MarkMonitor

Type:	Privately Held
Industry:	Internet, Brand protection
Founded:	San Francisco, CA (1998)
Headquarters:	303 Second Street, Suite 800N San Francisco, CA 94107
Products:	Domain Management, Online Trademark Protection, Online Channel Protection, AntiPhishing Solutions
Employees:	180 (2008)
Revenue:	$30.0M (2008)
Website:	http://MarkMonitor.com
Key People
Faisal Shah (Chairman) Irfan Salim (CEO) Chris Bounds (COO) Ted Sergott (SVP of Eng) Kurt Wedel (SVP of Sales and Bus Dev)

MarkMonitor is an Internet based company to provide enterprise brand protection solutions and services. It was founded in 1998 and is headquartered at San Francisco, California with regional offices and operations centers in London, Boise, and New York; and Washington, District of Columbia

As of November 2010, MarkMonitor has over 509,000 Domain Name under its management and safeguard the brands of companies like Facebook and Wikimedia Foundation MarkMonitor has strategic alliances with Microsoft, Yahoo!, America Online, Inc., Kroll, The Steele Foundation, Earthlink, LexisNexis, and Anti-Phishing Working Group.

History

In 1998, Faisal Shah founded MarkMonitor in San Francisco, CA . In 2000, MarkMonitor became an ICANN accredited domain registrar.

In 2001, MarkmMnitor announced strategic alliance with Lexis-Nexis, a research solution provider company.

MarkMonitor formed strategic alliance with Eversheds, an UK based law firm, in February, 2002.

In October 2003, MarkMonitor annouced its merging with Alldomains.com, a domain registration and management providing company from California.

MarkMonitor announced participation in a comprehensive effort to stop online fraud, sponsored by the FSTC in October 2004. The other participants included USA's largest financial institutions like Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Comerica, Visa USA, ABN AMRO, KeyBank, Capital One and University Bank etc.

In 2005, MarkMonitor signed partnership contracts with AOL to develop a new initiative to protect its users against phishing.

In November 2005, it was announced that MarkMonitor, with Cyota Inc. and Internet Identity , would regularly provide information on confirmed phishing Web sites as part of efforts to help enhance the protection offered by Microsoft.

In December, 2005, MarkMonitor annouced to work with Open Technology Solutions (OTS) to provide anti-phishing and fraud protection services

In May 2006, MarkMonitor announced the closing of $12 million in venture capital investment led by Cargill Ventures.

In 2006, MarkMonitor and Sports Marketing Surveys formed alliance to protect 2006 World Cup and Olympic Winter Games Brands online. .

In October 2010, MarkMonitor acquired DtecNet Software, a global anti-piracy company for an undisclosed amount of money.

They establish and secure companies' brands . 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. MarkMonitor was the 43rd largest domain name registrar in terms of number of registered domains in 2007.

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

External Links

• MarkMonitor Corporate Website