this action without any hassle. 

With web scraping all you need to do is click on the website to scrape, conduct the process and the data gets saved in your system. The data can be saved in any format for instance in a CSV file, Excel, JSON and much more. Web scraping, however, is more efficient when it is conducted with the help of any proxy servers. While the scraping happens, proxy servers ensure that 

Pros:

1 . Eliminates the manual work of copy-pasting information into the system

2. Retrieves data quicker

Cons:

1 . Regular scraping can cause the IP to be blocked

2. With the rise in technology, websites are incorporating advanced methods making it difficult to scrape the information.

6. REAL-TIME CRAWLER

Search any sorts of information you want from search engines and e-commerce websites with the help of a real-time crawler. When you send a request to the real-time crawler, it collects all the information required according to your request. Once the information is collected it sends you back the information in a format of an HTML or JSON. 

Let’s understand this with an example:

You can crawl bad reviews that appear under your brand and eliminate them before your prospects see it as well as verify only the genuine reviews which can keep your brand under the good books of your prospects. All the action taking place is conducted on the same connection being implemented which gives you real-time web scraping solutions. 

Pros:

1 . With a large IP choice and an exceptional IP backup option, the real-time crawler can deliver a 100% success rate in its data retrieval activities.

2. It is a user-friendly application that just requires a URL to get started

Cons:

1 . Requires constant modifications due to frequent website changes concerning its design or structural form.

7. PREMIUM PROXIES

Premium proxies are great to retrieve information online because it offers a dedicated proxy for a user. With premium proxies, any brand can conduct online activities without the fear of being blocked or their IP addresses being caught as suspicious. 

Premium proxies offer great speed and have a lot of advantages added to it for instance information can be viewed from any geo locations available, multiple IP addresses are provided, the data and bandwidth speed is great, ads can be conducted with a dedicated IP address and much more. 

Pros:

1 . Speed will never be tapered since the IP addresses provided are dedicated to the users

2. The servers are maintained from trusted brands which assure no crash or shutdown errors.

Cons:

1 . Proxies have a cache system which saves the information. This can cause security issues as anyone can view it.