Understanding Digital Risk Protection

What is digital risk protection?

Digital risk protection (DRP) involves monitoring and mitigating threats to an organization’s digital assets across public, deep, and dark web channels. It helps protect against cyber risks by providing:

• Brand protection: Monitors for misuse of brand names, logos, and reputational threats across the web, including social media and the dark web.
• Fraud prevention: Identifies phishing campaigns, counterfeit websites, and unauthorized apps targeting customers or employees.
• Data leak detection: Detects exposed sensitive information such as credentials, intellectual property, or customer data, on the dark web or unsecured public sources.
• Threat intelligence: Provides early warning of threats and emerging risks by tracking adversaries; tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs); and malicious indicators online.
• Executive and VIP protection: Protects high-profile individuals from targeted attacks, impersonation, and personal information leaks.

DRP offers contextual insight into underground forums, shedding light on threat actors, their tactics, and their methods for executing malicious campaigns. By combining human expertise, streamlined processes, and advanced technology, DRP proactively mitigates threats by taking down harmful content or blocking malicious activities.

Why is digital risk protection important?

DRP is essential because it proactively monitors and mitigates external threats that traditional security solutions often overlook, such as risks arising from the deep and dark web. By continuously monitoring for potential attacks, brand misuse, data leaks, and emerging threats, DRP helps organizations safeguard their digital assets, maintain customer trust, and mitigate financial and reputational damage before risks escalate. It enhances an organization’s overall cybersecurity posture by offering early threat detection and response before attacks reach the internal network.

Adversaries are no longer breaking in — they’re logging in with stolen credentials. According to the CrowdStrike 2025 Global Threat Report, 79% of cyberattacks observed in 2024 leveraged malware-free methods for initial access, such as phishing or purchasing credentials on the dark web. This shift to credential-based attacks is designed to bypass traditional security measures, highlighting the need for advanced detection strategies that go beyond the network perimeter.

Tactics like phishing through typosquatted domains and the sale of credentials on underground forums demand that security teams raise their defenses by expanding detection capabilities and monitoring external threats to stay ahead of these evolving attacks.

What are the benefits of digital risk protection?

DRP provides security teams deep visibility into cybercriminal activity, enabling them to mitigate threats before they escalate. By combining continuous monitoring with integrated response workflows, DRP allows analysts to detect and disrupt risks targeting employees, sensitive data, and brand reputation. Ultimately, DRP helps prevent dark web threats from evolving into costly breaches, reduces the likelihood of financial losses and reputational harm, and enhances an organization’s cybersecurity posture by addressing external threats proactively.

Who can benefit from digital risk protection?

DRP benefits a wide range of stakeholders, including:

• Enterprises and corporations: Protects against brand misuse, data leaks, and cyber threats, reducing financial and reputational damage.
• Security teams: Provides tools for proactive threat monitoring and early detection, allowing for more effective incident response and risk mitigation.
• Legal teams: Gathers evidence for litigation, supports cyber insurance claims, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and protects intellectual property.
• Executives and high-profile individuals: Guards against personal threats such as doxxing, impersonation, and targeted attacks.
• Financial institutions: Helps prevent fraud and secure sensitive customer data by monitoring for phishing attacks, credential theft, and dark web activity.
• Healthcare organizations: Safeguards patient data and prevents breaches by detecting threats targeting sensitive health information.
• Retailers and eCommerce businesses: Defends against counterfeit goods, payment fraud, and attacks aimed at customer accounts and transactions.

Overall, any organization with valuable digital assets or sensitive data can benefit from DRP to minimize external cyber threats.​

Proactive Threat Monitoring Strategies for Digital Risk Protection

Digital risk protection focuses on identifying and mitigating external threats that, while not directly within an organization's IT infrastructure, pose significant risks if left unaddressed. DRP strategies typically include:  

• Dark web monitoring: Scanning forums, marketplaces, and sites for stolen credentials, data leaks, and cybercrime discussions.
• Social media monitoring: Tracking for brand impersonation, phishing campaigns, or fraudulent posts that could harm reputation or customers.
• Domain and typosquatting detection: Monitoring for fraudulent domains mimicking the organization’s website to prevent phishing attacks.
• Threat actor Intelligence: Gathering intelligence on cybercriminal groups, their TTPs, and activities across underground forums to predict potential attacks.
• Phishing and malware campaign monitoring: Detecting ongoing or emerging campaigns by analyzing malicious URL patterns, email addresses, and file hashes.
• Brand and reputation monitoring: Scanning for unauthorized use of logos, trademarks, or names, especially in malicious contexts like scam campaigns.
• Data breach and credential leak detection: Monitoring paste sites and hacking forums for exposed credentials or sensitive data.
• Fraudulent app detection: Monitoring app stores for counterfeit or malicious apps impersonating the organization.

What’s required to run a digital risk protection program?

Running a DRP program requires a combination of technology, skilled personnel, and defined processes. Key elements include:

• Threat intelligence tools for aggregating and analyzing external data.
• Monitoring systems to detect brand misuse, phishing, and data leaks.
• Alerting and incident management workflows to respond to threats efficiently.

Organizations also need security analysts to interpret threat data, intelligence specialists to track adversaries, and incident response teams to mitigate threats. Cross-department collaboration and compliance with privacy regulations further enhance DRP effectiveness.

For organizations lacking in-house resources, managed DRP services provide a practical alternative.

Is a managed DRP service right for you?

Many security teams lack the resources or expertise to fully manage a DRP program. Managed services can handle the complexity of monitoring and mitigating external threats, such as brand misuse or employee-targeted attacks. These services:

• Set up tailored monitoring for specific risks.
• Deliver timely warnings and actionable insights.
• Enable your team to focus on core responsibilities while reducing the burden of threat mitigation.

CrowdStrike’s digital risk protection offerings

The CrowdStrike Falcon® Adversary Intelligence Recon feature is a core component of CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence suite, designed to proactively identify and mitigate external threats before they impact an organization. Recon specializes in hunting cyber risks across the dark web, criminal forums, and other underground channels. Under this umbrella, CrowdStrike offers two powerful solutions:

CrowdStrike Falcon® Adversary Intelligence Recon

Falcon Adversary Intelligence Recon delivers actionable insights into external threats by continuously monitoring a wide array of hidden sources, such as deep web forums, marketplaces, and data leak sites. Key capabilities include:

• Threat intelligence: Detects risks related to brand impersonation, credential theft, and other forms of digital threats.
• Fraud prevention: Enables security teams to identify fraudulent domains, malicious posts, and leaked data.
• Automated alerts: Tracks and prioritizes risks based on criticality, empowering teams to respond swiftly to emerging threats.

By providing real-time insights, Falcon Adversary Intelligence Recon equips organizations with the tools needed to protect against cyber threats and maintain a strong security posture.

CrowdStrike Falcon® Adversary Intelligence Recon+

Recon+ builds on the robust capabilities of Falcon Adversary Intelligence Recon by incorporating a managed service component. With Recon+, organizations gain access to CrowdStrike’s expert threat analysts who actively monitor and mitigate risks on their behalf. Key features include:

• Comprehensive monitoring: Analysts track underground forums, social media, and data leak sites in real time, alleviating the burden of external threat tracking for internal teams.
• Personalized reports: Delivers tailored insights into relevant threats, along with actionable recommendations to address them.
• Proactive mitigation: Provides expert advice and facilitates the takedown of malicious content or impersonations to minimize risk exposure.

The seamless integration of human expertise with advanced automated threat intelligence ensures swift and precise responses to emerging threats. By leveraging Falcon Recon and Recon+, organizations can strengthen their defenses, streamline threat management, and proactively mitigate risks before they escalate.