Cloudbrink’s legal issues shine spotlight on growing field of reputation management – News

The ongoing legal saga surrounding Cloudbrink Inc. involves allegations of fraudulent conduct that have drawn attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice — and in the midst of this turmoil, the company has pursued a strategy to elevate its online reputation and burnish the image of Chief Executive Prakash Mana.

News has learned that earlier this year Cloudbrink formed a business relationship with Blue Ocean Global Technology, a New York-based marketing agency that promotes itself as “your brand and reputation management partner.”

The marketing agency’s engagement comes on the heels of a lawsuit brought by Cloudbrink co-founder Subbu Ponnuswamy against Mana and the company’s board of directors in December. The allegations include use of fraudulent “customer quotes, invoices and purchase orders” and an orchestrated “illusion of success that was then shared with the Board and current and prospective investors.”

Blue Ocean’s work on behalf of Cloudbrink, a high-performance connectivity and security service provider, includes an interview with Mana posted on its website, and it maintains a personal webpage for the Cloudbrink executive. Cloudbrink has also been the subject of positive reviews posted on Google LLC in recent months.

Google reviews for Cloudbrink included testimonials that highlighted the “product’s reliability, ease of setup and helpful support team.” Coincidentally, names associated with the posted Google reviews matched those listed on the leadership page or affiliated as bloggers for an organization called Girl Power Talk, whose co-founders are Sameer Somal and Rachita Sharma, top executives of Cloudbrink’s reputation management partner Blue Ocean.

Within 24 hours after News sought comment from Cloudbrink and Blue Ocean about these Google reviews, they were removed. Here is a screenshot of the postings before they disappeared:

Cloudbrink has actively promoted its relationship with Girl Power Talk in recent months. The company issued a press release in September announcing the donation of a complimentary license for its high-performance secure access service, and recently posted a YouTube video that highlighted the partnership.

Blue Ocean did not respond to an inquiry from News. A spokesperson for Cloudbrink did not provide News with a statement from the company in response to a request for comment.

Control over online information

Cloudbrink’s engagement with Blue Ocean reflects the growing influence of the secretive online reputation management field. The reputation management software market alone has been valued at $5.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at an annual rate of 13% between now and 2031.

“This is absolutely a growth industry,” Adam Holland, project manager at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said in an interview with News for this story. “There’s always going to be a market for people who want or need to control information online.”

Company executives encountering adverse headwinds in the press or social media are often the targets of unsolicited communications from reputation management firms who advertise their services. One company executive, who preferred to remain anonymous, shared these “pitches” with News. In one solicitation, the firm promised to “put this negative content in the past – where it belongs,” and another pledged that it would “completely remove negative news articles from the Internet.”

The focus of the reputation management business has shifted in recent years, according to Ambuj Kumar, chief executive officer of Simbian Inc., a provider of online security products and services.

“Reputation management started with primarily monitoring social media,” Kumar said in an interview with News. “Imagine being a small restaurant owner or an executive in high tech and receiving an anonymous post. Over time, though, the services have grown from being reactive to proactively managing the online presence.”

Removing negative press

This proactive approach extends to controlling the media as well. News has itself been the target of an attempt to remove a story about the Cloudbrink lawsuit published last December. The media firm was notified in early October of a “takedown request” for its Cloudbrink story, alleging plagiarism. It was filed with Google under provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA, a law passed by Congress in 1998 that was designed to protect against online content rights violations.

The DMCA filing against News’s story was created using a backdated article technique. The fraudulent notice sender created a copy of the original story, backdated it and posted it in a Tumblr link under a fictitious author’s name. When Google received the DMCA request, it verified the backdated content and blocked the legitimate story from online search.

News filed a counter notice with Google, presenting evidence of the fraud. Google has reinstated News’s story on Cloudbrink as originally published in December.

Fraudulent DMCA takedown notices using the same technique on Tumblr were also submitted against SFGate, co-owned along with the San Francisco Chronicle by Hearst Publishing, seeking to remove its story on Cloudbrink. The SFGate story has remained searchable on Google.

News reached out to both Google and Tumblr for comment on the DMCA “fake takedown” process. Google did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Automattic Inc., which acquired Tumblr in 2019, issued the following statement:

“At Automattic we are keenly aware of the various ways that bad faith actors abuse the notice and takedown process of the DMCA to silence critics or have controversial material removed from the internet. This is an issue that we have written about extensively in our Transparency Report and accompanying blog.

While other platforms automatically remove content upon receipt of a takedown notification, we take great care to protect our users from fraudulent notices by scrutinizing them for abuse and pushing back where appropriate. We have taken – and won – legal action against complainants for abuse of the DMCA. We do not condone or permit the use of any of our services for the submission of false copyright claims.”

DMCA under scrutiny as requests grow

Google currently controls nearly 90% of the global online search market and the number of DMCA requests for content removal that are submitted to Google annually has grown at an astounding rate. According to the Google Transparency Report, rights holders have asked Google to remove over 10 billion “copyright infringing” URLs from search results since the inception of DMCA in 1998.

Google began processing DMCA takedown requests at a rate of a few million per year in the 2000s. That swiftly rose to 1 billion in 2016, but the implementation of anti-piracy algorithms slowed the pace of requests. However, in part driven by growing interest in reputation management, the volume has accelerated again and Google now reports that it is handling DMCA takedown requests at a record rate of 2.5 billion per year, which equates to about 5,000 per minute.

Cloudbrink’s engagement of Blue Ocean to improve its online image offers just one example in a sea of activity by companies seeking to shape the online narrative. DMCA is one of a host of tools available to reputation management firms seeking to deliver for their clients.

The U.S. Congress held hearings in 2020 to discuss reform of DMCA. Very little has happened since then.

“There are always calls to reform the DMCA from various sides,” Holland told News. “Many people are thinking about that. Fundamentally, this is a question of scale. Where would you or anyone like the see the balance struck?”

Image: Microsoft Designer