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October 26, 2022

Securing Patient Data at Cullman Regional Medical Center

Discover how Cullman Regional Medical Center safeguards patient data with Darktrace AI. Learn how to keep sensitive data protected with the Darktrace experts!
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
Sean Simpson
Executive Director of IT, Cullman Regional Medical Center (Guest Contributor)
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26
Oct 2022

Cullman Regional Medical Center strives to improve the health of our community by providing excellent medical resources. We have over 50 providers offering a wide range of specialized care across our offices in Cullman and Hartselle, Alabama. 

To deliver the best services possible, we rely on technology. Staff members record medical histories in digital files. Guests interact with us through online portals. Medical IoT devices collect patient data. Yet the same digital adoptions that make healthcare more efficient also present vulnerabilities that threat actors can exploit to gain access to our digital systems. 

Another major concern comes from insider threat, whether malicious or accidental. Data security depends on user compliance, which can be hard to enforce and monitor. Even unintentionally, medical professionals can introduce risk simply by bringing personal devices, such as smart phones or watches, into the network.  

In late 2020, the FBI, CISA, and HHS issued a warning after the number of cyber-attacks targeting the healthcare sector reached record highs. The agencies cautioned that cybercriminals could exploit malware like TrickBot to harvest credentials, hijack resources to mine crypto-currencies, exfiltrate data, and deploy ransomware. 

The attacks targeting the healthcare sector have gone up in frequency and complexity. While protecting our digital infrastructure and patient data has become increasingly difficult, it remains vitally important. That’s why we deployed Darktrace.

High stakes healthcare security

The consequences of cyber-attacks in medicine can be devastating. Lost or stolen medical records can damage a hospital’s reputation and cost millions of dollars. According to a Ponemon Institute study, the financial cost of a data breach in the healthcare sector can cost two to three times more than a breach in any other industry.  

Beyond reputational or financial harm, cyber-attacks against hospitals and clinics can be lethal. They can force ambulances to be re-routed, surgeries to be postponed, and treatment options to be scaled back. In 2021, over 45 million patients were impacted by cyber-attacks on healthcare centers, and almost 25% of Health Delivery Organizations found that cyber-attacks increased patient mortality rates.

Darktrace protects our digital infrastructure to avoid these consequences. Its Self-Learning AI learns our organization— from the laptops and servers to the IoT devices to the users themselves— to recognize what constitutes our “pattern of life.” The AI then uses this information to identify the subtle behaviors that indicate a cyber-attack. Once an attack is detected, Autonomous Response reacts with surgical precision to neutralize it without disrupting our normal digital activity.  

Darktrace is always on and can detect and respond to attacks within seconds, providing another layer of security for our hospital and clinics. Darktrace’s approach, based on understanding our organization to create bespoke security, allows the AI to spot threats that slip by traditional security tools, which rely on rules and signatures. In this way, Darktrace can detect insider threats, too.  

Finally, not only does Darktrace protect us by stopping cyber-attacks, but it also serves as a deterrent to threat actors by making us a harder target. 

Protection in action

Darktrace has successfully helped us monitor and protect our digital estate. We have used it to examine suspicious traffic and troubleshoot access related problems. Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst investigates attacks and translates its findings into understandable explanations displayed in a single screen.  

Darktrace has proven its value to us on multiple occasions. The same day that one of our clinic managers installed a new file transfer protocol, Darktrace identified traffic going out over an unencrypted port. With its visibility and understanding of our cyber landscape, Darktrace detected this abnormal action and responded at machine-speed. It protected us from exposing personal patient data.

Another time, Darktrace noticed someone on our guest network running a network snooping tool, triggering us to remove their computer from the network. While it was only on our guest network, the threat actor could have been targeting the patients that were using it. Darktrace protected them, helping us live up to our goal of serving our guests with compassion and respect.

Keeping our organization healthy

We do not have a large enough IT staff to constantly monitor all traffic across our digital estate, so Darktrace supplements and augments our team. The AI continuously monitors our cyber landscape and responds to attacks without disrupting our normal digital activities. Moreover, it works at all times of the day, even when I am not online. By handling the maintenance of our security, Darktrace buys my team time to work on other projects. 

The cyber security of our organization is crucial for the safety of our patients and practitioners. Since deploying Darktrace, my team feels reassured that our security posture can handle any attacks that come our way. Darktrace is a valuable tool in our security stack. 

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
Sean Simpson
Executive Director of IT, Cullman Regional Medical Center (Guest Contributor)

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July 3, 2025

Top Eight Threats to SaaS Security and How to Combat Them

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The latest on the identity security landscape

Following the mass adoption of remote and hybrid working patterns, more critical data than ever resides in cloud applications – from Salesforce and Google Workspace, to Box, Dropbox, and Microsoft 365.

On average, a single organization uses 130 different Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, and 45% of organizations reported experiencing a cybersecurity incident through a SaaS application in the last year.

As SaaS applications look set to remain an integral part of the digital estate, organizations are being forced to rethink how they protect their users and data in this area.

What is SaaS security?

SaaS security is the protection of cloud applications. It includes securing the apps themselves as well as the user identities that engage with them.

Below are the top eight threats that target SaaS security and user identities.

1.  Account Takeover (ATO)

Attackers gain unauthorized access to a user’s SaaS or cloud account by stealing credentials through phishing, brute-force attacks, or credential stuffing. Once inside, they can exfiltrate data, send malicious emails, or escalate privileges to maintain persistent access.

2. Privilege escalation

Cybercriminals exploit misconfigurations, weak access controls, or vulnerabilities to increase their access privileges within a SaaS or cloud environment. Gaining admin or superuser rights allows attackers to disable security settings, create new accounts, or move laterally across the organization.

3. Lateral movement

Once inside a network or SaaS platform, attackers move between accounts, applications, and cloud workloads to expand their foot- hold. Compromised OAuth tokens, session hijacking, or exploited API connections can enable adversaries to escalate access and exfiltrate sensitive data.

4. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) bypass and session hijacking

Threat actors bypass MFA through SIM swapping, push bombing, or exploiting session cookies. By stealing an active authentication session, they can access SaaS environments without needing the original credentials or MFA approval.

5. OAuth token abuse

Attackers exploit OAuth authentication mechanisms by stealing or abusing tokens that grant persistent access to SaaS applications. This allows them to maintain access even if the original user resets their password, making detection and mitigation difficult.

6. Insider threats

Malicious or negligent insiders misuse their legitimate access to SaaS applications or cloud platforms to leak data, alter configurations, or assist external attackers. Over-provisioned accounts and poor access control policies make it easier for insiders to exploit SaaS environments.

7. Application Programming Interface (API)-based attacks

SaaS applications rely on APIs for integration and automation, but attackers exploit insecure endpoints, excessive permissions, and unmonitored API calls to gain unauthorized access. API abuse can lead to data exfiltration, privilege escalation, and service disruption.

8. Business Email Compromise (BEC) via SaaS

Adversaries compromise SaaS-based email platforms (e.g., Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace) to send phishing emails, conduct invoice fraud, or steal sensitive communications. BEC attacks often involve financial fraud or data theft by impersonating executives or suppliers.

BEC heavily uses social engineering techniques, tailoring messages for a specific audience and context. And with the growing use of generative AI by threat actors, BEC is becoming even harder to detect. By adding ingenuity and machine speed, generative AI tools give threat actors the ability to create more personalized, targeted, and convincing attacks at scale.

Protecting against these SaaS threats

Traditionally, security leaders relied on tools that were focused on the attack, reliant on threat intelligence, and confined to a single area of the digital estate.

However, these tools have limitations, and often prove inadequate for contemporary situations, environments, and threats. For example, they may lack advanced threat detection, have limited visibility and scope, and struggle to integrate with other tools and infrastructure, especially cloud platforms.

AI-powered SaaS security stays ahead of the threat landscape

New, more effective approaches involve AI-powered defense solutions that understand the digital business, reveal subtle deviations that indicate cyber-threats, and action autonomous, targeted responses.

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Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

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July 2, 2025

Pre-CVE Threat Detection: 10 Examples Identifying Malicious Activity Prior to Public Disclosure of a Vulnerability

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Vulnerabilities are weaknesses in a system that can be exploited by malicious actors to gain unauthorized access or to disrupt normal operations. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (or CVEs) are a list of publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities that can be tracked and mitigated by the security community.

When a vulnerability is discovered, the standard practice is to report it to the vendor or the responsible organization, allowing them to develop and distribute a patch or fix before the details are made public. This is known as responsible disclosure.

With a record-breaking 40,000 CVEs reported for 2024 and a predicted higher number for 2025 by the Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) [1], anomaly-detection is essential for identifying these potential risks. The gap between exploitation of a zero-day and disclosure of the vulnerability can sometimes be considerable, and retroactively attempting to identify successful exploitation on your network can be challenging, particularly if taking a signature-based approach.

Detecting threats without relying on CVE disclosure

Abnormal behaviors in networks or systems, such as unusual login patterns or data transfers, can indicate attempted cyber-attacks, insider threats, or compromised systems. Since Darktrace does not rely on rules or signatures, it can detect malicious activity that is anomalous even without full context of the specific device or asset in question.

For example, during the Fortinet exploitation late last year, the Darktrace Threat Research team were investigating a different Fortinet vulnerability, namely CVE 2024-23113, for exploitation when Mandiant released a security advisory around CVE 2024-47575, which aligned closely with Darktrace’s findings.

Retrospective analysis like this is used by Darktrace’s threat researchers to better understand detections across the threat landscape and to add additional context.

Below are ten examples from the past year where Darktrace detected malicious activity days or even weeks before a vulnerability was publicly disclosed.

ten examples from the past year where Darktrace detected malicious activity days or even weeks before a vulnerability was publicly disclosed.

Trends in pre-cve exploitation

Often, the disclosure of an exploited vulnerability can be off the back of an incident response investigation related to a compromise by an advanced threat actor using a zero-day. Once the vulnerability is registered and publicly disclosed as having been exploited, it can kick off a race between the attacker and defender: attack vs patch.

Nation-state actors, highly skilled with significant resources, are known to use a range of capabilities to achieve their target, including zero-day use. Often, pre-CVE activity is “low and slow”, last for months with high operational security. After CVE disclosure, the barriers to entry lower, allowing less skilled and less resourced attackers, like some ransomware gangs, to exploit the vulnerability and cause harm. This is why two distinct types of activity are often seen: pre and post disclosure of an exploited vulnerability.

Darktrace saw this consistent story line play out during several of the Fortinet and PAN OS threat actor campaigns highlighted above last year, where nation-state actors were seen exploiting vulnerabilities first, followed by ransomware gangs impacting organizations [2].

The same applies with the recent SAP Netweaver exploitations being tied to a China based threat actor earlier this spring with subsequent ransomware incidents being observed [3].

Autonomous Response

Anomaly-based detection offers the benefit of identifying malicious activity even before a CVE is disclosed; however, security teams still need to quickly contain and isolate the activity.

For example, during the Ivanti chaining exploitation in the early part of 2025, a customer had Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability enabled on their network. As a result, Darktrace was able to contain the compromise and shut down any ongoing suspicious connectivity by blocking internal connections and enforcing a “pattern of life” on the affected device.

This pre-CVE detection and response by Darktrace occurred 11 days before any public disclosure, demonstrating the value of an anomaly-based approach.

In some cases, customers have even reported that Darktrace stopped malicious exploitation of devices several days before a public disclosure of a vulnerability.

For example, During the ConnectWise exploitation, a customer informed the team that Darktrace had detected malicious software being installed via remote access. Upon further investigation, four servers were found to be impacted, while Autonomous Response had blocked outbound connections and enforced patterns of life on impacted devices.

Conclusion

By continuously analyzing behavioral patterns, systems can spot unusual activities and patterns from users, systems, and networks to detect anomalies that could signify a security breach.

Through ongoing monitoring and learning from these behaviors, anomaly-based security systems can detect threats that traditional signature-based solutions might miss, while also providing detailed insights into threat tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This type of behavioral intelligence supports pre-CVE detection, allows for a more adaptive security posture, and enables systems to evolve with the ever-changing threat landscape.

Credit to Nathaniel Jones (VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO), Emma Fougler (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

References and further reading:

  1. https://www.first.org/blog/20250607-Vulnerability-Forecast-for-2025
  2. https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/fortimanager-zero-day-exploitation-cve-2024-47575
  3. https://thehackernews.com/2025/05/china-linked-hackers-exploit-sap-and.html

Related Darktrace blogs:

*Self-reported by customer, confirmed afterwards.

**Updated January 2024 blog now reflects current findings

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