The Top 7 ZeroFox Competitors for 2023
Website security is more than protecting vulnerabilities in your application, it’s also protecting the confidence your customers have that the site they’re visiting is actually yours. If a customer ever mistyped the URL for a website, they could be directed to a malicious site that is trying to steal their sensitive information.
There is a growing instance of mistyped URLs taking customers to sites that look and feel exactly like yours (including your logos and images), but are designed to commit fraud, launch malware drive-bys, or to gather information for further social engineering scams.
One step forward, two steps back
Protecting against typosquatting and phishing should be part of your overall security strategy.
This becomes especially important given the sheer volume and speed at which cybercriminals act, creating a virtual whack-a-mole of new scam sites and attack vectors.
One of the biggest challenges in fighting typosquatting and phishing is the speed of detection. Research shows learning about these sites within the first 25 hours of their appearance offers the most protection for organizations and their customers.
After that, most of the damage has already been done. As pointed out in the report, what good is taking down a phishing site within a day if it takes two weeks to learn about it in the first place? And how do you detect, track down, and remediate this issue or, even better, prevent it?
There are a variety of companies that can help with typosquatting and phishing, including one of the better known players, ZeroFox. But they’re not the only game in town.
So, here is a list of top competitors and alternatives to ZeroFox that you might take a look at for 2023.
1) Bolster
Bolster provides automated detection and takedown of phishing content and spoofed websites, and can even offer you suggestions for URLs to register that typosquatters might try and use.
Bolster uses AI-based detection to scan websites, domains, social media, app stores, and the dark web, all in real time. They scan to see if your logo and images are being used to impersonate your website, and scan search engines for malicious ads and search results.
Bolster offers a number of dashboards that allow for collaboration among your brand, fraud, and security teams. Setup time is measured in minutes, as there’s nothing to install on your end.
Scanning is automatic, and detection can occur within milliseconds, with scam sites being taken down within minutes.
2) DNStwist
DNSTwist can detect typosquatters, phishing attacks, fraud, and brand impersonation URLs. It has a website permutation engine that creates variations of your domain and then checks if those URLs are in use. DNSTwist offers two versions, a command-line Linux-based installation or, if “you’re in a hurry”, a browser-based version.
Although the CLI-based program can generate millions of URL permutations, it limits itself to those “very close to the original one” because of resource use.
Once the scan is complete, the returned data is structured as an easily processed list of dictionaries. The web version can export the results to a JSON or CSV file for your review and use.
DNSTwist can also check for rogue mail servers that attempt to intercept emails that have been sent with a typing error in the address.
While DNSTwist generates a list of fraudulent websites, it does not do remediation.
3) DNSlystics
The DNSlystics research tool allows you to track down information about a URL, such as IP, geolocation, DNS, and MX records. It also facilitates reverse lookups, such as IP and nameservers, as well as domains sharing the same Google Adsense or Analytics IDs.
Monitoring is done via keywords, such as your trademark, brand name, product name, or any other keyword string. Thus, search results will be only as good as your queries. DNSlystics allows you to create searches, but does not automatically generate URL permutations to check for alternative spellings of your domain.
DNSlystics offers automated brand monitoring services, sending an email alert when it detects a new domain containing the keyword string noted above. Its DNS Alerts sends an email when an IP address, mail server, or name servers for your domain is added, changed, or removed.
Scans for both services are conducted every 24 hours, and IP/DNS data is refreshed every 30 days. DNSlystics does no remediation, and it is available in both ad-supported and paid versions.
4) DNSRazzle
DNSRazzle is another tool to detect typosquatting and brand impersonation domains. It uses the DNSTwist engine to generate domain variations and then checks to see if those domains are in use. DNSRazzle can also detect phishing and brand impersonation sites by creating screenshots of the discovered domains and comparing them to your original domain.
DNSRazzle saves output data as a text file, and screenshots are put into a dedicated screenshot folder. DNSRazzle does not do any remediation.
5) OWASP Domain Protect
OWASP Domain Protect is used to prevent takeover of your website subdomains by continually scanning for DNS records vulnerable to takeover. Cybercriminals often use subdomains to host malware, harvest credentials, and generally damage your reputation.
When OWASP detects a vulnerable subdomain, the program alerts you via email or slack so you can take action. OWASP Domain Protect does not detect typosquatting, phishing, or similar websites or actions and, therefore, offers no remediation of any issues discovered.
6) PhishTank
PhishTank is a community-based phish information clearing house where registered users can submit, verify, track, and share phish data. Submitted phishing sites are voted on by users as to whether they believe the URL is a phish or not, which can take some time to finalize..
While new user registration is closed for the foreseeable future, you can still query the database to check if the community has information on a specific URL. Because it’s now an information repository only, it offers no direct protection nor does it perform any remediation.
7) VirusTotal
VirusTotal aggregates a variety of online scan engines and antivirus products submitted by contributors. These security vendor data sources allow you to submit suspect URLs or files to check for known security issues, including issues your anti-virus software may have missed.
VirusTotal is available as a browser-based tool for manually submitting URLs, but you can also install it locally. An API is available for automating submission and scanning of URLs, and outputs the results via JSON. It offers no remediation capabilities.
Conclusion
Bolster.ai, ZeroFox, and others are helping companies combat major threats to website security that can damage customer confidence and lead to fraud, malware drive-bys, and social engineering scams. These solutions offer a range of tools and services including automated detection and takedown of malicious content wherever it may be hosted.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Bolster Blog authored by Bolster Research Labs. Read the original post at: https://bolster.ai/blog/zerofox-competitors/
