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July 19, 2021

Data Exfiltration Trends in Latin America

Darktrace reveals key findings on data exfiltration in Latin America. Discover the latest cyber threats and defense strategies.
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
Max Heinemeyer
Global Field CISO
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19
Jul 2021

Data exfiltration is a popular enterprise for cyber-criminals. All organizations – from government agencies to small businesses – have sensitive data which can be stolen for extortion, competitive advantage, or further inroads in a company’s system. It is now the preferred technique of ransomware actors. Some Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) groups have even pioneered a new type of ‘extortionware’, which focuses solely on data theft without encryption.

Easy money

At a pharmaceutical manufacturing institute in Latin America, Darktrace recently detected the exfiltration of critical files from the company, as this blog will explore.

The organization was an enticing target for two reasons. Firstly, pharmaceutical companies hold a wealth of valuable IP and patient data, which have come under sustained fire this last year as threat actors and nation states infiltrate vaccine research and distribution.

#1 most affected industry for data breaches: pharmaceuticals.

Secondly, Latin America is a treasure trove for cyber-criminals, thanks to huge economic growth in recent years, the digitization of major industries, alongside sub-standard cyber insurance policies and virtually nonexistent regulations.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil and Mexico were in Europol’s top ten affected countries. Since then, cases have skyrocketed – and many companies remain underprepared, facing limited support and pressure from government bodies. Strikingly, even though it has suffered estimated losses of almost $8 billion, Brazil still has no data protection law in place.

On top of financial crimes, the LATAM region has been targeted by state-sponsored groups linked to Russia, China, and Iran. Cyber-espionage is used as a method to gain the upper hand in negotiations and advance foreign interests in investment and trade.

Furthermore, as supply chains in the criminal world are hit by the effects of the pandemic, organized crime may begin to leverage the digital world – particularly fraud and phishing – as a possible source of income. La Familia Michoacana, a notorious drug cartel in Mexico, has reportedly begun enlisting Dark Web hackers.

Despite the number of threats facing Latin America, organizations have been slow to adopt defensive technology. So when the attacker in the case below chose a small organization in the LATAM region, they probably expected to face only signature-based, legacy security tools. Sensing that this would be easy prey – with little resistance and large profit to be made – the actor launched their first steps.

How the intrusion played out

During a Proof of Value trial with the company, Darktrace detected unusual activity from a server, following external remote connectivity.

Figure 1: Timeline of the attack.

The attack began when an internal server received an unusual connection over RDP from an external IP. The connection lasted five hours. The external IP then established a new SMB session to the same server using administrative credentials. The external IP leveraged SMB to access a file, which appeared to contain unencrypted passwords.

65% of the Colombian population now use the Internet, compared to only 3% in 2000.

From there, the external IP downloaded over 18,000 files over SMB. Based on the file names, it appears that the data was highly sensitive. In total, the external IP downloaded around 150 MB of data from the internal server.

Unusual activity post remote connections

Self-Learning AI detected that the IP address was 100% rare for the organization and server. The data transfer was also detected as unusual for the device’s ‘pattern of life’. Unfortunately, as Antigena was being trialled in passive mode, Darktrace could not intervene and disrupt the attack.

Nevertheless, Darktrace fired a number of high-confidence alerts to warn the security team. The figure below shows five-day activity from an example device in the same situation, with a high volume of clustered alerts. These reflect the unusual increase in volume transferred externally from a breach device.

Figure 2: A similar device received an incoming remote desktop connection, highlighted by the first model breach (orange dot). Shortly after, the external device accessed an unencrypted password file. At the same time, the device transferred an unusual volume of data to a rare external source IP.

Data exfiltration methods: RDP and password file access

The threat actor managed to bypass all the other existing security products in the company. They did this with legitimate administrative credentials, which were used to establish the RDP and SMB connections. RDP credentials are easily bought off the Dark Web and have proved a popular form of initial access, especially this year as employees continue to work remotely.

In addition, improper password management can unlock an organization’s digital kingdom. One of the accessed files was a password file, enabling the actor to quickly escalate privileges. After this point, only an AI-powered defensive tool could keep up with the speed of the intrusion.

Leveraging common protocols such as SMB to exfiltrate data is a common tactic. Internet-exposed servers are still a major risk to organizations as attackers exploit open and unused ports.

Moreover, the files transferred during the activity were saved as receipts with the names of partners and customers. This is extremely dangerous and could have put the company’s reputation at serious risk. Luckily, Self-Learning AI detected the malicious actions and warned the security team immediately, allowing them to stop further exfiltration and any follow-up activity.

Protecting sensitive data

The example above demonstrates that even the smallest of companies can fall victim to an attack. Small and medium-sized enterprises are targeted because they own important data and IP, yet often lack robust security and resources. This makes them simple catches compared to large establishments or governments.

Darktrace’s AI has the ability to detect malicious data exfiltration from subtle changes in behavior. In this case, the targeted server regularly transfers data in and out of the organization, yet Darktrace scored the incoming external IP with the highest rarity. In other words, Darktrace considered the data transfer activity highly unusual and outside of the server’s normal ‘pattern of life’.

This enabled the security team to respond to the threat and take the server offline for further investigation. If Darktrace Antigena had been active in the environment, it would have responded seconds after the initial compromise, stopping the threat at machine speed.

Thanks to Darktrace analyst Kendra Gonzalez Duran for her insights on the above threat find.

Learn how to defend your company from data exfiltration and malicious insiders

Darktrace model detections:

  • Compliance / Incoming Remote Desktop
  • Compliance / Possible Unencrypted Password File On Server
  • Anomalous Connection/ Data Sent to Rare Domain

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
Max Heinemeyer
Global Field CISO

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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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