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March 4, 2019

The VR Goldilocks Problem and Value of Continued Recognition

Security and Operations Teams face challenges when it comes to visibility and recognition. Learn more about how we find a solution to the problems!
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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04
Mar 2019

First, some context about VR

Security Operations teams face two fundamental challenges when it comes to 'finding bad'.

The first is gaining and maintaining appropriate visibility into what is happening in our environments. Visibility is provided through data (e.g. telemetry, logs). The trinity of data sources for visibility concern accounts/credentials, devices, and network traffic.

The second challenge is getting good recognition within the scope of what is visible. Recognition is fundamentally about what alerting and workflows you can implement and automate in response to activity that is suspicious or malicious.

Visibility and Recognition each have their own different associated issues.

Visibility is a problem about what is and can be generated and either read as telemetry, or logged and stored locally, or shipped to a central platform. The timelines and completeness of what visibility you have can depend on factors such as how much data you can or can't store locally on devices that generate data - and for how long; what your data pipeline and data platform look like (e.g. if you are trying to centralise data for analysis); or the capability of host software agents you have to process certain information locally.

The constraints on visibility sets the bar for factors like coverage, timelines and completeness of what recognition you can achieve. Without visibility, we cannot recognize at all. With limited visibility, what we can recognize may not have much value. With the right visibility, we can still fail to recognise the right things. And with too much recognition, we can quickly overload our senses.

A good example of a technology that offers the opportunity to solve these challenges at the network layer is Darktrace. Their technology provides visibility, from a network traffic perspective, into data that concerns devices and the accounts/credentials associated with them. They then provide recognition on top of this by using Machine Learning (ML) models for anomaly detection. Their models alert on a wide range of activities that may be indicative of threat activity, (e.g. malware execution and command and control, a technical exploit, data exfiltration and so on).

The major advantage they provide, compared to traditional Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and other vendors who also use ML for network anomaly detection, is that you can a) adjust the sensitivity of their algorithms and b) build your own recognition for particular patterns of interest. For example, if you want to monitor what connections are made to one or two servers, you can set up alerts for any change to expected patterns. This means you can create and adjust custom recognition based on your enterprise context and tune it easily in response to how context changes over time.

The Goldilocks VR Matrix

Below is what we call the VR Goldilocks Matrix at PBX Group Security. We use it to assess technology, measure our own capability and processes, and ask ourselves hard questions about where we need to focus to get the most value from our budget, (or make cuts / shift investment) if we need to.

In the squares are some examples of what you (maybe) should think about doing if you find yourself there.

Important questions to ask about VR

One of the things about Visibility and Recognition is that it’s not a given they are ‘always on’. Sometimes there are failure modes for visibility (causing a downstream issue with recognition). And sometimes there are failure modes or conditions under which you WANT to pause recognition.

The key questions you must have answers to about this include:

  • Under what conditions might I lose visibility?
  • How would I know if I have?
  • Is that loss a blind spot (i.e. data is lost for a given time period)…
  • …or is it 'a temporal delay’ (e.g. a connection fails and data is batched for moving from A to B but that doesn’t happen for a few hours)?
  • What are the recognitions that might be impacted by either of the above?
  • What is my expectation for the SLA on those recognitions from ‘cause of alert’ to ‘response workflow’?
  • Under what conditions would I be willing to pause recognition, change the workflow for what happens upon recognition, or stop it all together?
  • What is the stacked ranked list of ‘must, should, could’ for all recognition and why?

Alerts. Alerts everywhere.

More often than not, Security Operations teams suffer the costs of wasted time due to noisy alerts from certain data sources. As a consequence, it's more difficult for them to single out malicious behavior as suspicious or benign. The number of alerts that are generated due to out of the box SIEM platform configurations for sources like Web Proxies and Domain Controllers are often excessive, and the cost to tune those rules can also be unpalatable. Therefore, rather than trying to tune alerts, teams might make a call to switch them off until someone can get around to figuring out a better way. There’s no use having hypothetical recognition, but no workflow to act on what is generate (other than compliance).

This is where technologies that use ML can help. There are two basic approaches...

One is to avoid alerting until multiple conditions are met that indicate a high probability of threat activity. In this scenario, rather than alerting on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th ‘suspicious activities’, you wait until you have a critical mass of indicators, and then you generate one high fidelity alert that has a much greater weighting to be malicious. This requires both a high level of precision and accuracy in alerting, and naturally some trade off in the time that can pass before an alert for malicious activity is generated.

The other is to alert on ‘suspicious actives 1-4' and let an analyst or automated process decide if this merits further investigation. This approach sacrifices accuracy for precision, but provides rapid context on whether one, or multiple, conditions are met that push the machine(s) up the priority list in the triage queue. To solve for the lower level of accuracy, this approach can make decisions about how long to sustain alerting. For example, if a host triggers multiple anomaly detection models, rather than continue to send alerts (and risk the SOC deciding to turn them off), the technology can pause alerts after a certain threshold. If a machine has not been quarantined or taken off the network after 10 highly suspicious behaviors are flagged, there is a reasonable assumption that the analyst will have dug into these and found the activity is legitimate.

Punchline 1: the value of Continued Recognition even when 'not malicious'

The topic of paused detections was raised after a recent joint exercise between PBX Group Security and Darktrace in testing Darktrace’s recognition. After a machine being used by the PBX Red Team breached multiple high priority models on Darktrace, the technology stopped alerting on further activity. This was because the initial alerts would have been severe enough to trigger a SOC workflow. This approach is designed to solve the problem of alert overload on a machine that is behaving anomalously but is not in fact malicious. Rather than having the SOC turn off alerts for that machine (which could later be used maliciously), the alerts are paused.

One of the outcomes of the test was that the PBX Detect team advised they would still want those alerts to exist for context to see what else the machine does (i.e. to understand its pattern of life). Now, rather than pausing alerts, Darktrace is surfacing this to customers to show where a rule is being paused and create an option to continue seeing alerts for a machine that has breached multiple models.

Which leads us on to our next point…

Punchline 2: the need for Atomic Tests for detection

Both Darktrace and Photobox Security are big believers in Atomic Red Team testing, which involves ‘unit tests’ that repeatedly (or at a certain frequency) test a detection using code. Unit tests automate the work of Red Teams when they discovery control strengths (which you want to monitor continuously for uptime) or control gaps (which you want to monitor for when they are closed). You could design atomic tests to launch a series of particular attacks / threat actor actions from one machine in a chained event. Or you could launch different discreet actions from different machines, each of which has no prior context for doing bad stuff. This allows you to scale the sample size for testing what recognition you have (either through ML or more traditional SIEM alerting). Doing this also means you don't have to ask Red Teams to repeat the same tests again, allowing them to focus on different threat paths to achieve objectives.

Mitre Att&ck is an invaluable framework for this. Many vendors are now aligning to Att&ck to show what they can recognize relating to attack TTPs (Tools, Tactics and Procedures). This enables security teams to map what TTPs are relevant to them (e.g. by using threat intel about the campaigns of threat actor groups that are targeting them). Atomic Red Team tests can then be used to assure that expected detections are operational or find gaps that need closing.

If you miss detections, then you know you need to optimise the recognition you have. If you get too many recognitions outside of the atomic test conditions, you either have to accept a high false positive rate because of the nature of the network, or you can tune your detection sensitivity. The opportunities to do this with technology based on ML and anomaly detection are significant, because you can quickly see for new attack types what a unit test tells you about your current detections and that coverage you think you have is 'as expected'.

Punchline 3: collaboration for the win

Using well-structured Red Team exercises can help your organisation and your technology partners learn new things about how we can collectively find and halt evil. They can also help defenders learn more about good assumptions to build into ML models, as well as covering edge cases where alerts have 'business intelligence' value vs ‘finding bad’.

If you want to understand the categorisations of ways that your populations of machines act over time, there is no better way to do it than through anomaly detection and feeding alerts into a system that supports SOC operations as well as knowledge management (e.g. a graph database).

Working like this means that we also help get the most out of the visibility and recognition we have. Security solutions can be of huge help to Network and Operations teams for troubleshooting or answering questions about network architecture. Often, it’s just a shift in perspective that unlocks cross-functional value from investments in security tech and process. Understanding that recognition doesn’t stop with security is another great example of where technologies that let you build your own logic into recognition can make a huge difference above protecting the bottom line, to adding top line value.

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
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