Many organizations have implemented email authentication and hardened their owned domains against abuse. But a more exposed and less controlled surface remains: the brand.
With the ease and efficiency of AI tools, brand impersonation has become a successful tactic for bypassing technical controls and targeting users directly. While email authentication protocols like DMARC can block exact-domain spoofing, they do little to stop attackers from registering lookalike domains, mimicking brand visuals, and launching near-identical web experiences designed to deceive. These attacks are hard to detect and often succeed on appearance alone — a costly blind spot that, in 2024, led to nearly $3 billion in lost consumer revenue from brand spoofing (source: PYMNTS).
Defending against this threat requires organizations to look beyond their owned infrastructure. As attack methods evolve, protection must extend to the broader public-facing surfaces where their brand lives and where it is increasingly being weaponized.
To address this challenge, Red Sift has expanded its partnership with Cisco. Red Sift Brand Trust now joins Red Sift OnDMARC within Cisco’s domain protection offering, enabling organizations to protect both their owned domains and the broader landscape of lookalike threats targeting their brand online.
By bringing Red Sift Brand Trust into Cisco’s security stack, we’re putting specialist AI back in defenders’ hands—automating the hunt, classification, and takedown of threats before users are deceived. Together, we give enterprises the same confidence across their entire public presence that they already enjoy with OnDMARC and Cisco.”
Rahul Powar
Co-founder and CEO, Red SiftLookalike domains: The low-effort, high-impact tactic behind modern brand impersonation
In 2023, Red Sift partnered with Cisco to make OnDMARC available through Cisco’s security portfolio. This collaboration marked a significant step in scaling access to domain-based protection across a broader set of organizations. But domain protection is only part of the picture.
Once exact-domain spoofing is neutralized, attackers do not give up — they adapt. Lookalike domains offer a path of lower resistance: variations that resemble legitimate domains closely enough to mislead users, evade basic filters, and host phishing infrastructure that operates in plain sight.
Individually, these domains may appear low-risk or insignificant. But in aggregate, they represent a vast and constantly shifting threat surface. Anyone can register hundreds of lookalike domains in minutes, and attackers often cycle through them faster than defenders can respond. This creates an asymmetric challenge: defenders must monitor and triage an expanding pool of potential threats, while attackers only need one domain to succeed.
Red Sift Brand Trust equips teams to manage lookalike risk
Brand Trust was built to give security teams the visibility and tools they need to identify and act on threats that leverage brand impersonation. It continuously monitors the open internet to detect domains designed to imitate a legitimate organization’s identity and provides the operational workflows needed to mitigate them efficiently.
The platform offers a range of capabilities designed to eliminate brand impersonation attacks as quickly as possible:
- Internet-scale lookalike detection, identifying domains that closely resemble legitimate brand domains using visual, phonetic, and character-level analysis.
- AI-powered brand asset detection, flagging websites that replicate branded imagery, copy, and layout to deceive users.
- Infrastructure-level intelligence, including IP ownership, location, and more, to assess risk and prioritize response.
- First-of-its-kind AI agent that mimics human review to classify lookalike domains and highlight takedown candidates with speed and confidence. Read how it works.
- Integrated takedown workflows, allowing teams to escalate and resolve confirmed threats without delay.
Brand Trust enables teams to operationalize defense against impersonation with clarity, context, and control.
Integrated email and brand protection through Cisco
Cisco first partnered with Red Sift to bring OnDMARC to its customers, selecting the solution for its ability to handle complex enterprise deployments and its seamless fit within the Cisco ecosystem.
Today, global enterprises across industries, including retail, finance, pharmaceuticals, aviation, and luxury goods, rely on this solution to stop exact-domain spoofing at scale.
Now, with the addition of Brand Trust, that protection goes further. Organizations can monitor the open internet for lookalike domains and other impersonation threats that DMARC alone cannot detect, and take action before they result in compromise or reputational harm.
This expansion marks a necessary evolution in how domain and brand protection is delivered. As the perimeter shifts beyond infrastructure to include a brand’s full public presence, Cisco and Red Sift are equipping security teams with the visibility, control, and confidence they need — all within a platform they already trust.
To learn more about Red Sift or get started, please visit our dedicated Cisco page.
