Two years, the British International Airlines Group, which includes the national carrier British Airways, suffered a major data breach in which hackers stole the details of thousands of customers, including credit card details. Not only did the hackers exploit a known vulnerability in Javascript on the airline’s website, according to Wired, they also used a domain name baways-com which was similar to the airline’s own www.ba.com website and re-directed customers to this domain. The company was initially fined GBP 183 million but this was recently reduced to GBP 20 million on appeal.
The case shows how important it is to monitor brand names on the Internet. Many companies use trademark watching services to identify potentially conflicting new registrations of trademarks in national trademark offices. It is also possible to set up monitoring services for the use of brand names and conflicting domain names. They are relatively inexpensive and allow a brand name owner to take speedy action against potential infringers quickly and efficiently.
