In today’s cyber threat landscape, the risk is greatest to those with the most valuable assets; assets comprised of family, wealth, reputation, and brand.

The Internet has become a two-way window to the world.  Just as any family, high net worth families recognize the power and benefits of having the world’s information literally at their fingertips; and they acknowledge with mixed emotions sometimes their capacity for instantaneous communications and the benefit of being “so connected.”

Unfortunately, the two-way window presents unprecedented access to their personal lives.  The simple fact is that the improper use of social media and being “over exposed” due to weak privacy settings in social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare create a significant opportunity for “bad guys” to exploit this information in the worst way.

The Solution

The obvious question then becomes: “What does a high net family need to know to protect themselves; and what should they prioritize in terms of changing their online security profile?”

DigitalStakeout’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) works with high net families to meet this new need head-on.

1 ) Changing the level of visibility others have into the family online.

By scouring the websites, social networks, and the deep web, iScoutWeb™ detects everything that can attribute back to the family’s non-public personal information such as address, phone number, email, and cell phone number. DigitalStakeout works with the family to remove every listing possible for them and close relatives.

2) Managing the online reputation of the family.

iScoutWeb™ detects negative content targeting the family and immediately informs key personnel. The moment something “hits the wires,” DigitalStakeout ERT supports the family and crisis management personnel to determine the level of severity and media distribution of the event.

3) Monitoring for online mistakes which could compromise physical security.

iScoutWeb™ monitors for social media content where physical location can be “pinned” on a family member. Additionally, monitoring of support staff is conducted to assure a child’s location or schedule is not compromised. iScoutWeb™ persistently monitors for geo location exposures on on Twitter, Foursquare and other applicable social media.

PAETEC, a national service provider of telecommunications and IT services, wanted to enhance the security of its service provider infrastructure and managed security services while improving the overall security posture of their organization.

Additionally, PAETEC recognized that bots and malware pose a significant threat to its business customers and wanted to take proactive measures in reducing the surface area of risk their customers would face.

These problems, if not resolved, could dramatically affect their service quality to legitimate customers as well as the enterprise-wide risk impact of malevolent traffic being sent across its networks.  To address these concerns, PAETEC required a solution that could be deployed immediately with no downtime for personnel or infrastructure, scalable for their increased growth as well as integrated within existing network security infrastructure without extra staff or costly software or hardware.

The Solution

Analyzing PAETEC’s challenges, DigitalStakeout identified that a critical mechanism for thwarting potentially risky customers was needed within the service provider’s customer acquisition process.  DigitalStakeout deployed iScoutNetwork^™ which now enables PAETEC to evaluate potential risk of an incoming customer by evaluating their prior network reputation.

PAETEC also utilizes DigitalStakeout’s iScoutNetwork^™ on an ongoing basis to bolster adherence to their Acceptable Use Policy, which ultimately provides exceptional network resilience for their customers along with the capability to recognize and mitigate threats traversing their network.

Most importantly, with network availability and security representing a valuable cornerstone to their service offerings, PAETEC has enriched their competitive advantage by extending exceptional SLA assurance to their customers.  As a result of DigitalStakeout “watching the watchers,” PAETEC’s customers enjoy a significant increase in defense from cyber threats.

About PAETEC

PAETEC (NASDAQ: PAET) is personalizing business communications for medium and large businesses, enterprise organizations and institutions across the United States. PAETEC offers a comprehensive suite of IP, voice, data, and Internet services, as well as enterprise communications management software, network security solutions, CPE, and managed services. For more information, visit www.paetec.com.