How The Union Co-operative Bank protects its brand with Hunto AI
Industry
Urban Co-operative Banking
Scale
Multi-branch regional bank serving retail and MSME customers
Product used
Hunto AI Brand Monitoring and Takedown
Location
India
About Client
The Union Co-operative Bank serves individuals and small businesses through a branch network and digital channels such as mobile banking, UPI, IMPS, net banking, and publicly accessible service pages. Community trust and local reputation are central to growth. Those same strengths attract impersonators who attempt to hijack the bank’s name in order to trick customers and vendors through look-alike domains, fake support handles, and search ads that misdirect users.
Challenges faced
Impersonation around high-intent moments
Scammers launched look-alike websites and social profiles during interest-rate promotions, festival campaigns, and product pushes. Popular lures included KYC revalidation, refund or settlement confirmations, UPI and OTP harvest, and card block or unblock requests.
Hijacked search and social
Malicious paid placements and SEO-poisoned pages intermittently appeared above official links for queries like net banking login, customer care, and loan subsidy information. On social media, imposter accounts replied below genuine posts with phishing links and “priority help” numbers.
Fragmented takedown workflow
Each registrar, host, social network, app store, and ad network demanded different proofs, legal hooks, and submission formats. With screenshots scattered across inboxes, time to takedown was inconsistent and mirror sites often resurfaced.
RBI audit readiness and third-party oversight
Supervisory reviews expected evidence of continuous monitoring, incident reporting, and oversight of vendor-managed public assets. Legal and audit teams needed artifact-rich case files that could be exported and shared quickly with management committees and partners.
Customer support strain and trust risk
Fraud waves spiked ticket volumes and branch escalations. CX staff lacked bank-approved scripts and a public reference listing verified channels, which slowed resolutions and confused customers.
Hunto AI Solution
Objective: detect and remove impersonation infrastructure across domains, social, job boards, messaging, and ads while producing audit-grade proof aligned to RBI expectations, without expanding headcount.
Rapid onboarding and pattern seeding
We ingested official domains, verified social handles, app IDs, and search terms. Hunto AI seeded a banking-specific lure library covering KYC revalidation, UPI and OTP harvest, refund and settlement confirmation, card block or unblock, and fee-collection scams.
Always on brand monitoring
Look-alike domain hunting using fuzzy matching, homograph checks, passive DNS, and page similarity to catch suspicious registrations early
Social, job-board, and messaging sweeps for imposter support handles, fake recruitment, and vendor-fee frauds
Search and ads watchlists that flag malicious paid placements and SEO traps intercepting branded queries during traffic peaks
Agentic takedown execution with evidence
Auto-assembled case files per incident that contain screenshots, WHOIS and ASN, hosting metadata, time-stamped crawls, link graphs, and platform-policy citations
Platform-native notices to registrars and hosts, social platforms, job boards, app stores, and ad networks to lift first-notice acceptance
Post-removal re-scans to map mirrors and connected infrastructure so clusters are suppressed, not only single URLs
Customer safety and CX enablement
Paste-ready Official Channels microsnippet for web and app listing verified URLs, app IDs, and handles with a simple how-to-report flow
Short scripts for branches and the contact center to standardize verification, escalation, and customer education
Reporting and governance
Executive dashboard showing detections, median Time to Takedown, first-notice acceptance, scam survival time, and a directional proxy for revenue and trust protection
Monthly evidence archives packaging all case files for internal audit and supervisory interactions, with vendor ownership labels to support third-party oversight
Impact
“We replaced ad-hoc screenshot chasing with a measurable, repeatable process. Fraud pages come down faster, customers receive clear guidance, and audit questions are answered with a single export.”
– Head of IT and Operations, The Union Co-operative Bank
Measured outcomes in the first 120 days suitable for publication
Scale
- 170+ abusive assets detected across domains, social, job boards, and ads
- Approximately 77% removed on first notice, with most remaining cleared after one follow-up
Velocity
- Median Time to Takedown under 24 hours for registrar and hosting cases
- Median Time to Takedown under 12 hours for social and job-board listings after evidence submission
- Malicious paid placements reported within 2 to 6 hours during campaign peaks, reducing diversion from branded queries
Customer support relief
- Visible drop in scam-related enquiries after Official Channels and CX scripts went live
- Fewer repeated investigations due to standardized evidence packs and closure templates
Governance
- Evidence-ready, time-stamped case files shortened responses to internal audit and supervisory requests on external monitoring and incident handling
- Clear oversight of vendor-managed public assets during third-party reviews
How Hunto AI maps to RBI and national cyber expectations
RBI Cyber Security Framework in Banks (June 2, 2016)
- Continuous surveillance and incident response. Hunto AI’s 24×7 external monitoring and alerts feed SOC processes and incident logs.
- Phishing and social-engineering readiness. Brand Monitoring detects real-world impersonation and produces the evidence chain for response and reporting.
- Stakeholder awareness. Official Channels guidance and CX scripts operationalize customer education that supervisors expect to see.
RBI Outsourcing of IT Services Directions, 2023
Governance and oversight for vendor-managed public assets. Hunto AI labels vendor ownership, tracks takedown performance, and provides archives to support audit rights and periodic service-provider reviews.
CERT-In Directions, May 2022
Report specified cyber incidents within six hours and retain logs in India. Hunto AI’s time-stamped artifacts and case timelines align with incident logging and timely reporting when phishing, identity misuse, or fake apps are involved.
Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023
Reasonable security safeguards and breach notification as prescribed. By suppressing impersonation infrastructure early and documenting actions, Hunto AI strengthens due diligence and breach-prevention posture.
Why Hunto AI worked for a regional co-operative bank
Speed with proof
Agentic evidence assembly and platform-native submissions improved first-time acceptance and reduced removal cycle time.One console for lean teams
Detection, takedown, mirror hunts, and CX guidance ran in a single workflow without adding headcount.Compliance and security together
Evidence archives, month-over-month trendlines, and vendor visibility map cleanly to RBI expectations while cutting real fraud in the wild.
About Hunto
Hunto AI quantifies external cyber and brand risk and resolves it automatically. Brand Monitoring and Takedown detects impersonation across domains, social, job boards, messaging, and ads, then executes removals with evidence that stands up to scrutiny. Banks can add Attack Surface Monitoring to consolidate external hygiene in one platform.
Protect customers and brand trust while staying audit ready.
Request a no integration Brand Abuse Snapshot and receive an evidence ready takedown pack plus a 30 day suppression plan aligned to RBI expectations.