The IT Nerd

Darktrace has today announced strong demand for its latest product release, Version 5 of its self-learning Darktrace Immune System, as customers tackle security challenges related to home working, and the new wave of sophisticated cyber-attacks.   

Requests to trial its award-winning Cyber AI technology in December 2020, when the security industry was rattled by the compromise of SolarWinds which made thousands of organizations vulnerable to infiltration, were up 40 per cent compared to December 2019. Darktrace’s customer base now numbers over 4,500 organizations, including Micron, Rolls-Royce and NHS trusts, and its headcount has recently risen to 1,500 employees.  

Darktrace is the world’s leading cyber AI company and the creator of Autonomous Response technology. It provides comprehensive, enterprise-wide cyber defense to over 4,000 organizations worldwide, protecting the cloud, email, IoT, traditional networks, endpoints and industrial systems.  

A self-learning technology, Darktrace AI autonomously detects, investigates and responds to advanced cyber-threats, including insider threat, remote working risks, ransomware, data loss and supply chain vulnerabilities.  

The company has 1,300 employees and 44 office locations, with headquarters in Cambridge, UK and San Francisco. Every 3 seconds, Darktrace AI fights back against a cyber-threat, preventing it from causing damage. 

Darktrace, the world’s leading cyber AI company, today launched Version 5 of its autonomous, self-learning Darktrace Immune System for general availability, empowering organizations to embrace the advantages of the cloud, while protecting against novel cyber-threats.  

Powered by self-learning Cyber AI, the Darktrace Immune System works by learning the normal ‘pattern of life’ of an organization, and can interrupt in-progress attacks across today’s digital infrastructure, including the cloud, email, and home office environments.  

Version 5 of the Darktrace Immune System represents a fundamental upgrade for Darktrace customers, and includes: 

• Autonomous Response for Software as a Service (SaaS) Tools  

Darktrace Antigena can take real-time action to stop in-progress attacks to cloud and SaaS tools, including Microsoft 365 and Zoom 

• Human-triggered, Automated Threat Investigations 

Cyber AI Analyst delivers automated investigations across cloud, SaaS and ICS environments, and can be triggered by humans, or third-party security tools 

• SaaS Threat Visualization  

New, intuitive visualization console for oversight of SaaS-based threats, seamlessly harmonized with other interface views 

• 100% Protection of Dynamic Workforce  

New Client Sensorsextend Darktrace’s visibility and cyber protection to all remote workers, on clients on or off VPN 

• Cloud-Native Delivery — Darktrace’s flexible delivery options include 100% cloud-hosted deployments, with AWS Marketplace 

Read more about the Darktrace Immune System Version 5 on the Darktrace blog. To hear from leading industry speakers and learn more about these new product innovations, register now for the Darktrace Cyber AI Forum. 

Darktrace, the world’s leading cyber AI company, has today announced that two of its core products have been designated Marsh ‘Cyber Catalyst’solutions. The program brings together leading cyber insurers to identify the solutions they believe most effective in reducing cyber risk.

Darktrace’s core AI threat detection technology, the Enterprise Immune System, and its AI-powered email security solution, Antigena Email, received Cyber Catalyst designation for their unique ability to combat the cyber risks facing organizations today, including ransomware and social engineering. Designated solutions can qualify for enhanced terms and conditions on cyber insurance policies offered by insurers participating in the Cyber Catalyst program, such as AXA XL, Allianz, AXIS and Beazley.

Darktrace’s Enterprise Immune System protects against novel cyber-threats by learning the normal ‘patterns of life’ of an organization, and detecting threats as they deviate from these patterns. In their evaluation, the insurers commented: “This is a unique product where machine learning/AI plays a core part in protecting, detecting, and responding to threats… [providing] a force multiplier to the security operations center.”
Darktrace’s Antigena Email is a self-learning technology that stops targeted email campaigns and impersonation attacks that evade traditional email gateways. The insurers commented: “A very novel context-based approach that asks not whether an incoming email is malicious but crucially whether it belongs – clearly valuable for organizations.”

Darktrace is the world’s leading cyber AI company and the creator of Autonomous Response technology. It provides comprehensive, enterprise-wide cyber defense to over 4,000 organizations worldwide, protecting the cloud, email, IoT, traditional networks, endpoints and industrial systems.

A self-learning technology, Darktrace AI autonomously detects, investigates and responds to advanced cyber-threats, including insider threat, remote working risks, ransomware, data loss and supply chain vulnerabilities.

The company has 1,300 employees and 44 office locations, with headquarters in Cambridge, UK and San Francisco. Every 3 seconds, Darktrace AI fights back against a cyber-threat, preventing it from causing damage.

Darktrace, the world’s leading cyber AI company, has today announced that its Cyber AI Analyst technology has won the 2021 Business Intelligence Group (BIG) Award for Innovation. The annual awards program recognizes the organizations, products and people that bring new ideas to life.

Cyber AI Analyst is the world’s first AI-powered security analyst. Using supervised and unsupervised machine learning, the technology automatically investigates threats at machine speed, producing easy-to-read security reports that can be actioned in minutes. The technology delivers a 92% time saving and currently performs over 1.4 million security investigations per week. 

In 2019, Cyber AI Analyst was responsible for automatically investigating the activity of nation-state threat group APT41, helping organizations protect themselves against the most sophisticated attacks before the attacker group had even been named.

As one truly unpredictable year comes to an end and we look ahead to 2021, questions around the future of cybersecurity in Canada are at the forefront. If this year is any indication, organizations need to prepare for a future of increasing online operations. 

World-leading Cyber AI company Darktrace has pulled together their predictions for the top cyber trends in 2021, including:

Cyber-attacks taking off in space

• A growing number of space organizations have adopted AI to autonomously defend their space infrastructure and we will see this trend grow in 2021 as cyber-attacks in space take off
• Hackers will target “trust,” using illegitimate access to computer networks not to steal data, but to subtly alter information and undermine its integrity
• We can expect attackers to launch trust attacks against businesses as well as national governments, seeking to smear business’s reputations or disrupt economic activity

 A new wave of 5G

• 5G will enable a massive increase in connectivity, emboldening hackers to launch more ambitious attacks

Internal security investigations will be performed by AI

• A mutually dependent partnership of human and AI will be the bedrock of cyber security in 2021 and beyond

What’s clear is that 2021 is going to be a year where companies have to make sure that their cyber-defenses have to be in tip top shape or they may become a statistic as well as having their company being severely impaired by threat actors.

With hopes beginning to rise around COVID-19 vaccine approval, Canadian’s should also be weary of an underlying risk arising just below the surface – cyberattacks around distribution. As you have likely seen, there are already concerns of threats gaining traction around the globe – with attacks targeting global coronavirus vaccine supply chains – calling for the need to urge cold-chain companies to remain vigilant and on high alert. IBM identified some very specific targets which illustrates that the threat is real and comes at a critical time.

Max Heinemeyer, Director of Threat Hunting for Darktrace had this to say about this attack:

2020 has seen an increase in digital supply chain attacks of this kind. Attacking the supply chain is often easier than going after the core target. This particular effort to disrupt vaccine research and development confirms that the barrier between the ‘cyber’ and ‘physical’ supply chains has all but dissolved – attacks today can start in the inbox and end up disrupting the delivery chain of a critical vaccine or service.

A single phishing attack is easy to conduct, but executing an orchestrated spear phishing campaign against high-profile targets like this shows a lot of sophistication. The attack appears broad and sophisticated – broader than typical cyber-crime campaigns that aim for quick monetization.

We can only speculate on the goals at this stage but information about the physical whereabouts of a vaccination that needs to be kept cold could be interesting for many nation states, and could potentially disrupt the cold chain.

The fact that this campaign has been ongoing for many months is concerning. Organizations need to get much better at detecting unusual digital activity at a far earlier stage, using cutting-edge defence technology – particularly artificial intelligence – across the entirety of their digital infrastructure. AI is necessary today given the sophistication and speed of the attacks that we are now witnessing, across a wide range of digital platforms and tools.

Clearly now that there is a vaccine that is close at hand, anyone involved in its distribution needs to be on guard for more of these attacks.

As we near Black Friday and Cyber Monday, widely recognized as one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year, consumers and businesses alike are prepping for the inevitable influx of online shopping brought forth by the past year of increased remote work and social distancing. The need for online operations to run smoothly is greater and so is the need for organizational data to stay secure from cyber threat.

David Masson, Director of Enterprise Security, Darktrace had this to say:

We are now battling attackers that understand their victims’ business models extremely well – using this knowledge to hit where, and when, it hurts the most. Black Friday is typically a busy and important day for retail, but now with increased pressure on online shopping, hackers are preparing attacks to profit from this and take advantage.

Hackers are using ransomware to not just disrupt the cyber realm, but also to grind organizations to a halt and interrupt critical business processes – we can expect many more of these types of attacks to hit the retail sector at the tail end of this year. At Darktrace, we’ve seen the rising trend in ransomware firsthand, and our AI has already stopped several attempted ransomware attacks across the retail sector in the past month alone. 

As the retail sector braces itself for an online shopping season like never before, with a more stretched out timeframe than just one day of deals and savings for their customers, companies must proceed with caution. Increasing their cyber defenses are critical for benefiting from strong sales and keeping their businesses operational. Artificial intelligence is already a crucial ally for the retail sector across Canada – the technology is always on, it doesn’t take breaks and it augments human defenders at a time that will make or break many retailers.

Darktrace, the world’s leading cyber AI company, has today announced that McLaren Racing is using Antigena Email to defend against sophisticated and targeted phishing emails.

McLaren Racing was founded by New Zealand racing driver Bruce McLaren in 1963. The team entered its first Formula 1 race in 1966, since when McLaren has won 20 Formula 1 World Championships, more than 180 Formula 1 Grand Prix, the Le Mans 24 Hours at its first attempt and the Indianapolis 500 three times.

McLaren Racing competes in the 2020 FIA Formula 1 World Championship with Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, and the 2020 INDYCAR Series in the US with Pato O’Ward and Oliver Askew.

With the number of COVID-19-related email attacks surging over the course of the pandemic, McLaren decided to extend its AI-based security system to protect its Microsoft Office 365 system, and safeguard its workforce from malicious emails, including the team’s drivers. Darktrace’s Antigena Email solution is critical in protecting highly sensitive data including car updates that could be at risk from phishing attacks.

Powered by cyber AI, Antigena Email is currently Darktrace’s fastest-growing product area, with its ability to prevent novel and targeted malicious emails from being delivered to the user. It works by forming an evolving understanding of ‘normal activity’ for individual email users and the email environment as a whole, and detects subtle indicators of change that traditional approaches miss. McLaren already relies on Darktrace’s cyber AI technology to protect other parts of its digital infrastructure, including cloud services, data centers, and the IoT sensors on the cars.

Darktrace, the world’s leading cyber AI company, has today announced that the Vatican Library, which holds one of the oldest and most significant collections of historical texts in the world, has selected Darktrace AI to protect it against cyber-attacks.

Founded in 1451 by Nicholas V, the Vatican Library holds invaluable documents from across history including letters from ancient figures, drawings and writings from Michelangelo and Galileo and the oldest surviving copy of the Bible.

Eight years ago, the Library embarked on a project to digitize over 80,000 of these documents in order to help preserve the content for posterity, and broaden access to new audiences and academics. As a result, however, the collections have become vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and securing their digital versions is paramount. 

The Vatican Library selected Darktrace Immune System technology to protect against a range of potential attackers that pose a risk to these priceless works and writings. Powered by AI, the technology works by forming an evolving understanding of the ‘normal’ activity within the Vatican Library’s digital systems, and detects significant changes that may indicate that a cyber-threat is emerging. On average, Darktrace Cyber AI defends against 100 security incidents every month at the Library, spotting genuine threats before they escalate into crisis.

Darktrace, the world’s leading cyber AI company, today launched Version 5 of its self-learning, self-defending Darktrace Immune System, allowing security teams to meet the novel challenges presented by more dynamic ways of working. 

Darktrace was the first to use machine learning to analyze normal patterns of work, adapt on the job, and autonomously respond when changes in employees’ behaviors introduce security risks. With flexible work, Darktrace Immune System Version 5 extends protection against insider threat, data leaks, and advanced cyber-attacks beyond office walls, with lightweight client sensors and one-click integrations to provide a holistic view. 

As the C-suite balances managing employee productivity with cyber security, organizations are also accelerating digital transformation investments to support cloud-based business and customer engagement models. Darktrace Immune System Version 5 delivers security both from the cloud and for the cloud, including new Autonomous Response for SaaS applications like Microsoft365.

Digital transformation also encompasses more automation, integration, and artificial intelligence to streamline processes, extend existing investments and augment human teams. One of the most significant advancements in these areas is Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst, which mimics world-class threat analysts to prioritize, investigate and report on top threats. Investigations can now be kicked off by threats identified by people, for example the HR department, or from third-party security tools. Incidents can now also be fed into SIEMs, SOAR, or ticketing systems.

Darktrace Immune System Version 5’s numerous innovations include:

• Extended Visibility: new ‘client sensors’ extend the Enterprise Immune System’s visibility to remote and decentralized workers, on clients on or off VPN

• Autonomous Response for SaaS: Darktrace Antigena can now take action to stop emerging threats within Microsoft 365 and Zoom

• Upgrade to Cyber AI Analyst: automated threat investigations and reporting can now be produced for Cloud, SaaS and Industrial environments, triggered on-demand by humans and third-party security tools

• Dedicated SaaS Console: new, intuitive visualization of SaaS-based threats, seamlessly harmonized with other interface views

• New One-Click Integrations – easier to integrate with a range of additional third-party security tools for telemetry, SOC workflow and active Autonomous Response integrations

• Cloud-Native Delivery – Darktrace’s flexible delivery options include 100% cloud-hosted deployments, with AWS Marketplace or AWS QuickStart