While monitoring your brand reputation online, perhaps you have come across a few heavy terms like dark web monitoring, deep web monitoring, and so on. Yes, they are as heavy as their characters. But unfortunately, they are often overlooked by many just because they hardly know what they are.
In this article, we will pay more attention to dark web monitoring services. Keep reading!
- What Is The Dark Web?
- Dark Web VS Deep Web
- Importance Of Dark Web Monitoring For Business
- Things To Consider While Hiring Dark Web Monitoring Services
- How To Set Up And Get Dark Web Monitoring Alert?
- Steps To Monitor The Dark Web
- Types Of Data Web Alerts
- Effective Tools To Monitor The Dark Web
- How Do The Best Dark Web Monitoring Tools Work?
- The Solution
Before throwing light on why it is important to have dark web monitoring for business, it is necessary to know what is dark web monitoring and how it is different from deep web monitoring concepts.
Let us have a brief introduction to these two.
What Is The Dark Web? How Do You Define Dark Web Monitoring?
The dark web is the bottom layer of the internet where plenty of illegal activities take place every day. The tier is usually hidden from the search engines and standard browsers and can be only accessed by a special web browser. Hence, there is a minimum chance of keeping data secure in this shrouded layer of the internet.
A few crimes that frequently take place on the dark web are as follows.
- Sharing exploits and TTP.
- Data breaching and exfiltrating.
- Transferring private and confidential information.
- Planning and executing cyber attacks.
- Selling illegal data on black markets.
The nature of the dark web implies that it needs constant monitoring so as to resist the fraudsters from committing any crime like identity theft. For protecting the site from financial and reputational harm, dark web monitoring services are included in a business process.
In other words, dark web monitoring is a process to prevent sensitive data by monitoring the business information on the dark web.
Dark Web VS Deep Web – How They Are Different?
Dark web and deep web are often used interchangeably as it is assumed that these two are more or less the same thing. This is purely a wrong concept!
The deep web is referred to the non-indexed pages which require the advanced search to locate these pages. Whereas, the dark web is referred to the hidden pages that are not accessed by normal browsers but are open to infiltrate criminal communities. This implies that since the deep web is made of non-indexed pages Google search engine fails to see them but for the dark web, the pages always remain hidden as they want to.
If you can frame a picture, you can analyze that the dark web is the deeper section of the internet while the deep web lies above the dark web.
Importance Of Dark Web Monitoring For Business
Dark web monitoring services are pivotal for every business irrespective of its type and size. No matter what type of organization you belong to, you can benefit from complete security and prevent your business from identity threats through intelligence. But of course, you need to implement the right threat-preventing strategies to fight all types of threats.
We will talk about the strategies in the upcoming section. But till then, you need to learn the benefits of acquiring dark web monitoring for business.
- You can identify the occurrence of data breaching in no time. You don’t need to struggle for it and can know about your threats in advance.
- Criminals find it less likely to choose your business reputation to use your data and selling than in black markets.
- Keep your company prevented from stealing confidential data, before you know it’s gone.
- Protect your employees, clients, and high-profile individuals from being exploited on the dark web.
To enjoy all the aforesaid benefits, you need to make a habit of monitoring your business on the dark web. 24*7 monitoring can ensure 100% safety, assisting you to determine instances or any risk related to sensitive data, consumer information, key assets, and any other private information of your brand.
Things To Consider While Hiring Dark Web Monitoring Services
Finding the best dark web monitoring services is a bit challenging. Only the experts who have good knowledge in dark web monitoring services, tools, and techniques can determine the best reputation management service among the hundreds.
Are you looking for effective dark web monitoring solutions? No need to fret. Here we have listed down the key characteristics that need to be considered for better surveillance.
- Dark Web Threat Alerts: Proactive monitoring that will notify you about your stolen and compromised data. It provides you with a real-time dark web alert whenever business data is found on the dark web, instead of other parts of the internet.
- Compromised Data Tricking & Reporting: The experts will track all your private and sensitive data and provide you with a regular monthly report, displaying all necessary facts on it.
- Compromised Data Trending & Benchmarking: With this service, you can gain insights into your current threat status – whether your data is already breached or is at risk. Analyzing the risk, you get the option to create a benchmark and prevent your data against your peers.
- Supply Chain Threat Monitoring: You are getting access to monitor your supply chain, the third-party vendors, and determine whether your business is vulnerable to threat or not. This particular service is more important for businesses like law, healthcare, and different politician agencies.
- Client Management: The experts should have the potential to manage all your clients along with their data by offering them actionable intelligence. This helps to prevent potential data breaches.
How To Set Up Dark Web Monitoring And How To Get A Dark Web Alert?
Data breaching and identity theft are growing rapidly with the advancement of new technology. This has taken a new form in the dark web. However, by availing the dark web monitoring for business, you can scan the web for your compromised sensitive data along with the possible threats.
Choose any of the monitoring tools and you can set up strong surveillance for your business account. Suppose you consider Dashlane. The tool allows you to monitor up to 5 email addresses. For each email address, the tool runs the scanning process on the dark web.
Initially, Dashlane finds the basic information related to the email address. These include username and password, credit card numbers, social security numbers, contact details, postal address, and IP address.
Once the initial scan is completed, the results are submitted to the respective email ID. In case, any threat is marked, a dark web alert is sent on the identity dashboard. The alert will advise you to change your password in order to keep your data safe. Make sure you activate your email address to get the dark web alert on time.
Steps To Monitor The Dark Web
Monitoring your business on the dark web is not so difficult. If you are aware of the right steps, you can easily generate good results from it. Although the dark web monitoring steps vary for different tools, you can check out one to get a basic idea of it.
Here we have listed down the steps for Dashlane.
- Open the dark web monitoring page from the left panel.
- On the right-hand side, click on the “Add Email” option to activate your email address for the account.
- Leave your email address on the bar and tap on “Send Activation Link”. A link will be sent to the registered email address and on the monitored email address list “Pending verification” will be displayed.
- Login to your email address and find the email sent by Dashlane. Use the link and verify your email address within 24 hours.
- Clicking the link, you will be directed to a page asking you to confirm the request. The moment you confirm you will be taken to a page within dark web scan results.
- The dark web scan results display the number of breaches that hit your data. It will showcase the number along with the type of data scanned.
- You can even choose “Scan another email” to perform another search on another email ID.
Types Of Data Web Alerts
If your email address is linked to the account and properly activated, you get a chance to collect all your alerts on various topics. The alerts are listed below.
- Financial account takeover.
- Social security number.
- Change of address, phone number.
- Court records.
- Social network.
- Identity validation.
- Dark web internet surveillance.
- Sex offender registry.
- Detection of credit cards and non-credit loans.
- Compromised employee accounts.
- Compromised company servers.
- Trademark and copyright violation.
- Detection of phishing attempts.
Monitoring the dark web on the entire world-wide-web is definitely a need when you are serious about your company’s data security. Accessing the dark web and getting hands-on with the dark web alert is thus a strong necessity for every business.
Effective Tools To Monitor The Dark Web
The dark web is accessed by pedophiles and fraudsters to commit several criminal activities. Hence, monitoring them and protecting the company from those unexpected threats is too essential.
Now, since the dark web is not at all accessed by search engines, it is too hard to keep track of the threats that hide in the dark web. Hence, the demand for the best dark web monitoring tools. The following are some popular tools that are usually used to monitor the dark web.
- Echosec Beacon: The tool tracks the dark web to determine the compromised account credentials and user information along with financial data.
- SpyCloud ATO Prevention: The tool uses a threat intelligence database from Dark Web scans to prevent account takeover.
- Digital Shadows Searchlight: The tool ensures complete protection to the corporate body by monitoring the threats hidden in the dark web layer.
- ACID Cyber Intelligence: The tool scans all possible sources of illegal data and threats and ensures a threat intelligence service. Comprehensive searches are initiated to determine potential risks and upcoming threats.
- Alert Logic Dark Web Scanner: One of the premium dark web monitoring solutions is using this scanner that prevents taking over of the account.
- Digital Stakeout Scout: The tool comes with a data loss prevention system and threat-protection system. It uses a dark web scanner to track the entire dark web.
- Dashlane Business: The dark web monitoring tool offers a comprehensive password protection system to prevent the credentials.
- Dark Owl Vision: The product suite comes with a large database containing darknet monitoring content. It prevents the organization from finding leaked data and compromised sensitive data.
How Do The Best Dark Web Monitoring Tools Work?
The tools are smart enough to offer the best dark web monitoring services to clients. when you are choosing any of the above-mentioned tools, you are completely under surveillance. You can track the entire dark web and determine the threats for the information you want to monitor.
Just have a look at the things you can monitor using such tools.
- Web pages
- Blogs
- Forums
- Chatboxes that are publicly accessed
- Peer-to-peer sharing networks
- Social media feeds
- Web services
- Web servers
- File transfer
- Bulletin boards
- Malware samples
It doesn’t matter what information you want to monitor for your company, you can gain proper dark web monitoring solutions. For every tool, you need to create an account with your email ID. Hence, whenever a threat is tracked, the tool will send you an alert on your email address along with the steps that need to be performed to ensure identity safety. The types of alerts are already mentioned in the previous section.
The Solution
When you are desperate about your brand reputation and want to maintain a proper image across your online platform, you must invest in internet monitoring. It is nothing uncommon if your site experiences data threats. Instead, you need to be cautious about all these unexpected actions and prefer dark web monitoring solutions to local instances of sensitive data. This will help you protect your key assets, private and confidential information, along consumer data.
No user wants to share his data with a site that possesses the least security solution. Hence, opting for the best dark web monitoring services is always a greater approach.
