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November 29, 2022

How to Cut Through Cyber Security Noise

Learn how Cyber AI Analyst tackles alert fatigue by categorizing vast amounts of data into actionable security incidents for your team's review.
Inside the SOC
Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.
Written by
Dan Fein
VP, Product
Written by
Elliot Stocker
Product SME
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29
Nov 2022

For cyber security experts, it’s hard enough staying on top of the latest threats and emerging attacks without having to deal with a virtual tsunami of alert noise from systems monitoring email, SaaS environments, and endpoints – in addition to IaaS cloud and on-premises networks. Unfortunately, fatigue from these demands can lead to overworking, burnout, and crucially, high employee turnover. 

The worldwide industry shortage of 3.5 million cyber security professionals only exacerbates the problem. Not only does it add pressure to the current stock of skilled and available security professionals, but it also raises the stakes for CISOs and other security leaders to find a way to cut through the alert noise while staying on ahead of threat actors who never stop innovating and applying novel malware strains and attack techniques.

Working Smarter Not Harder

One way to help with retention is to empower security teams to break away from monotony and to think creatively and leverage their expertise where it can really add value. Working smarter, rather than harder, is often easier said than done, but by employing automation and AI-driven tools to take on the heavy lifting of threat detection, investigation, and response, human teams can be given the breathing room needed to focus on long-term objectives and think more deeply about their security approaches.

It is important for security programs to continuously level up alongside evolving threat landscapes by questioning existing security operations, and this cannot be achieved during times of hand-to-hand alert combat.

When alerts are fewer, higher quality, and context-heavy, the background to each can be easily explored, whether that’s reevaluating a policy or configuration, or simply asking useful questions around the company’s broader security approach. Work done at this level empowers security teams and fosters growth.

Less is More

Business risk– or the potential impact of cyber disruption– should be the number one concern driving a security team, but lack of resources is a near-constant constraint. Reducing the volume of alerts doesn’t just mean bringing the noise floor up. You can think of the noise floor as an alert threshold: if it is too high then there are fewer alerts, but more threats may be missed, whereas if it is too low, there are high volumes of unhelpful false positives. Freeing up time for the team must not equate to ignoring alerts; it should instead mean focusing on the alerts that matter.

Darktrace’s technologies make this possible, with Darktrace DETECT™ and Cyber AI Analyst working together to address alert fatigue and burnout for security teams while strengthening an organizations’ overall security posture. Cyber AI Analyst essentially takes over the busy work from the human analysts and elevates a team’s overall decision making. Teams now operate at higher levels, as they’re not stuck in mundane alert management and humans are brought in only after the machine and AI have done the heavy lifting.

“Before AI Analyst, we were barely treading water with all of the alerts, most of which were false positives, our old systems produced daily. With AI Analyst, we’ve been able to exponentially reduce those alerts, harden our environment, and get strategic.”

Dr. Robert Spangler, the CISO and Assistant Executive Director of the New Jersey State Bar Association.

Figure 1: Billions of individual events are reduced into a critical incident for review


Imagine a scenario in which Darktrace observed around 9.6 billion events over a 28-day period. DETECT and Cyber AI Analyst might distill that huge amount of data down into just, say, 54 critical incidents, or just two per day. Here’s how:

9.6 billion events

When trying to understand the full picture, every single puzzle piece counts. That’s why Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI goes wherever your organization has data, integrating with data sources across the digital estate, including network, email, endpoints, OT, cloud, and SaaS environments. And with an open architecture, Darktrace facilitates quick and easy integrations with everything from SIEMs and SOARs to public clouds and the latest Zero Trust technologies. So, any data can become learnable, whether directly ingested or via integration.

By examining this full and contextualized data set, Self-Learning AI builds a constantly evolving understanding of what ‘normal’ looks like for the entire organization. Every connection, every email, app login, resource accessed, VM spun up, PLC reprogrammed, and more become signals from which Darktrace can learn, evaluate, and improve its understanding.

40,404 model breaches

The billions of events are analyzed by Darktrace DETECT, which uses its extensive knowledge of ‘normal’ to draw out hosts of subtle anomalies or ‘AI model breaches.’ Many of these AI model breaches will be weak indicators of threatening activity, and most will not be sufficient to individually signal a threat. For that reason, no human attention is required at this stage. Darktrace DETECT will continue to draw anomalous behaviors from the ongoing stream of events without the need for intervention. 

200 incidents

The Cyber AI Analyst takes the total list of model breaches collated by DETECT and performs the truly sophisticated work of determining distinct threat incidents. By piecing together anomalies which may, in themselves, appear harmless, the AI Analyst draws out subtle and often wide-ranging attacks, tracking their route from the initial compromise to the present moment. This creates a much shorter list of genuine threat incidents, but there is still no need for human attention at this stage.

54 critical incidents

Once it has discovered the threat incidents facing an organization, the Cyber AI Analyst begins the crucial processes of triage to determine which incidents need to be surfaced to the security team, and in what order of priority. This supplies the human team with a highly focused briefing of the most pressing threats, massively reducing their overall workload and minimizing or potentially eradicating alert fatigue. In the above example of a month with over 9.6 billion distinct events, the team are left with just two incidents to address per day. These two incidents are clearly presented with natural language-processing and all the most relevant info, including details, devices, and dates. 

“When we had other, noisier systems, we didn’t have the time to have truly in-depth discussions or conduct deep investigations, so there were fewer teachable moments for junior team members and fewer opportunities to inform our cybersecurity strategy as a whole,” Spangler said. “Now, we’re not just a better team, we’re more efficient, responsive, and informed than we’ve ever been. We’re all better cyber security professionals as a result.”

In the event of a breach, CISOs and security leaders want the full incident report, and they want it yesterday. The promise of AI is to handle specific tasks at a speed and scale that humans can’t. Going from 9.6 billion events to 54 incidents demonstrates the scale, but it’s important to consider the impact of speed here as well, as the Cyber AI Analyst works in real time, meaning all relevant events are presented in an easy to consume downloadable report available immediately upon investigation.

This isn’t a black box either; every step of the AI Analyst’s investigation process is visible to the human team. Not only can they see the relevant events and breaches that led to the incident, but if required, they can pivot into them easily with a click. If the investigation requires going all the way down to the metadata level to easily peruse the filtered events of the 9.6 billion overall signals or even to PCAP data, those are available and easy to find too.

Since DETECT and Cyber AI Analyst not only reduce alert fatigue but also simplify incident investigations, security teams feel empowered and experience less burnout. 

“We’ve been stable and have had minimal turnover since we started using AI Analyst,” Spangler said. “We’re not scrambling to keep up with noisy and time-consuming false positives, making the investigations that we undertake stimulating and– I say this cautiously– fun! Put simply, the thing we all love about this career, the virtual chess game we play with attackers, is a lot more fun when you know you’re going to win.”

Autonomous Response

Organizations that deploy Darktrace RESPOND™ can address the incidents raised by DETECT and the Cyber AI Analyst autonomously, and in mere seconds. Using the full context of the organization built up by Self-Learning AI, RESPOND takes the least disruptive measures necessary to disarm threats at machine speed. By the time the security team learns about the attack, it is already contained, continuing to save them from the hand-to-hand combat of threat fighting.

With day-to-day threat detection, response, and analysis taken care of, security teams are free to give full and sustained attention to their overall security posture. Neutralized threats may yet reveal broader security gaps and potential improvements which the team now has the time and headspace to pursue.

For example, discovering a trend that users are uploading potentially sensitive data via third-party file-sharing services might lead to a discussion about whether it should be company policy to block access to this service, reducing to zero the number of future alerts that would have been triggered by this behavior. Importantly, this wouldn’t be altering the aforementioned noise floor, but instead fundamentally altering security policies to align with the needs of the business, which could indirectly affect future alerting, as activities may subside.

As a result, practitioners find more value in their work, security teams efforts are optimized, and organizations are strengthened overall.

“We’re now focused on the items that AI Analyst alerts us to, which are always worth looking into because they either identify an activity that we need to get eyes on and/or provide us with insight into ways we can harden our network,” Spangler said. “The hardening that we’ve done has been incalculably beneficial– it’s one of the reasons we get fewer alerts, and it’s also protected us against a wide variety of threats.”

Inside the SOC
Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.
Written by
Dan Fein
VP, Product
Written by
Elliot Stocker
Product SME

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May 21, 2025

Evaluating Email Security: How to Select the Best Solution for Your Organization

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When evaluating email security solutions, it’s crucial to move beyond marketing claims and focus on real-world performance. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through an A/B comparison approach – a side-by-side evaluation of vendors based on consistent, predefined criteria.

This method cuts through biases, reveals true capability differences, and ensures that all solutions are assessed on a level playing field. It’s not just about finding an objectively good solution – it’s about finding the best solution for your organization’s specific needs.

An A/B comparison approach is particularly effective for three main reasons:

  1. Eliminates bias: By comparing solutions under identical conditions, it’s easier to spot differences in performance without the fog of marketing jargon.
  2. Highlights real capabilities: Direct side-by-side testing exposes genuine strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to judge which features are impactful versus merely decorative.
  3. Encourages objective decision-making: This structured method reduces emotional or brand-driven decisions, focusing purely on metrics and performance.

Let’s look at the key factors to consider when setting up your evaluation to ensure a fair, accurate, and actionable comparison.

Deployment: Setting the stage for fair evaluation

To achieve a genuine comparison, deployment must be consistent across all evaluated solutions:

  • Establish the same scope: All solutions should be granted identical visibility across relevant tenants and domains to ensure parity.
  • Set a concrete timeline: Deploy and test each solution with the same dataset, at the same points in time. This allows you to observe differences in learning periods and adaptive capabilities.

Equal visibility and synchronized timelines prevent discrepancies that could skew your understanding of each vendor’s true capabilities. But remember – quicker results might not equal better learning or understanding!

Tuning and configurations: Optimizing for real-world conditions

Properly tuning and configuring each solution is critical for fair evaluation:

  • Compare on optimal performance: Consult with each vendor to understand what optimal deployment looks like for their solution, particularly if machine learning is involved.
  • Consider the long term: Configuration adjustments should be made with long-term usage in mind. Short-term fixes can mask long-term challenges.
  • Data visibility: Ensure each solution can retain and provide search capabilities on all data collected throughout the evaluation period.

These steps guarantee that you are comparing fully optimized versions of each platform, not underperforming or misconfigured ones.

Evaluation: Applying consistent metrics

Once deployment and configurations are aligned, the evaluation itself must be consistent, to prevent unfair scoring and help to identify true differences in threat detection and response capabilities.

  • Coordinate your decision criteria: Ensure all vendors are measured against the same set of criteria, established before testing begins.
  • Understand vendor threat classification: Each vendor may have different ways of classifying threats, so be sure to understand these nuances.
  • Maintain communication: If results seem inaccurate, engage with the vendors. Their response and remediation capabilities are part of the evaluation.

Making a decision: Look beyond the metrics

When it comes to reviewing the performance of each solution, it’s important to both consider and look beyond the raw data. This is about choosing the solution that best aligns with your specific business needs, which may include factors and features not captured in the results.

  • Evaluate based on results: Consider accuracy, threats detected, precision, and response effectiveness.
  • Evaluate beyond results: Assess the overall experience, including support, integrations, training, and long-term alignment with your security strategy.
  • Review and communicate: Internally review the findings and communicate them back to the vendors.

Choosing the right email security solution isn’t just about ticking boxes, it’s about strategic alignment with your organization’s goals and the evolving threat landscape. A structured, A/B comparison approach will help ensure that the solution you select is truly the best fit.

For a full checklist of the features and capabilities to compare, as well as how to perform a commercial and technical evaluation, check out the full Buyer’s Checklist for Evaluating Email Security.

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About the author
Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

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May 21, 2025

Adapting to new USCG cybersecurity mandates: Darktrace for ports and maritime systems

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What is the Marine Transportation System (MTS)?

Marine Transportation Systems (MTS) play a substantial roll in U.S. commerce, military readiness, and economic security. Defined as a critical national infrastructure, the MTS encompasses all aspects of maritime transportation from ships and ports to the inland waterways and the rail and roadways that connect them.

MTS interconnected systems include:

  • Waterways: Coastal and inland rivers, shipping channels, and harbors
  • Ports: Terminals, piers, and facilities where cargo and passengers are transferred
  • Vessels: Commercial ships, barges, ferries, and support craft
  • Intermodal Connections: Railroads, highways, and logistics hubs that tie maritime transport into national and global supply chains

The Coast Guard plays a central role in ensuring the safety, security, and efficiency of the MTS, handling over $5.4 trillion in annual economic activity. As digital systems increasingly support operations across the MTS, from crane control to cargo tracking, cybersecurity has become essential to protecting this lifeline of U.S. trade and infrastructure.

Maritime Transportation Systems also enable international trade, making them prime targets for cyber threats from ransomware gangs to nation-state actors.

To defend against growing threats, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) has moved from encouraging cybersecurity best practices to enforcing them, culminating in a new mandate that goes into effect on July 16, 2025. These regulations aim to secure the digital backbone of the maritime industry.

Why maritime ports are at risk

Modern ports are a blend of legacy and modern OT, IoT, and IT digitally connected technologies that enable crane operations, container tracking, terminal storage, logistics, and remote maintenance.

Many of these systems were never designed with cybersecurity in mind, making them vulnerable to lateral movement and disruptive ransomware attack spillover.

The convergence of business IT networks and operational infrastructure further expands the attack surface, especially with the rise of cloud adoption and unmanaged IoT and IIoT devices.

Cyber incidents in recent years have demonstrated how ransomware or malicious activity can halt crane operations, disrupt logistics, and compromise safety at scale threatening not only port operations, but national security and economic stability.

Relevant cyber-attacks on maritime ports

Maersk & Port of Los Angeles (2017 – NotPetya):
A ransomware attack crippled A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company. Operations at 17 ports, including the Port of Los Angeles, were halted due to system outages, causing weeks of logistical chaos.

Port of San Diego (2018 – Ransomware Attack):
A ransomware attack targeted the Port of San Diego, disrupting internal IT systems including public records, business services, and dockside cargo operations. While marine traffic was unaffected, commercial activity slowed significantly during recovery.

Port of Houston (2021 – Nation-State Intrusion):
A suspected nation-state actor exploited a known vulnerability in a Port of Houston web application to gain access to its network. While the attack was reportedly thwarted, it triggered a federal investigation and highlighted the vulnerability of maritime systems.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, India (2022 – Ransomware Incident):
India’s largest container port experienced disruptions due to a ransomware attack affecting operations and logistics systems. Container handling and cargo movement slowed as IT systems were taken offline during recovery efforts.

A regulatory shift: From guidance to enforcement

Since the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) of 2002, ports have been required to develop and maintain security plans. Cybersecurity formally entered the regulatory fold in 2020 with revisions to 33 CFR Part 105 and 106, requiring port authorities to assess and address computer system vulnerabilities.

In January 2025, the USCG finalized new rules to enforce cybersecurity practices across the MTS. Key elements include (but are not limited to):

  • A dedicated cyber incident response plan (PR.IP-9)
  • Routine cybersecurity risk assessments and exercises (ID.RA)
  • Designation of a cybersecurity officer and regular workforce training (section 3.1)
  • Controls for access management, segmentation, logging, and encryption (PR.AC-1:7)
  • Supply chain risk management (ID.SC)
  • Incident reporting to the National Response Center

Port operators are encouraged to align their programs with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) and NIST SP 800-82r3, which provide comprehensive guidance for IT and OT security in industrial environments.

How Darktrace can support maritime & ports

Unified IT + OT + Cloud coverage

Maritime ports operate in hybrid environments spanning business IT systems (finance, HR, ERP), industrial OT (cranes, gates, pumps, sensors), and an increasing array of cloud and SaaS platforms.

Darktrace is the only vendor that provides native visibility and threat detection across OT/IoT, IT, cloud, and SaaS environments — all in a single platform. This means:

  • Cranes and other physical process control networks are monitored in the same dashboard as Active Directory and Office 365.
  • Threats that start in the cloud (e.g., phishing, SaaS token theft) and pivot or attempt to pivot into OT are caught early — eliminating blind spots that siloed tools miss.

This unification is critical to meeting USCG requirements for network-wide monitoring, risk identification, and incident response.

AI that understands your environment. Not just known threats

Darktrace’s AI doesn’t rely on rules or signatures. Instead, it uses Self-Learning AI TM that builds a unique “pattern of life” for every device, protocol, user, and network segment, whether it’s a crane router or PLC, SCADA server, Workstation, or Linux file server.

  • No predefined baselines or manual training
  • Real-time anomaly detection for zero-days, ransomware, and supply chain compromise
  • Continuous adaptation to new devices, configurations, and operations

This approach is critical in diverse distributed OT environments where change and anomalous activity on the network are more frequent. It also dramatically reduces the time and expertise needed to classify and inventory assets, even for unknown or custom-built systems.

Supporting incident response requirements

A key USCG requirement is that cybersecurity plans must support effective incident response.

Key expectations include:

  • Defined response roles and procedures: Personnel must know what to do and when (RS.CO-1).
  • Timely reporting: Incidents must be reported and categorized according to established criteria (RS.CO-2, RS.AN-4).
  • Effective communication: Information must be shared internally and externally, including voluntary collaboration with law enforcement and industry peers (RS.CO-3 through RS.CO-5).
  • Thorough analysis: Alerts must be investigated, impacts understood, and forensic evidence gathered to support decision-making and recovery (RS.AN-1 through RS.AN-5).
  • Swift mitigation: Incidents must be contained and resolved efficiently, with newly discovered vulnerabilities addressed or documented (RS.MI-1 through RS.MI-3).
  • Ongoing improvement: Organizations must refine their response plans using lessons learned from past incidents (RS.IM-1 and RS.IM-2).

That means detections need to be clear, accurate, and actionable.

Darktrace cuts through the noise using AI that prioritizes only high-confidence incidents and provides natural-language narratives and investigative reports that explain:

  • What’s happening, where it’s happening, when it’s happening
  • Why it’s unusual
  • How to respond

Result: Port security teams often lean and multi-tasked can meet USCG response-time expectations and reporting needs without needing to scale headcount or triage hundreds of alerts.

Built-for-edge deployment

Maritime environments are constrained. Many traditional SaaS deployment types often are unsuitable for tugboats, cranes, or air-gapped terminal systems.

Darktrace builds and maintains its own ruggedized, purpose-built appliances and unique virtual deployment options that:

  • Deploy directly into crane networks or terminal enclosures
  • Require no configuration or tuning, drop-in ready
  • Support secure over-the-air updates and fleet management
  • Operate without cloud dependency, supporting isolated and air-gapped systems

Use case: Multiple ports have been able to deploy Darktrace directly into the crane’s switch enclosure, securing lateral movement paths without interfering with the crane control software itself.

Segmentation enforcement & real-time threat containment

Darktrace visualizes real-time connectivity and attack pathways across IT, OT, and IoT it and integrates with firewalls (e.g., Fortinet, Cisco, Palo Alto) to enforce segmentation using AI insights alongside Darktrace’s own native autonomous and human confirmed response capabilities.

Benefits of autonomous and human confirmed response:

  • Auto-isolate rogue devices before the threat can escalate
  • Quarantine a suspicious connectivity with confidence operations won’t be halted
  • Autonomously buy time for human responders during off-hours or holidays
  • This ensures segmentation isn't just documented but that in the case of its failure or exploitation responses are performed as a compensating control

No reliance on 3rd parties or external connectivity

Darktrace’s supply chain integrity is a core part of its value to critical infrastructure customers. Unlike solutions that rely on indirect data collection or third-party appliances, Darktrace:

  • Uses in-house engineered sensors and appliances
  • Does not require transmission of data to or from the cloud

This ensures confidence in both your cyber visibility and the security of the tools you deploy.

See examples here of how Darktrace stopped supply chain attacks:

Readiness for USCG and Beyond

With a self-learning system that adapts to each unique port environment, Darktrace helps maritime operators not just comply but build lasting cyber resilience in a high-threat landscape.

Cybersecurity is no longer optional for U.S. ports its operationally and nationally critical. Darktrace delivers the intelligence, automation, and precision needed to meet USCG requirements and protect the digital lifeblood of the modern port.

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About the author
Daniel Simonds
Director of Operational Technology
Your data. Our AI.
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