Aer Soléir

Headquartered in Dublin, Aer Soléir, meaning “clear air” in Irish, has quickly become a force in utility-scale wind, solar, and battery storage, with more than 2.6 GW of projects underway across Europe, including Italy, Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal.  

From day one, Head of IS and Facilities, Robbie Kennedy, was given a rare opportunity to design the company’s technology and security architecture from scratch.

“It’s not often you’re handed a blank canvas and told to put your stamp on it,” he recalls. The challenge was to create a framework that could scale across multiple countries, regulations, and languages – while keeping a lean footprint.

Building resilience in a high-risk, high-value sector

Renewable energy sites are increasingly viewed as prime cyber targets. The convergence of operational technology (OT), remote connectivity, and cloud systems “makes these environments a playground for bad actors,” notes Kennedy. Yet the corporate strategy was clear: scale the business, not the security team. “I’m a ‘team of me’ with multiple hats supporting a company with big ambitions.”

He needed intelligent automation capable of delivering enterprise-grade visibility and protection across a global, fast-growing business.

AI would be an essential element of Aer Soléir’s cybersecurity strategy. “AI is a no-brainer,” explains Kennedy. “Threat actors use it to launch sophisticated attacks – so we need AI to stay one step ahead.”

After a deep proof-of-concept process, Darktrace emerged as the clear winner – both for its best-in-class technology and partnership. “Even our leadership didn’t need convincing. Everyone loved Darktrace,” he says. “I worked with Darktrace at a previous company with massive volumes of data, so I knew it had the power to scale.”

Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI learns the unique ‘pattern of life’ across cloud, email, network, and OT environments, autonomously detecting and responding to anomalies in real time. “It’s not buried in the infrastructure – it sees everything that’s happening across the entire estate,” he explains. Within weeks, the system was surfacing phishing and malware activity invisible to other tools, validating Kennedy’s belief that AI-driven defense was the only scalable path for a small, high-growth company.

Unified visibility, global consistency

Strategic partnerships with Darktrace and Bytes – Aer Soléir’s cloud solution and licensing provider – ensured the right technology and support models were in place from the start. Kennedy opted for a phased deployment designed to build comprehensive, scalable protection.

• Phase 1: Darktrace / EMAIL™ to secure user communications and cloud apps
• Phase 2: Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management™ for continuous attack surface visibility and vulnerability reduction, Darktrace / IDENTITY for unified visibility and coverage across its entire identity landscape, and Darktrace Managed Detection Response (MDR) for AI- and human-powered 24/7 expert monitoring, investigation, and response
• Phase 3: Darktrace Attack Surface Management (ASM)™ for continuous, tailored detection of externally exposed assets
• Phase 4: Darktrace / CLOUD™  for complete coverage across user, device, and cloud domains, and the newest addition to the Darktrace Active AI Security Platform
• Phase 5: Darktrace / OT™ for operational technology visibility. Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation™ for rapid incident reconstruction and response

A repeatable model for trusted energy expansion

Darktrace protection is now built into each Aer Soléir project contract, covering everything from wind turbines and firewalls to local utility interconnects. Each project follows the same standardized, fully locked-down security blueprint. “It doesn’t matter how many wind farms or solar plants we bring online – the only thing that changes is the IP address,” explains Kennedy. “Everything else is identical and fully protected. That’s great for me, great for investors, and great for our partners.”

From plans to power – with cloud-native forensics

While the company may be small, it’s doing big things – with three major projects coming online, including construction of Europe’s largest wind farm in Greece. Once the wind farm is complete, it will be classified as a large-scale utility, and Aer Soléir will transition from building energy assets to operating them – significantly raising its risk exposure. Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation will play a pivotal role in navigating that shift.

As the industry’s first truly automated cloud forensic solution, Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation eliminates the delays and blind spots of traditional forensic tools by enabling security teams to quickly uncover root cause, reconstruct attacker timelines, and investigate across AWS, Azure, GCP, SaaS, and on-prem environments, all within a single workflow.  

“When we move into production, we’ll need answers in minutes, not days. Darktrace / Forensic Acquisition & Investigation gives us the speed and clarity to act fast, contain exposure, and maintain confidence with our investors,” says Kennedy. “Our reputation is our most valuable asset, everything else is covered by insurance. If we lose trust in the market, we lose all credibility. Darktrace is here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Darktrace’s impact extends beyond protection. “Darktrace is doing it all – saving us time, improving mean time to detect, helping lower insurance premiums, and enabling us to scale efficiently,” Kennedy says.

Transforming high risk into high resilience

During a routine insurance review in Italy, insurers were so impressed by the Aer Soléir’s structured cybersecurity and deployment approach that they lowered its classification from high-risk to very low risk. “The long list of questions disappeared,” Kennedy recalls. “With Darktrace, we’ve reduced insurance overhead and accelerated contract approvals across multiple jurisdictions.”

AI in action: Turning incidents into non-events

When an employee unknowingly downloaded malware from an official government site, Darktrace autonomously contained the threat before Kennedy even knew there was an issue. Using the platform’s 3D Threat Visualizer, he reconstructed the incident and reimaged the device remotely in under three hours – no downtime, no escalation.

“It’s like turning on the lights,” he says. “Darktrace gave me the time and details to investigate and the playbook to recover.”

From pressure to peace of mind with AI  

Within a two-month period, Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst™ resolved 91% of all investigations autonomously. And within a single month, Darktrace saved the one-person team102 human investigation hours.

Kennedy underscores that, “There’s no one else doing what Darktrace does at this level. I have a single pane of glass across our email, IT, OT and cloud. I know exactly what’s happening, why, and how to fix it – and I sleep well at night. If something happens, it’s quarantined, it’s investigated, it’s escalated to the SOC. If I need to know, I’m told. If not, I know it’s handled.”

By reclaiming precious time and mental bandwidth Kennedy can now focus more on ‘real life’. “Darktrace has given me the confidence to switch off and be present,” he said “It’s even given me the time to start training for and running marathons!”

Fueling a sustainable future together

Beyond the technology, Kennedy credits the partnership behind it. “The personal touch is what I love about Darktrace, it makes all the difference.”  

That collaboration fuels confidence for what’s ahead. “The future’s bright,” says Kennedy.

With Darktrace on our side, we can pursue new opportunities knowing our security posture can scale in lockstep with growth. And I can focus on what really matters – enabling the business, spending time with my family, and testing my own resilience to cross the finish line.”