MarkMonitor

Type: Privately Held Industry: Internet, Brand protection Founded: San Francisco, CA (1997) Founder: Faisal Shah Headquarters: 701 303 Second Street Suite 800N San Francisco, CA 94107 Key people: Irfan Salim (CEO) Faisal Shah (Chairman) Chris Bounds (Chief Operating Officer) Ted Sergott (Senior Vice President of Engineering) Kurt Wedel (Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development) Products: Domain Management, Online Trademark Protection, Online Channel Protection, AntiPhishing solutions Employees 180 (2008) Sales: $30.0M (2008) Website: MarkMonitor.com

MarkMonitor was founded in 1997 and has its headquarters in San Francisco(1), with regional offices and centers in London, Boise, Washington DC, and New York, and safeguard the brands of companies like Facebook (2), Google and the Wikimedia Foundation(3). They establish and secure companies' brands(4). MarkMonitor’s access to data combined with real-time prevention, detection and response, enables a more security for their companies and the customers of those companies(5). MarkMonitor was the 43rd largest domain name registrar in terms of number of registered domains in 2007(6).

Domain Management

Domain Management establishes brands online.

Domain Management Highlights:

• Ensures domains are safe. Includes security measures at the registrar level—and, security services to lock domains down to the registry level
• Establishes domain management.
• Provides domain status.
• Secures using the MarkMonitor Trademark Lookup.
• Enables domain recovery when M&A, product launches, and other events occur.
• Prevents illicit domain abuse tactics—such as cybersquatting — by using defensive domain registration to block others from exploiting domain names associated with a brand.

MarkMonitor Brand Protection™

MarkMonitor Brand Protection helps to eliminate fraudulent use of companies brands online. They have access to online data sources and monitor Internet channels to safeguard brand equity, web traffic, marketing investments, and revenue from paid search scams, unauthorized channels, counterfeit, pirated and grey market sales, false association, cybersquatting and other online threats.

MarkMonitor Brand Protection™ Highlights:

• Safeguards marketing investments by preventing pay-per-click scams, SEO manipulation and cybersquatting from diverting web traffic to unaffiliated sites or to illicit sites which associate brands with undesirable content.
• Detects abuses by monitoring online data sources—auctions, B2B/B2C exchanges, eCommerce sites, paid search, social media, message boards, and email.
• Protects revenues and profits by shutting—down sites selling grey market, pirated or counterfeit goods and reducing false warranty and customer service claims.
• Helps to prevent brand reputation erosion by defending against false association on websites and social media sites
• Pinpoints and prioritizes abuse through analytics and detection technology—scoring algorithms and matching copyrighted images.
• Enables brand protection impact by identifying high-priority brand abuse, automating enforcement measures and simplifying enterprise-wide collaboration.
• Warns customers away from infringing sites, until enforcement measures take full effect, through the MarkMonitor Trusted Brand Broadcast System™.
• Delivers results by using the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model and Managed Services.

AntiFraud Solutions

MarkMonitor’s AntiFraud Solutions protects enterprises and their customers from phishing and malware attacks. It predicts detects, blocks, monitors and shuts down phishing and malware sites.

AntiFraud Solutions Highlights:

• Provides preventive and reactive defense against phishing and malware attacks.
• Prevents attacks with an Early Warning System® and tools for uncovering frauds
• Detects attacks by monitoring and analyzing intelligence sources, including spam feeds from the top ISPs, honeypots, and desktop sensors, plus antivirus vendor partners and other industry feeds.
• Mitigates loss and brand risk with early detection and response by sharing malware and phishing alerts via the broadest fraudcasting network of ISP’s, browsers, email providers and security vendor partners
• Achieves shutdowns quickly.
• Halts complex rock phish and fast flux DNS attacks by shutting them down at the root level.
• Identifies targeted malware then shuts the sites down.
• Web portal with real-time monitoring, reports on industry-wide fraud activity, and trend reports.

Management Team

• Irfan Salim - President and Chief Executive Officer
• Charlie Abrahams - Vice President and General Manager, EMEA
• David Batista - Senior Vice President, Sales
• Paul Dagum - Chief Technology Officer
• Frederick Felman - Chief Marketing Officer
• Tom Ryden - Senior Vice President, Finance
• Trina Schnapp - Vice President, Human Resources
• Ihab Shraim - Chief Security Officer and VP, Network and System Engineering
• David Silver - Vice President, Business Development

Board of Directors

• Dave Barrett - General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners
• Stephen J. Harrick - General Partner, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP)
• Irfan Salim - President and Chief Executive Officer, MarkMonitor
• Jim Sayre - President, Cargill Ventures
• Warren Weiss - General Partner, Foundation Capital
• Susan D. Whiting - Vice Chair, The Nielsen Company
• Steven P. Bird (observer) - General Partner, Focus Ventures

Partners

• Microsoft
• Yahoo!
• America Online (AOL)
• Kroll, DtecNet
• The Steele Foundation
• Earthlink
• LexisNexis
• Anti-Phishing Working Group.

Associates

• American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA)
• Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG)
• Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG)
• Bank Administration Institute (BAI)
• Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO)
• International Anticounterfeiting Coalition (IACC)
• Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
• International Trademark Association (INTA)
• Online Trust Alliance (OTA)
• Shop.org

References

1. "MarkMonitor, Inc." Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
2. "Facebook Targeted in Spam Scam" eWeek. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
3. "Resolution:MarkMonitor" Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
4. "Nielsen's Whiting Joins MarkMonitor Board" Brand Week. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
5. "The Global Leader in Enterprise Brand Protection" Corporate Overview. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
6. "Summary of 2007" Domain Tools. Retrieved September 22, 2010.

External Links

• MarkMonitor Corporate Website

Internet Service Provider