Who Should Be Involved in Brand Protection

Key stakeholders and team members essential for effective brand protection

Effective brand protection requires collaboration across your organization. This guide identifies the key stakeholders who should be involved and explains their unique contributions to your security program.

Key Stakeholders

Knowledge Owners

These team members have the most profound understanding of your brand, its legitimate presence, and authorized activities.

Founders and C-Suite Executives

Why they’re critical: Founders and executives have the complete picture of your company’s strategic direction, partnerships, and official communications.

What they contribute:

• Know all official company accounts across platforms
• Understand authorized partnerships and affiliate relationships
• Can quickly identify unauthorized use of company branding
• Make final decisions on brand protection policies and budgets
• Approve official responses to brand impersonation incidents

When to involve them:

Program Setup

Initial brand protection program setup

High-Severity Incidents

Incidents affecting company reputation

Strategic Decisions

Brand protection investments and policies

Executive Impersonation

CEO fraud or executive social media impersonation

Marketing Teams

Why they’re critical: Marketing teams create and manage most of your brand’s public-facing presence.

What they contribute:

• Maintain comprehensive lists of all official social media accounts
• Know current and past marketing campaigns that scammers might impersonate
• Understand your brand’s visual identity, messaging, and voice
• Track influencers, ambassadors, and partners authorized to represent your brand
• Identify subtle brand guideline violations that others might miss

When to involve them:

1. Brand Monitoring Setup

   Setting up brand monitoring configurations

2. Threat Review

   Reviewing potential impersonation threats

3. Content Legitimacy

   Determining if promotional content is legitimate

4. Response Templates

   Creating response templates for brand abuse cases

5. Training

   Training other teams on brand guidelines

Security Teams

Why they’re critical: Security teams bring technical expertise and incident response capabilities.

What they contribute:

• Understand phishing tactics and social engineering techniques
• Can assess technical sophistication of threats
• Know your organization’s security tools and infrastructure
• Have established incident response procedures
• Connect brand protection to broader security strategy

When to involve them:

• Initial system setup and security configuration
• Evaluating high-risk threats
• Incidents involving credential theft or data breaches
• Integration with existing security tools and workflows
• Security awareness training programs

Development Teams

Why they’re critical: Developers understand your technical infrastructure and can help identify technical impersonation.

What they contribute:

• Know all legitimate domains, subdomains, and APIs
• Understand your application’s technical fingerprint
• Can identify fake apps, cloned websites, and API abuse
• Implement technical integrations with brand protection tools
• Develop custom detection rules or automation

When to involve them:

Asset Identification

Identifying all legitimate technical assets

API Integration

Setting up API integrations and webhooks

Custom Rules

Creating custom detection rules for technical threats

Technical Threats

Reviewing threats targeting developer communities

Threat Reporters

These team members are your eyes and ears, often the first to spot brand abuse in the wild.

Community Members

Why they’re critical: Your community often encounters scams before your internal teams do.

What they contribute:

• First-hand experience with phishing attempts targeting your users
• Real-time visibility into social media impersonation
• Ground-level perspective on what threats actually affect users
• Authentic feedback on potential false positives

How to enable them:

1. Easy Reporting

   Provide easy reporting mechanisms (dedicated email, web form, Discord channel)

2. Clear Guidelines

   Create clear guidelines for what to report

3. Acknowledge Reports

   Acknowledge and thank community reporters

4. Share Updates

   Share general updates about brand protection efforts (without sensitive details)

5. Reward Program

   Consider a bug bounty or reward program for security reports

Brand Ambassadors

Why they’re critical: Ambassadors have large followings and are frequent impersonation targets.

What they contribute:

• Report impersonation of their own accounts that reference your brand
• Identify scams targeting your community through their channels
• Help educate their followers about legitimate brand communications
• Amplify official security warnings

How to enable them:

Scam Pattern Training

Brief them on common scam patterns targeting your community

Direct Contact

Give them a direct contact for urgent reports

Official Statements

Provide them with official statements they can share

Monitor Impersonation

Monitor for impersonation of their accounts related to your brand

SOC Analysts

Why they’re critical: If you have a Security Operations Center (SOC), analysts monitor threats 24/7.

What they contribute:

• Continuous monitoring of security alerts and threat feeds
• Triage and prioritize brand protection alerts
• First-line analysis of potential threats
• Escalate high-priority incidents to appropriate teams
• Document and track incident patterns

How to enable them:

• Integrate ChainPatrol alerts into existing SOC tools (SIEM, ticketing systems)
• Provide clear escalation procedures and runbooks
• Define severity levels and response SLAs
• Give access to brand protection dashboards
• Include brand protection metrics in SOC reporting

Customer Support

Why they’re critical: Support teams interact directly with customers who may have fallen victim to scams.

What they contribute:

• Receive direct reports from users who encountered scams
• Identify patterns in customer complaints about suspicious communications
• Gather detailed information about scam tactics from victims
• Provide immediate assistance to affected customers
• Reduce impact by quickly identifying and escalating threats

How to enable them:

Training

Train them to recognize and document phishing reports

Response Templates

Create templates for customer responses about security incidents

Escalation Process

Give them a clear process to escalate brand abuse reports

Post-Incident Reviews

Include them in post-incident reviews to improve response

Threat Updates

Provide regular updates on active threats to watch for

Communications & PR

Why they’re critical: Comms teams manage public messaging during and after security incidents.

What they contribute:

• Craft official statements about brand impersonation incidents
• Coordinate public warnings about active scams
• Monitor social media and news for brand mentions related to scams
• Manage reputation during high-profile incidents
• Interface with media during major security events

When to involve them:

• Widespread scams affecting many users
• Incidents gaining media attention
• Coordinated takedown efforts that should be publicized
• Creating proactive security awareness campaigns
• Responding to public questions about brand security

Technical Implementation

These team members handle the integration and technical setup of brand protection tools.

IT Teams

Handle infrastructure and access

Engineering Teams

Build custom integrations

Support Operations

Manage support tool workflows

IT Teams

Why they’re critical: IT teams manage your organization’s technology infrastructure and access controls.

What they contribute:

• Provision access to brand protection tools for appropriate staff
• Integrate tools with existing IT infrastructure
• Manage SSO and authentication for security platforms
• Ensure compliance with IT security policies
• Handle technical troubleshooting and vendor coordination

When to involve them:

Setup

• Initial tool procurement and setup
• User access management and permissions
• SSO configuration and integration

Operations

• Network and firewall configuration for tool access
• Regular access reviews and audits
• Technical troubleshooting

Engineering Teams

Why they’re critical: Engineers can build custom integrations and automation.

What they contribute:

• Develop custom integrations using brand protection APIs
• Build internal dashboards combining multiple data sources
• Create automated workflows for threat response
• Develop custom detection logic for your specific use case
• Implement webhook handlers for real-time alerts

When to involve them:

Custom Integrations

Building integrations with internal tools

Automation

Automating repetitive brand protection tasks

Custom Reporting

Creating custom reporting or dashboards

Detection Rules

Developing organization-specific detection rules

Customer Support Operations/Engineering

Why they’re critical: Support operations teams manage support tools and workflows.

What they contribute:

• Integrate brand protection alerts into support ticketing systems
• Configure routing rules for security-related support tickets
• Build custom views and reports for support teams
• Train support staff on new tools and processes
• Optimize support workflows for efficiency

When to involve them:

• Integrating with support platforms (Zendesk, Intercom, etc.)
• Creating macros and templates for common responses
• Setting up automated ticket routing and tagging
• Building support team dashboards
• Training support staff on technical tools

Building Your Brand Protection Team

You don’t need all of these roles to get started. Start with the knowledge owners and threat reporters, then expand to technical implementation as your program matures.

Minimum Viable Team

For most organizations, start with:

1. Executive Sponsor

   One C-suite or senior leader to champion the program

2. Marketing Representative

   Someone who knows all official brand assets

3. Security Contact

   A security team member to handle technical threats

4. Community Manager

   Someone to coordinate community reporting

Scaling Your Team

As your program grows, add:

Dedicated Analyst

Full-time role for threat monitoring and response

Engineering Support

Developer time for custom integrations

Support Training

Train support team on security reporting

PR Coordination

Communications team for public incidents

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Need Help Building Your Team?

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