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May 13, 2025

Revolutionizing OT Risk Prioritization with Darktrace 6.3

Darktrace / OT introduces IEC-62443 compliance reporting, expanded protocol visibility, and dynamic risk modeling, redefining how OT teams prioritize risks with contextual insights now additionally powered by firewall rule analysis and KEV scoring, all purpose-built to protect industrial operations and safety.
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
Pallavi Singh
Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance
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13
May 2025

Powering smarter protection for industrial systems

In industrial environments, security challenges are deeply operational. Whether you’re running a manufacturing line, a power grid, or a semiconductor fabrication facility (fab), you need to know: What risks can truly disrupt my operations, and what should I focus on first?

Teams need the right tools to shift from reactive defense, constantly putting out fires, to proactively thinking about their security posture. However, most OT teams are stuck using IT-centric tools that don’t speak the language of industrial systems, are consistently overwhelmed with static CVE lists, and offer no understanding of OT-specific protocols. The result? Compliance gaps, siloed insights, and risk models that don’t reflect real-world exposure, making risk prioritization seem like a luxury.

Darktrace / OT 6.3 was built in direct response to these challenges. Developed in close collaboration with OT operators and engineers, this release introduces powerful upgrades that deliver the context, visibility, and automation security teams need, without adding complexity. It’s everything OT defenders need to protect critical operations in one platform that understands the language of industrial systems.

additions to darktrace / ot 6/3

Contextual risk modeling with smarter Risk Scoring

Darktrace / OT 6.3 introduces major upgrades to OT Risk Management, helping teams move beyond generic CVE lists with AI-driven risk scoring and attack path modeling.

By factoring in real-world exploitability, asset criticality, and operational context, this release delivers a more accurate view of what truly puts critical systems at risk.

The platform now integrates:

  • CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) database
  • End-of-life status for legacy OT devices
  • Firewall misconfiguration analysis
  • Incident response plan alignment

Most OT environments are flooded with vulnerability data that lacks context. CVE scores often misrepresent risk by ignoring how threats move through the environment or whether assets are even reachable. Firewalls are frequently misconfigured or undocumented, and EOL (End of Life) devices, some of the most vulnerable, often go untracked.

Legacy tools treat these inputs in isolation. Darktrace unifies them, showing teams exactly which attack paths adversaries could exploit, mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, with visibility into where legacy tech increases exposure.

The result: teams can finally focus on the risks that matter most to uptime, safety, and resilience without wasting resources on noise.

Automating compliance with dynamic IEC-62443 reporting

Darktrace / OT now includes a purpose-built IEC-62443-3-3 compliance module, giving industrial teams real-time visibility into their alignment with regulatory standards. No spreadsheets required!

Industrial environments are among the most heavily regulated. However, for many OT teams, staying compliant is still a manual, time-consuming process.

Darktrace / OT introduces a dedicated IEC-62443-3-3 module designed specifically for industrial environments. Security and operations teams can now map their security posture to IEC standards in real time, directly within the platform. The module automatically gathers evidence across all four security levels, flags non-compliance, and generates structured reports to support audit preparation, all in just a few clicks.Most organizations rely on spreadsheets or static tools to track compliance, without clear visibility into which controls meet standards like IEC-62443. The result is hidden gaps, resource-heavy audits, and slow remediation cycles.

Even dedicated compliance tools are often built for IT, require complex setup, and overlook the unique devices found in OT environments. This leaves teams stuck with fragmented reporting and limited assurance that their controls are actually aligned with regulatory expectations.

By automating compliance tracking, surfacing what matters most, and being purpose built for industrial environments, Darktrace / OT empowers organizations to reduce audit fatigue, eliminate blind spots, and focus resources where they’re needed most.

Expanding protocol visibility with deep insights for specialized OT operations

Darktrace has expanded its Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) capabilities to support five industry-specific protocols, across healthcare, semiconductor manufacturing, and ABB control systems.

The new protocols build on existing capabilities across all OT industry verticals and protocol types to ensure the Darktrace Self-Learning AI TM can learn intelligently about even more assets in complex industrial environments. By enabling native, AI-driven inspection of these protocols, Darktrace can identify both security threats and operational issues without relying on additional appliances or complex integrations.

Most security platforms lack native support for industry-specific protocols, creating critical visibility gaps in customer environments like healthcare, semiconductor manufacturing, and ABB-heavy industrial automation. Without deep protocol awareness, organizations struggle to accurately identify specialized OT and IoT assets, detect malicious activity concealed within proprietary protocol traffic, and generate reliable device risk profiles due to insufficient telemetry.

These blind spots result in incomplete asset inventories, and ultimately, flawed risk posture assessments which over-index for CVE patching and legacy equipment.

By combining protocol-aware detection with full-stack visibility across IT, OT, and IoT, Darktrace’s AI can correlate anomalies across domains. For example, connecting an anomaly from a Medical IoT (MIoT) device with suspicious behavior in IT systems, providing actionable, contextual insights other solutions often miss.

Conclusion

Together, these capabilities take OT security beyond alert noise and basic CVE matching, delivering continuous compliance, protocol-aware visibility, and actionable, prioritized risk insights, all inside a single, unified platform built for the realities of industrial environments.

[related-resource]

Map Darktrace to the IEC framework

Download the guide to learn what the standard means for your OT environment and how Darktrace / OT maps to key security requirements

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
Pallavi Singh
Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance

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Proactive Security

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June 4, 2025

Beyond Discovery: Adding Intelligent Vulnerability Validation to Darktrace / Attack Surface Management

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Introducing Exploit Prediction Assessment

Security teams are drowning in vulnerability alerts, but only a fraction of those issues pose a real threat. The new Exploit Prediction Assessment feature in Darktrace / Attack Surface Management helps teams cut through the noise by validating which vulnerabilities on their external attack surface can be actively exploited.

Instead of relying solely on CVSS scores or waiting for patch cycles, Exploit Prediction Assessment uses safe, targeted simulations to test whether exposed systems can be compromised, delivering fast, evidence-based results in under 72 hours.

This capability augments traditional pen testing and complements existing ASM workflows by transforming passive discovery into actionable insight. With EPA, security teams move from reacting to long lists of potential vulnerabilities to making confident, risk-based decisions on what actually matters.

Key highlights of Exploit Prediction Assessment

Simulated attacks to validate real risk

Exploit Prediction Assessment conducts safe, simulated attacks on assets with potential security vulnerabilities that have been identified by Darktrace / Attack Surface Management. This real-time testing validates your systems' susceptibility to compromise by confirming which vulnerabilities are present and exploitable on your attack surface.

Prioritize what matters most

Confirmed security risks can be prioritized for mitigation, ensuring that the most critical threats are promptly addressed. This takes the existing letter ranking system and brings it a step further by drilling down to yet another level. Even in the most overwhelming situations, teams will be able to act on a pragmatic, clear-cut plan.

Fast results, tailored to your environment

Customers set the scope of the Exploit Prediction Assessment within Darktrace / Attack Surface Management and receive the results of the surgical vulnerability testing within 72 hours. Users will see 1 of 2 shields:

1. A green shield with a check mark: Meaning no vulnerabilities were found on scanned CVEs for the asset.

2. A red shield with a red x: Meaning at least one vulnerability was found on scanned CVEs for the asset.

Why it's a game changer

Traditionally, attack surface management tools have focused on identifying exposed assets and vulnerabilities but lacked the context to determine which issues posed the greatest risk. Without context on what’s exploitable, security teams are left triaging long lists of potential risks, operating in isolation from broader business objectives. This misalignment ultimately leads to both weakened risk posture and cross team communication and execution.

This is where Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) becomes essential. Introduced by Gartner, CTEM is a framework that helps organizations continuously assess, validate, and improve their exposure to real-world threats. The goal isn’t just visibility, it’s to understand how an attacker could move through your environment today, and what to fix first to stop them.

Exploit Prediction Assessment brings this philosophy to life within Darktrace / Attack Surface Management. By safely simulating exploit attempts against identified vulnerabilities, it validates which exposures are truly at risk—transforming ASM from a discovery tool into a risk-based decision engine.

This capability directly supports the validation and prioritization phases of CTEM, helping teams focus on exploitable vulnerabilities rather than theoretical ones.  This shift from visibility to action reduces the risk of critical vulnerabilities in the technology stack being overlooked, turning overwhelming vulnerability data into focused, clear actionable insights.

As attack surfaces continue to grow and change, organizations need more than static scans they need continuous, contextual insight. Exploit Prediction Assessment ensures your ASM efforts evolve with the threat landscape, making CTEM a practical reality, not just a strategy.

Exploit Prediction Assessment in action

With Darktrace / Attack Surface Management organizations can get Exploit Prediction Assessment, and the cyber risk team no longer guesses which vulnerabilities matter most. Instead, they identify several externally exposed areas of their attack surface, then use the feature to surgically test for exploitability across these exposed endpoints. Within 72 hours, they receive a report:  

Positive outcome: Based on information in the html or the headers it seems that a vulnerable software version is running on an externally exposed infrastructure. By running a targeted attack on this infrastructure, we can confirm that it cannot be abused.

Negative outcome: Based on information in the html or the headers it seems that a vulnerable software version is running on an externally exposed infrastructure. By running a targeted attack on this infrastructure, we can confirm that it can be exploited, so we can predict it being exploited.

This second outcome changes everything. The team immediately prioritizes the exploitable asset for patching and takes the necessary adjustments to mitigate exposure until the fix is deployed.

Instead of spreading their resources thin across dozens of alerts, they focus on what poses a real threat, saving time, reducing risk, and demonstrating actionable results to stakeholders.

Conclusion

Exploit Predication Assessment bolsters Darktrace’s commitment to proactive cybersecurity. It supports intelligent prioritization of vulnerabilities, keeping organizations ahead of emerging threats. With this new addition to / Attack Surface Management, teams have another tool to empower a more efficient approach to addressing security gaps in real-time.

Stay tuned for more updates and insights on how Darktrace continues to develop a culture of proactive security across the entire ActiveAI Security Platform.

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About the author
Kelland Goodin
Product Marketing Specialist

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Network

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June 3, 2025

Darktrace Recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response

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Darktrace has been recognized as a Leader in the first ever Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response (NDR).

A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors. CIOs and CISOs can use this research to make informed decisions about NDR, which is evolving to offer broader threat detection. We encourage our customers to read the full report to get the complete picture.

Darktrace has also received accolades in other recent NDR leadership evaluations including IDC named as market share leader, and  KuppingerCole’s heralding us as an Overall Leader, Product Leader, Market Leader and Innovation Leader. We believe we have continued to be identified as a Leader due to the strength of our capabilities in NDR, driven by our unique application of AI in cybersecurity, continuous product innovation, and our ability to execute on a global scale to meet the evolving needs of our customers.

We’re proud of Darktrace’s unrivaled market, and ability to execute effectively in the network security market, reflecting our commitment to delivering high-quality, reliable solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers.

Gartner MQ for NDR, NDR mq, Gartner NDR, Gartner best NDR solution
Gartner MQ for NDR

Why is Darktrace the market share leader and undisputed force in NDR?

Transforming network security and shifting to an AI-led SOC

Darktrace’s Self-Learning AITM understands normal for your entire network, intelligently detecting anomalies and containing sophisticated threats without historical attack data. This approach, based on advanced, unsupervised machine learning, enables Darktrace to catch novel, unknown and insider threats that traditional tools miss and other NDR vendors can’t detect. Darktrace has identified and contained attempted exploits of zero-day vulnerabilities up to 11 days before public disclosure.

We change SOC dynamics with our Cyber AI AnalystTM, which eliminates manual triage and investigation by contextualizing all relevant alerts across your environment, including third-party alerts, and performing end-to-end investigations at machine speed. Cyber AI Analyst gives your team the equivalent of 30 extra full time Level 2 analysts without the hiring overhead2, so you can shift your team away from manual, reactive workflows and uplift them to focus on more proactive tasks.

When combined, Darktrace Self-Learning AI and Cyber AI Analyst go far beyond the capabilities of traditional NDR approaches to completely transform your network security and help your teams operate at the speed and scale of AI.

Coverage across the extended IT enterprise and all-important OT devices

We believe the report validates the business-centric approach that Darktrace uses to deploy AI locally and train it solely on each unique environment, giving our customers tailored security outcomes without compromising on privacy.

This contrasts with other NDR vendors that require cloud connectivity to either deliver full functionality or to regularly update their globally trained models with the latest attack data. This capability is particularly sought after by organizations who are no longer just on-premise, have operational technology (OT) networks, or those that operate in classified environments.

Darktrace serves these organizations and industries by extending IT and unifying OT security within a single solution, reducing alert fatigue and accelerating alert investigation in industrial environments.

With Darktrace / NETWORK you can achieve:

  • Full visibility across your modern network, including on-premises, virtual networks, hybrid cloud, identities, remote workers and OT devices
  • Precision threat detection across your modern network to identify known, unknown and insider threats in real-time without relying on rules, signatures or threat intelligence,
  • 10x accelerated incident response times with agentic AI that uplifts your team and enables them to focus on more proactive tasks
  • Containment of threats with the first autonomous response solution proven to work in the enterprise, stopping attacks from progressing at the earliest stages with precise actions that avoid business disruption

Going beyond traditional NDR to build proactive network resilience

Darktrace does not just stop at threat detection, it helps you prevent threats from occurring and increase your resiliency for when attacks do happen. We help discover and prioritize up to 50% more risks across your environment and optimize incident response processes, reducing the impact of active cyber-attacks using an understanding of your data.

Attack path modeling: By leveraging attack path modeling and AI-driven risk validation, customers can close gaps before they’re exploited, focusing resources where they’ll have the greatest impact.

AI-driven playbooks and breach simulations: With AI-driven playbooks and realistic breach simulations, Darktrace helps your team practice response, strengthen processes, and reduce the impact of real-world incidents. You’re not just reacting; you’re proactively building long-term resilience.

Continued innovation in network security

Darktrace leads innovation in the NDR market with more than 200+ patents and active filings, covering a range of detection, response and AI techniques. Our AI Research Center is foundational to our ongoing innovation, including hundreds of R&D employees examining how AI can be applied to real-world problems and augment human teams.

Trusted by thousands of customers globally

Our commitment to innovation and patented Self-Learning AITM has protected organizations in all industries from known and novel attacks since 2013, bolstering network security and augmenting human teams for our 10,000 active customers across 110 countries. These organizations place a great deal of trust in Darktrace’s unique approach to cybersecurity and application of AI to detect and respond to threats across their modern network.

A new standard for NDR

Darktrace / NETWORK is not just another NDR tool; we are the most advanced network security platform in the industry that pushes beyond traditional capabilities to protect thousands of organizations against known and novel threats.

From real-time threat detection and autonomous response to proactive risk management, we’re transforming network security from reactive to resilient.

[related-resource]

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

References

1, 3 Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Network Detection and Response, by Thomas Lintemuth, Esraa ElTahawy, John Collins, Charanpal Bhogal, 29 May, 2025

2 Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst fleet data, 2023

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About the author
Mikey Anderson
Product Marketing Manager, Network Detection & Response
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