The communication attack surface is expanding

Modern attackers no longer focus solely on inboxes, they target people and the productivity systems where work actually happens. Meanwhile, the boundary between internal and external usage of tools is becoming blurrier everyday – turning the entire workplace into the attack surface. In 2025, identity compromise emerged as the single most consistent threat across the global threat landscape, as observed by Darktrace research across our entire customer base. Over 70% of incidents in the US involved SaaS/M365 account compromise and phishing or email-based social engineering, making credential abuse the single most effective initial access vector.

Despite this upward trend, investment in existing security awareness training (SAT) isn’t moving the needle on reducing risk. 84% of organizations still measure success through completion rates¹, even though completion of standard training correlates with less than 2% real improvement in risky behavior.² By prioritizing completion, organizations reward time spent rather than meaningful engagement, yet time in training doesn’t translate to retention or real-world decision-making. This compliance-first approach has left the workforce unprepared for the threats they actually face.

At the same time, attacks have evolved. Highly personalized, AI-generated campaigns now move fluidly across email, Slack, Teams, Zoom, and beyond, blending channels and even targeting systems directly through techniques like prompt injection. This new reality demands a different approach: one that treats people and the tools they use as a single ecosystem, where behavior and detection continuously inform and strengthen each other.

Only an adaptive communication security system can keep pace with the speed, creativity, and cross channel nature of today’s threats. 

Ushering in the adaptive era of workplace security

With this release, Darktrace brings together our new behavior-driven training solution with email detection, cross-channel visibility, and platform-level insights. Powered by Self-Learning AI, it delivers protection across both people and the communication tools they rely on every day, including email, Slack, Teams, and Zoom.

Each component learns from the others – training adapts to real user behavior, detection evolves across channels, and response is continuously refined – creating a powerful feedback loop that strengthens resilience and improves accuracy against today’s AI-driven threats.

Introducing: Unified training and email security for a self-improving email defense

Our brand new product, Darktrace / Adaptive Human Defense, closes the gap between human behavior and email security to continuously strengthen both people and defenses. Each user receives personalized training that adapts to their own inbox activity and skill level, with learning delivered directly within the flow of their day-to-day email interactions.

By learning from each user’s interactions with security training, it adapts security responses, creating a closed-loop system where training reinforces detection and detection informs training. Let’s look at some of the benefits.

• Reduce successful phishing at the source with contextual Just in Time coaching: Contextual coaching appears directly in real email threads the moment risky behavior is detected, so habits change where mistakes actually happen. Configurable triggers and group policies target the right users, reducing repeated errors and administrative overhead.
• Adaptive phishing simulations that progress automatically with each user: Embedded simulations vary in their degree of realism, from generic phishing to generative AI-enabled spear phishing. Users progress through the difficulty levels based on their performance to give an accurate picture of their phishing preparedness.  
• Native email security integration turns human behavior into quantified risk: The native email security integration allows engagement, links clicked, and question success signals to flow back into / EMAIL recipes and models, so detection and response adapt automatically as users learn.  
• Actionable risk and trend analytics beyond completion rates: Analytics that surface repeat offenders, high-value targets, and measurable exposure, moving beyond completion metrics to give leaders actionable insights tied to real behavior.

Learn more about / Adaptive Human Defense in the product solution brief.

Industry-first cross-channel full-message analysis for email, Slack, Teams, and Zoom

Darktrace now brings full-message analysis to Email, Slack, Teams, Zoom, and even generative AI prompts. The same leading behavioral analysis from EMAIL extends to every message, tracing intent, tone, relationships, and conversation flow across all communication activity for a complete understanding of every user interaction.

By correlating messaging and collaboration activity with email and account environments, cross-channel analysis reveals multi-domain attack paths and follows both users and threats as a single, continuous narrative – delivering better context to improve detection across the entire organization.

• Eliminate cross-channel blind spots: Detect phishing, malware, account takeovers, and conversational manipulation across email and collaboration platforms, so attackers can’t exploit Slack, Teams, or Zoom as a new entry point. Unified behavioral analysis gives security teams a coherent, single view, for no more fragmented, channel-specific gaps.
• Spot generative AI prompt injection attacks before they manipulate assistants: Dedicated models surface threats targeting corporate AI assistants – like ShadowLeak and Hashjack – before they can silently manipulate workflows, reducing risk before static filters catch up.

Learn more about Darktrace’s messaging security offering in the product solution brief.

Industry-first DMARC with bi-directional ASM and email security integration

Darktrace transforms domain protection by linking DMARC, attack surface intelligence, and email security into a single, continuously evolving workflow. Instead of treating domain authentication and exposure as separate tasks, this unified approach shows not just where domains are vulnerable, but how attackers are actively exploiting them.

• Fix authentication weaknesses faster: SPF, DKIM, DMARC configurations, and external exposure data are analyzed together, giving teams clear guidance to correct weaknesses before they can be abused. Deep bidirectional integration with attack surface intelligence reduces impersonation risk at the source.
• Accelerate email investigations: DMARC context is embedded directly into email workflows, enriching triage with authentication posture, internal/external sender lists, and seamless pivots between email and domain intelligence for faster, more accurate investigations.

Committed to innovation

These updates are part of a broader Darktrace release, which also includes:

• Innovations in cloud security with continuous Kubernetes posture management, as well as native integrations with Proactive Exposure Management (PEM) and Attack Surface Management (ASM).
• Innovations to Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation, including faster cloud incident investigations, automated and on-demand forensic data capture across hybrid environments, and open forensic coverage for third-party endpoint and XDR ecosystems.
• Introduction of a new Alerts Dashboard in the ActiveAI Security Portal, enabling unified alert triage, AI-driven incident correlation, and coordinated investigations across multiple deployments to reduce response times and operational complexity.‍
• Innovations in OT security, including Operational Overview Architecture diagrams, Operational Overview reporting, expanded ICS & IoMT device classification, and expanded OT & IIoT Protocol Coverage.
• Further updates to / NETWORK, / ENDPOINT, Cyber AI Analyst, and cross-platform products.

‍

Join our Live Launch Event on April 14, 2026.

Join us for an exclusive announcement event where Darktrace, the leader in AI-native cybersecurity, will be announcing our latest innovations, including  a demo of our new product / Adaptive Human Defense, an exclusive conversation with a Darktrace customer, and a deep dive into the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Portal.  

Register here.

‍

‍References

[1] 84% of organizations still measure security awareness training success through completion rates, a vanity metric with no correlation to behavior change. (Source:  NIST Awareness Effectiveness Study, Forrester 2025)

[2] 'Limited benefit from embedded phishing training. Using randomized controlled trials and statistical modeling, embedded training provides a statistically-significant reduction in average failure rate, but of only 2%.' Ho, G., Mirian, A., Luo, E., Tong, K., Lee, E., Liu, L., Longhurst, C. A., Dameff, C., Savage, S., & Voelker, G. M. (2025). Understanding the Efficacy of Phishing Training in Practice. Proceedings of the 2025 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

Security operations under increasing pressure

AI has accelerated both innovation and attack speed. According to Darktrace’s State of AI Cybersecurity report, 92% of security believe that AI-powered cyber-threats are forcing them to significantly upgrade their defenses. Meanwhile, while security teams are expected to protect more complex environments with limited resources.  

For Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), this challenge is amplified: delivering consistent, high quality outcomes across multiple customers and deployments without multiplying tools, consoles, or analyst workload.

Darktrace aims to address this challenge with new capabilities within the ActiveAI Security Portal s. This includes the introduction of a new Alerts Dashboard, designed to help MSSPs, and the customers they serve, operate more efficiently when triaging security alerts at scale.

From alert volume to operational clarity

Modern security teams often struggle to coordinate alerts across complex environments with multiple deployments, whether due to geography, regulation, or organizational structure.

As environments expand across regions, business units, and architectures, analysts are frequently required to log into multiple systems simply to understand what requires attention. This fragmentation slows triage, increases cognitive load, and makes it harder to deliver consistent outcomes.

The ActiveAI Security Portal addresses this challenge by providing a single, unified triage workspace that brings alerts from multiple Darktrace deployments together in one place without changing how those environments are architected.

For MSSPs, this creates a clearer operational view across customer accounts. For internal SOC teams, it delivers the same clarity across distributed enterprise environments.

Built for alert investigation across complex and multi-customer environments

The new ActiveAI Security Portal Alerts Dashboard is designed as a coordination layer, not a replacement for investigation tools.

From a single view, teams can:

• Triage alerts across connected deployments
• Assign and track investigations across analysts
• Capture notes to support clean handoffs and auditability
• Move seamlessly into deeper investigation when required

By reducing context switching and manual coordination, the dashboard helps SOC teams focus on decision making rather than navigation, improving efficiency across shifts and service tiers.

AI driven triage that reduces analyst burden

At the core of the triage workflow is Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst, which automatically performs Level 1 and Level 2 triage by grouping related activity into evolving incidents.

Rather than presenting analysts with disconnected alerts, Cyber AI Analyst builds context automatically,reducing noise and surfacing what matters most. As new events or assets are detected, incidents update dynamically, ensuring teams are always working with the most current information.

This allows analysts to prioritize effectively, respond faster, and spend less time manually correlating activity across systems.

Unified visibility for multiple deployments in a single operational queue

Many MSSPs and enterprises operate environments that are intentionally segmented by geography, regulation, or business function. The ActiveAI Security Portal respects this reality.

Alerts from multiple deployments are surfaced in a single operational queue, but incidents remain scoped to how environments are configured. Where customers use a Unified View, Cyber AI Analyst can correlate activity across submasters; where they do not, the dashboard still provides consolidated triage without forcing artificial correlation.

This flexibility makes the Alerts Dashboard valuable across a wide range of operational and architectural models.

Supporting MSSPs and complex customers alike

While the ActiveAI Security Portal is purpose-built for MSSPs managing multi-customer operations, it also delivers immediate value for customers with complex, multi-deployment environments.

Enterprise SOC teams can now triage alerts across regions or business units from one place without deploying additional infrastructure purely for visibility. In this way, the dashboard supports both outsourced and in-house security teams facing similar coordination challenges.

Continuing the ActiveAI Security Portal journey

The new Alerts Dashboard builds on capabilities introduced in the ActiveAI Security Portal in November, reflecting Darktrace’s continued focus on operational efficiency and AI-driven workflows.

Together, these enhancements bring the efficiency gains of Cyber AI Analyst and self-learning detection directly into the day-to-day work of SOC teams, making it easier to operate, scale, and deliver outcomes across increasingly complex environments.

This is not a one-off feature launch, but part of a broader evolution toward AI-native security operations.

Looking Ahead

As AI continues to reshape both the threat landscape and security operations, the ability to coordinate, prioritize, and respond efficiently will define successful SOCs.

The ActiveAI Security Portal is designed to help MSSPs and customers meet that challenge today, while providing a strong foundation for what comes next.

To learn more about availability and onboarding, contact your Darktrace partner manager.