Proactive Reputation Defense

Frank Tortorici

Crisis communications isn’t only for corporations hit with devastating events or spurious accusations.

Whether you’re a person of influence or simply an executive working for a public company, you must do due diligence to plan an online harassment and threat campaign to ward off reputational attacks against you as an individual.

This involves proactive and preventative measures designed to safeguard your online integrity. Online harassment is on the rise and can grow into real-life security threats. We all have our personal information online, and the danger grows with each form we fill out and each social media channel we join.

For risk management of potential crisis events or attacks, a proactive reputation management campaign should be initiated for any individual, company or non-profit organization.

This is primarily because today we exist in a polarized digital environment, where individuals and companies are easily targeted by online harassment and threat campaigns.

If a competing individual or organization, for example, has a grudge against you, it has become easy for them to build damaging narratives about you or your company and easily plan them anonymously at any place on the Internet. Sometimes they could be of a nature that could be extremely hard to counter.

Viral narratives in mainstream or alternative social media platforms can cause real reputational damage, sometimes leading to threats of physical violence.

Reputational defense requires a layered, flexible response—both reactive to threats and proactive to the conditions that allow threats to arise.

It’s always a good idea to start by managing one’s online digital footprint: the traceable data and activity that a user leaves on the Internet. A cybercriminal can get their hands on your digital information and play havoc with your reputation, bank account or both. Your digital footprint can include digital images of you and your family, online reviews, YouTube and TikTok videos and comments on social media sites. Conveyed through these channels can be your personal, financial and professional data. Online banking and online shopping add to the potential dangers of sharing too much information online.

To begin safeguarding your footprint, Google your name and see what content under your name is online. This will also help you to determine if and how many other individuals in the world use the same moniker as you.

This would be a good point to determine if you can secure a URL under your full name and reserve the right to get your domain. You should also register handles on social media platforms—even if not actively used—to control your online presence.

These are the first steps toward helping you become both more reactive to threats to your name or content and more flexible and reactive to conditions that allow threats to arise.

Most threat campaigns follow a typical pattern:

A triggering event signals the initial chaos. This could be in the form of someone using your name to post their inflammatory or dubious statements on a matter.

Then there could be a spike in online activity surrounding your name and perhaps threat statements.

At this point, you should begin measures to combat the adverse narratives and themes as they develop and as self-organized communities of interest form to perpetuate the narratives. One should act quickly because online activity can spill over into the real world at any stage. The online threat will dissipate over time but not before real damage is usually done.

In order to proactively bolster your online presence and thereby make it more secure, one should publish content regularly—quarterly or biannually—to improve SEO. This can be done by utilizing press releases and thought leadership articles to enhance your online presence.

However, there are strategic methods for managing your digital presence. It’s imperative to monitor and protect your personal brand. These include:

• Regularly search for your trademark and monitor its usage online.
• Be prepared to send cease-and-desist letters if your trademark is misused.
• Keep current with new and emerging social media platforms.
• Refresh your profiles and content periodically to maintain relevance.
• Understand that search results can vary by location and device.
• Perform searches from different IP addresses and devices to see diverse results.
• Strategically manage what content is public versus private.
• Ensure business-related content is public and personal content is appropriately secured.

It’s key to know what information surrounding your name is publicly accessible and what you can control.

Then take steps to guard your social media footprint. It’s always a good idea to delete inactive profiles and deactivate accounts temporarily or make them private if needed, especially during high-risk periods.

Make sure to check and update your privacy settings to limit content to known users. And protect all personal information by not listing your email and phone numbers on social media accounts.

For more protection, one should also not post personal details such as kids’ activities, vacations, or check-ins.

Then there are sound cybersecurity factors to consider.

• Enable two-factor authentication.
• Use complex passwords/phrases and password managers.
• Submit PII removal requests to data brokers and public online sources.

Moving beyond the preventative to reactive measures, if you do become a target, immediately save threatening content by taking screenshots and reporting all threats and components of threats to law enforcement.

Then use your experience as a learning tool for future online activity. Ask yourself: Why did the campaign arise, and what risks does it pose? Who are the actors or groups driving it?

Finding and evaluating these reasons will help diminish your online vulnerabilities. It’s also important to determine what actions you can take to monitor, mitigate, or impact the threat and potential future dangers.

For high-profile corporations and individuals, a media monitoring program may be in order.

Consider continuous monitoring of media of social media, messaging platforms and deep/dark web forums for adverse commentary.

Then take defensive action by removing offending posts or revoking the posting privileges of abusers. If possible, perform antagonist mapping and analyze common themes and timeliness of the attacks.

It’s also smart to conduct threat actor profiling by researching, identifying and assessing threats posed by online actors, including those who believe they are anonymous.

Collecting and preserving evidence is crucial for any potential legal action. It may be necessary to work with outside counsel, security advisors and public relations firms to develop strategies to counter these adverse actors and narratives.

All of this may cost a good deal, but consider the money, aggravation and insecurity you can prevent by finding the right partners to put an end to or mitigate your online safety.

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Frank Tortorici is VP of Media Relations at Marketing Maven.