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August 7, 2022

Boost Your SMB Security Investments with Darktrace

Understand the best practices for SMBs to enhance their security investments with Darktrace's advanced solutions.
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
Tony Jarvis
VP, Field CISO
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07
Aug 2022

Preparing for today’s threat landscape can be particularly challenging for small and midsize businesses. While larger organizations have more resources at their disposal, and might accept the diminishing returns of employing numerous security solutions, small and midsize businesses are often limited by the funds and personnel they can reasonably dedicate to cyber security.  

The Danger of Being Unprepared

While no sector is immune to cyber risk, certain industries are typically targeted more than others. Healthcare, specifically hospitals, have been particularly badly affected by ransomware since 2016. Insufficient funding, outdated embedded operating systems and the incredibly high stakes of maintaining system uptime have made them vulnerable to attackers looking to leverage easy ransoms.

Many fast-growing fintech companies, which handle large volumes of financial transactions and considerable customer funds, have faced a surge of attacks. Like many newer organizations, growth and customer acquisition are often prioritized over security within these companies, leaving small security teams scrambling to close gaps before attackers can exploit them. 

Most SMBs already have their perimeters protected with next generation firewalls and endpoint antivirus solutions. These protections have their rightful place in any organization’s security stack, but there are crucial gaps remaining that need to be addressed. As a result, IT and security leaders in SMBs come under a lot of pressure to ensure their next investment adds value by effectively reducing cyber risk, minimizing cyber disruption, and augmenting their human teams.  

The Next Investment

There are an overwhelming number of options (and acronyms) flooding the marketplace today: NGAV, EDR, XDR, MDR, SIEMs, SOAR and so many more. But rather than looking at the market to decide which tools you need, it can be more productive to think about the specifics of your organization. Identify what is being used, how work is performed, and where data is sitting and being accessed from. 

The right solution will vary for every organization. Protecting employees in a corporate office will look very different to protecting a remote team, for instance. There are a range of ‘coverage areas’ to consider, including network, endpoints, cloud, SaaS, email and OT systems. Knowing where your workloads are, what your users are typically accessing throughout the course of their workdays, and their physical location, will give you an idea as to where protections are most needed.

When deploying additional security tools, it is also worth considering their ease of use. Tools requiring a lot of time or technical ability to operate may not be a great fit for smaller organizations with lean teams. Ask whether the tools you’re considering require a lot of tuning, follow up activity, or correlation with alerts found in different platforms – as many do.  

Realizing the Value of AI  

To have a chance at matching the security capabilities of the big enterprises, SMBs require technology that can provide visibility over all of the systems, devices, and platforms which make up a business, collecting cyber security efforts together into a single view which not only simplifies things for small teams, but makes threat detections more effective as well. By utilizing contextual data from multiple “coverage areas”, Darktrace DETECT enhances its ability to illuminate cyber-threats that traverse multiple fields of operation. 

Once a threat has been detected, an autonomous response function can act on behalf of stretched security teams. Many professionals lose hours of time after a threat has been detected to tasks that AI is more than capable of taking on.  

The first of these tasks is threat triaging, which Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst performs autonomously, putting the highest-priority threats which require action in front of security teams immediately. The AI Analyst investigates and triages hundreds of these threats simultaneously, and reports on them in easy-to-understand summaries which are ready to be presented to company executives, security trainees, or whoever else needs to see them.  

The pressure of taking action against threats after triaging can also be lifted from security teams. When the response time of a small team begins to drop – whether because the team is temporarily down a member, or the number of tasks is just too high – cyber-attacks can escalate. In the case of Darktrace RESPOND, the technology uses its evolving understanding of the bespoke organization to initiate a targeted response; one that stops the threatening activity without interrupting normal business, and keeps fast-moving SMBs running.  

Making ‘the next investment’ can be a daunting task for SMBs. As the industry continues to grapple with a cyber skills gap, augmentation of existing resources – human or technological – will likely be at the center of a decision-making process. Any addition should make security simpler, not more complex or time-consuming. This requires a quick and easy set up, easy-to-understand outputs, and seamless integrations with existing investments – from firewalls and endpoint security to ticketing systems and zero trust architectures.   

The protections and enhancements which AI brings to the table can turn a small, stretched team into a 24/7, machine-speed security operation that can prevent, detect and respond to cyber-attacks, all at once. By uplifting security teams and taking on much of the heavy lifting, AI gives your human teams the freedom to put their time and expertise where it matters the most: taking proactive measures that improve your security stature in the long term.  

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
Tony Jarvis
VP, Field CISO

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September 23, 2025

It’s Time to Rethink Cloud Investigations

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Cloud Breaches Are Surging

Cloud adoption has revolutionized how businesses operate, offering speed, scalability, and flexibility. But for security teams, this transformation has introduced a new set of challenges, especially when it comes to incident response (IR) and forensic investigations.

Cloud-related breaches are skyrocketing – 82% of breaches now involve cloud-stored data (IBM Cost of a Data Breach, 2023). Yet incidents often go unnoticed for days: according to a 2025 report by Cybersecurity Insiders, of the 65% of organizations experienced a cloud-related incident in the past year, only 9% detected it within the first hour, and 62% took more than 24 hours to remediate it (Cybersecurity Insiders, Cloud Security Report 2025).

Despite the shift to cloud, many investigation practices remain rooted in legacy on-prem approaches. According to a recent report, 65% of organizations spend approximately 3-5 days longer when investigating an incident in the cloud vs. on premises.

Cloud investigations must evolve, or risk falling behind attackers who are already exploiting the cloud’s speed and complexity.

4 Reasons Cloud Investigations Are Broken

The cloud’s dynamic nature – with its ephemeral workloads and distributed architecture – has outpaced traditional incident response methods. What worked in static, on-prem environments simply doesn’t translate.

Here’s why:

  1. Ephemeral workloads
    Containers and serverless functions can spin up and vanish in minutes. Attackers know this as well – they’re exploiting short-lived assets for “hit-and-run” attacks, leaving almost no forensic footprint. If you’re relying on scheduled scans or manual evidence collection, you’re already too late.
  2. Fragmented tooling
    Each cloud provider has its own logs, APIs, and investigation workflows. In addition, not all logs are enabled by default, cloud providers typically limit the scope of their logs (both in terms of what data they collect and how long they retain it), and some logs are only available through undocumented APIs. This creates siloed views of attacker activity, making it difficult to piece together a coherent timeline. Now layer in SaaS apps, Kubernetes clusters, and shadow IT — suddenly you’re stitching together 20+ tools just to find out what happened. Analysts call it the ‘swivel-chair Olympics,’ and it’s burning hours they don’t have.
  3. SOC overload
    Analysts spend the bulk of their time manually gathering evidence and correlating logs rather than responding to threats. This slows down investigations and increases burnout. SOC teams are drowning in noise; they receive thousands of alerts a day, the majority of which never get touched. False positives eat hundreds of hours a month, and consequently burnout is rife.  
  4. Cost of delay
    The longer an investigation takes, the higher its cost. Breaches contained in under 200 days save an average of over $1M compared to those that linger (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025).

These challenges create a dangerous gap for threat actors to exploit. By the time evidence is collected, attackers may have already accessed or exfiltrated data, or entrenched themselves deeper into your environment.

What’s Needed: A New Approach to Cloud Investigations

It’s time to ditch the manual, reactive grind and embrace investigations that are automated, proactive, and built for the world you actually defend. Here’s what the next generation of cloud forensics must deliver:

  • Automated evidence acquisition
    Capture forensic-level data the moment a threat is detected and before assets disappear.
  • Unified multi-cloud visibility
    Stitch together logs, timelines, and context across AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid environments into a single unified view of the investigation.
  • Accelerated investigation workflows
    Reduce time-to-insight from hours or days to minutes with automated analysis of forensic data, enabling faster containment and recovery.
  • Empowered SOC teams
    Fully contextualised data and collaboration workflows between teams in the SOC ensure seamless handover, freeing up analysts from manual collection tasks so they can focus on what matters: analysis and response.

Attackers are already leveraging the cloud’s agility. Defenders must do the same — adopting solutions that match the speed and scale of modern infrastructure.

Cloud Changed Everything. It’s Time to Change Investigations.  

The cloud fundamentally reshaped how businesses operate. It’s time for security teams to rethink how they investigate threats.

Forensics can no longer be slow, manual, and reactive. It must be instant, automated, and cloud-first — designed to meet the demands of ephemeral infrastructure and multi-cloud complexity.

The future of incident response isn’t just faster. It’s smarter, more scalable, and built for the environments we defend today, not those of ten years ago.  

On October 9th, Darktrace is revealing the next big thing in cloud security. Don’t miss it – sign up for the webinar.

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About the author
Kellie Regan
Director, Product Marketing - Cloud Security

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September 22, 2025

Understanding the Canadian Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act

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Introduction: The Canadian Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act

On 18 June 2025, the Canadian federal Government introduced Bill C-8 which, if adopted following completion of the legislative process, will enact the Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act (CCSPA) and give Canada its first federal, cross-sector and legally binding cybersecurity regime for designated critical infrastructure providers. As of August 2025, the Bill has completed first reading and stands at second reading in the Canadian House of Commons.

Political context

The measure revives most of the stalled 2022 Bill C-26 “An Act Respecting Cyber Security” which “died on Paper” when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025, in the wake of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation.

The new government, led by Mark Carney since March 2025, has re-tabled the package with the same two-part structure: (1) amendments to the Telecommunications Act that enable security directions to telecoms; and (2) a new CCSPA setting out mandatory cybersecurity duties for designated operators. This blog focuses on the latter.

If enacted, Canada will join fellow Five Eyes partners such as the United Kingdom and Australia, which already impose statutory cyber-security duties on operators of critical national infrastructure.

The case for new cybersecurity legislation in Canada

The Canadian cyber threat landscape has expanded. The country's national cyber authority, the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity (Cyber Centre), recently assessed that the number of cyber incidents has “sharply increased” in the last two years, as has the severity of those incidents, with essential services providers among the targets. Likewise, in its 2025-2026 National Cyber Threat Assessment, the Cyber Centre warned that AI technologies are “amplifying cyberspace threats” by lowering barriers to entry, improving the speed and sophistication of social-engineering attacks and enabling more precise operations.

This context mirrors what we are seeing globally: adversaries, including state actors, are taking advantage of the availability and sophistication of AI tools, which they have leverage to amplify the effectiveness of their operations. In this increasingly complex landscape, regulation must keep pace and evolve in step with the risk.

What the Canadian Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act aims to achieve

  • If enacted, the CCSPA will apply to operators in federally regulated critical infrastructure sectors which are vital to national security and public safety, as further defined in “Scope” below (the “Regulated Entities”), to adopt and comply with a minimum standard of cybersecurity duties (further described below)  which align with those its Five Eyes counterparts are already adhering to.

Who does the CCSPA apply to

The CCSPA would apply to designated operators that deliver services or systems within federal jurisdiction in the following priority areas:

  • telecommunications services
  • interprovincial or international pipeline and power line systems, nuclear energy systems, transportation systems
  • banking and clearing  
  • settlement systems

The CCSPA would also grant the Governor in Council (Federal Cabinet) with powers to add or remove entities in scope via regulation.

Scope of the CCSPA

The CCSPA introduces two key instruments:

First, it strengthens cyber threat information sharing between responsible ministers, sector regulators, and the Communications Security Establishment (through the Cyber Centre).

Second, it empowers the Governor in Council (GIC) to issue Cyber Security Directions (CSDs) - binding orders requiring a designated operator to implement specified measures to protect a critical cyber system within defined timeframes.

CSDs may be tailored to an individual operator or applied to a class of operators and can address technology, process, or supplier risks. To safeguard security and commercial confidentiality, the CCSPA restricts disclosure of the existence or content of a CSD except as necessary to carry it out.

Locating decision-making with the GIC ensures that CSDs are made with a cross-government view that weighs national security, economic priorities and international agreement.

New obligations for designated providers

The CCSPA would impose key cybersecurity compliance and obligations on designated providers. As it stands, this includes:

  1. Establishing and maintaining cybersecurity programs: these will need to be comprehensive, proportionate and developed proactively. Once implemented, they will need to be continuously reviewed
  2. Mitigating supply chain risks: Regulated Entities will be required to assess their third-party products and services by conducting a supply chain analysis, and take active steps to mitigate any identified risks
  3. Reporting incidents:  Regulated Entities will need to be more transparent with their reporting, by making the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) aware of any incident which has, or could potentially have, an impact on a critical system. The reports must be made within specific timelines, but in any event within no more than 72 hours;
  4. Compliance with cybersecurity directions:  the government will, under the CCSPA, have the authority to issue cybersecurity directives in an effort to remain responsive to emerging threats, which Regulated Entities will be required to follow once issued
  5. Record keeping: this shouldn’t be a surprise to many of those Regulated Entities which fall in scope, which are already likely to be subject to record keeping requirements. Regulated Entities should expect to be maintaining records and conducting audits of their systems and processes against the requirements of the CCSPA

It should be noted, however, that this may be subject to change, so Regulated Entities should keep an eye on the progress of the Bill as it makes its way through parliament.

Enforcement of the Act would be carried out by sector-specific regulators identified in the Act such as the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Minister of Transport, Canada Energy Regulator, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the Ministry of Industry.

What are the penalties for CCSPA non-compliance?

When assessing the penalties associated with non-compliance with the requirements of the CCSPA, it is clear that such non-compliance will be taken seriously, and the severity of the penalties follows the trend of those applied by the European Union to key pieces of EU legislation. The “administrative monetary penalties” (AMPs) set by regulation could see fines being applied of up to C$1 million for individuals and up to C$15 million for organizations.

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