CASE STUDY
with cease and desist notices. ZeroFOX has
helped Satsangi to identify any websites that
were made outside of the official websites
deployed by the company – which were
immediately disconnected – and site owners
were notified.
Azizi Developments is one of the leading
private real estate developers in the
UAE. The awareness of its brand and the
projects it is associated with has increased
exponentially over the last few years. This led
to re-sellers, agents and employees trying to
leverage the name of Azizi and its brand to
improve their credibility within the market –
especially on social media.
“So we are looking at a huge recovery
from the loss of lead generation which
was, prior to ZEROFox, being redirected to
other websites that are impersonating Azizi
Developments and dropping a lead there,
rather than have it come to us.” He added
that the solution provides crucial visibility,
stating: “You can’t protect what you
can’t see.”
Customers are also more satisfied with the
interaction with the brand, social media
leads are no longer being missed and are
being converted into solid business and
overall brand awareness was increasing due
to a concerted effort on a single account
HE ADDED THAT THE SOLUTION
PROVIDES CRUCIAL VISIBILITY,
STATING: “YOU CAN’T PROTECT WHAT
YOU CAN’T SEE.”
The voice of content used was not unified,
the frequency was irregular and there were
too many variations of the same profile
floating around across the different social
media platforms, thus cascading mixed
messages to the end-user.
The online presence of the company was
also tainted by the presence of multiple
websites created by different stakeholders
with the intent to promote themselves as the
official representative of the brand and their
offerings. The level of service and dedication
provided was not up to the company mark
as was discovered and this led to the overall
brand image getting diluted in the eyes of
the customer.
Through the entire process it was evident
that the brand of Azizi Developments was
being tainted using social media dysfunction
and misinterpretation – which led to missed
leads. With this unified approach laid down by
Satsangi and the team at Azizi, and a closer
watch on any scattered approach outside of
the official channels, this has dramatically
changed over the past three months.
Satsangi said: “Our customers now are
being directed to our official websites, not
impersonating websites.
www.intelligentcio.com
versus a divided approach across different
social presence.
Anand Choudha, CEO and President,
SPECTRAMI, added that nearly 70% of
customers visit an organisation’s Facebook
page before making a buying decision – so
protecting brand reputation is a ‘no-brainer’
for every modern marketing team. He said:
“Identifying and removing fake or fraudulent
social accounts is now a top priority. With
ZeroFOX we have ensured that our customer
Azizi Developments company-owned social
media and online digital accounts are
protected with automated remediation to
immediately hide or remove sensitive content.”
Intelligent CIO spoke to Ankit Satsangi
further about some of the biggest regional
cybersecurity talking points.
What, in your view, are the biggest
cyberthreats faced by the region at
the moment?
In 2018 Q4 I think we are going to be
looking at a few rising attacks in phishing
and ransomware. Every company has a
certain number of vulnerabilities which can
be exploited in some way or another, so
we go with a layered approach, a layered
defence, not just a single point of defence.
Looking ahead, are there any new
threats you think are likely to
emerge or any other things security
professionals need to be aware of?
I think the threat landscape is evolving and
so is the CISO role. In the very early days a
CISO was a very technically-focused person,
a very security-focused person but it has
evolved to having a more mind-share with
the board, more involvement with the board
and talking security from more of a business
perspective and business aspect and
convincing the board why you need budgets
rather than answering questions in technical
terms as that doesn’t really make any sense,
so the CISO is now a management player.
How much of a challenge is
convincing the board that they
need to invest?
CISOs have good days and bad days. It is
somewhat of a challenge because there are
certain things that you can explain – such as
anti-virus. That’s a common term. But if we talk
about, for example, email security, we would
definitely need to portray why we need this
layer of defence and, if we don’t, what could
possibly be damaged within our organisation.
We could possibly be looking at downtime
in emails, that would lead to a certain loss of
lead generation or business disruption. So, it
definitely is a challenge, but it’s all on how you
present to the management. n
BECAUSE WE ARE IN REAL ESTATE,
WE SEE AND WE EXPECT A LOT OF
PHISHING ATTACKS TARGETING CFOS
AND OTHER C-LEVEL EXECUTIVES.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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