January 9, 2024

Three Ways AI Secures OT & ICS from Cyber Attacks

Explore the three challenges facing industries that manage OT and ICS Systems, the benefits of adopting AI technology, and Darktrace / OT’s unique role!

Written by

Oakley Cox

Director of Product

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

Oakley Cox

Director of Product

Jan 2024

What is OT and ICS?

Operational technologies and industrial control systems are the networked technologies used for the automation of physical processes. These are the technologies that allow operators to control processes and retrieve real time process data from a factory, rail system, pipeline, and other industrial processes. ‍

The role of AI in defending OT/ICS networks

While largely adopted by industrial organizations, OT is utilized by Critical Infrastructures, these being the industries that directly affect the health, safety, and welfare of the public. As these organizations expand and adopt new networked industrial technologies, they are simultaneously expanding their attack surface.

With a larger attack surface, more attacks targeting OT/ICS, and focused coordination around cyber security from regulatory authorities, security personnel have increasing workloads that make it difficult to keep pace with threats and vulnerabilities. Defenders are managing growing attack surfaces due to IT and OT convergence. Thus, the adoption of AI technology to protect, detect, respond, and recover from cyber incidents in industrial systems is paramount for keeping critical infrastructure safe.

This blog will explore three challenges facing industries managing OT/ICS, the perceived benefits of adopting AI technology to address these challenges, and Darktrace/OT’s unique role in this process.

Darktrace also delivers complete AI-powered solutions to defend US federal government customers from cyber disruptions and ensure mission resilience. Learn more about high fidelity detection in Darktrace Federal’s TAC report.

Figure 1: AI statistics from Gartner and Deloitte

Three ways AI helps improves OT/ICS security

1. Anomaly detection and response

In this heightened security landscape, OT/ICS environments face a spectrum of external cyber threats that demand vigilant defense. From the looming risk of industrial ransomware to the threat of insiders, yet another dimension is added to security challenge, meaning security professionals must be equipped to detect and respond to internal and external threats.

While threats are eminent from both inside and outside the organization, many organizations rely on Indicator of Compromises (IOCs) for threat detection. By definition, these solutions can only detect network activity they recognize as an indicator of compromise; therefore, often miss insider threats and novel (zero-day) attacks because the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and attack toolkits have never been seen in practice.

Anomaly-based detection is best suited to combat never-before-seen threats and signatureless threats from the inside. However, not all detection methods are equal. Most anomaly-based detection solutions that leverage AI rely on a combination of supervised machine learning, deep learning, and transformers to train and inform their systems. This entails shipping your company’s data out to a large data lake housed somewhere in the cloud where it gets blended with attack data from thousands of other organizations. This data set gets used to train AI systems — yours and everyone else’s — to recognize patterns of attack based on previously encountered threats.

While this method reduces the workload for security teams who would have to input attack data otherwise manually, it runs the same risk of only detecting known threats and has potential privacy concerns when shipping this data externally.

To improve the quality and speed of anomaly detection, Darktrace/OT uses Self-Learning AI that leverages Bayesian Probabilistic Methodologies, Graph Theory, and Deep Neural Networks to learn your organization from the ground up in real time. By learning your unique organization, Darktrace/OT develops a sophisticated baseline knowledge of your network and assets, identifying abnormal activity that indicates a threat based on your unique network data at machine speed. Because the AI engine is local to the organization and/or assets, concerns of data residency and privacy are reduced, and the result is faster time to detect and triage incidents.

Leveraging Self-Learning AI, Darktrace/OT uses autonomous response that severs only the anomalous or risky behaviors allowing the assets to continue to operate as normal. Organizations work with Darktrace to customize how they want Darktrace’s autonomous response to be applied. These options vary from on a device- by-device basis, device type by device type, or subnet by subnet basis and can be done completely autonomously or in human confirmation mode. This gives security teams more time to respond to an incident and reduces operational downtime when facing a threat.

Darktrace leverages a combination of AI methods:

Self-Learning AI
Bayesian classification probabilistic models
Deep neural networks
Transformers
Graph theory models
Clustering models
Anomaly detection models
Generative and applied AI
Natural language processing
Supervised machine learning for investigation process of alerts

2. Vulnerability & Asset Management

At present, managing OT cyber risk is labor and resource intensive. Many organizations use third-party auditors to identify assets and vulnerabilities, grade compliance, and recommend improvements.

At best, these exercises become tick-box exercises for companies to stay in compliance with little measurable reduction in cyber risk. At worst, asset owners can be left with a mountain of vulnerability information to work through, much of it irrelevant to the security risks Engineering and Operations teams deal with day to day, and increasingly out of date each passing day after the annual or biannual audit has been completed.

In both cases, organizations are left using a patchwork of point products to address different aspects of preventative OT cyber security, most of which lack wider business context and lead to costly inefficiencies with no real impact to vulnerability or risk exposure.

Darktrace’s technology helps in three unique ways:

AI populates asset inventories: Self-Learning AI technology listens and learns from network traffic to populate or update asset inventories. It does this not just by identifying simple IPs, mac addresses, and hostnames, it learns from what it sees and automatically classifies or tags specific types of assets with the function that they perform. For example, if a specific device is performing functions like a PLC, sending commands to and from an HMI, it can appropriately tag and label these systems.
AI prioritizes risk: Leveraging Bayesian Probabilistic Methodologies, Graph Theory, and Deep Neural Networks, Darktrace/OT assesses the strategic risks facing your organization in real time. Using knowledge of data points on all your networked assets, data flow topology, your assets vulnerabilities and OSINT, Darktrace identifies and prioritizes high-value assets, potential attack pathways based on an existing vulnerabilities targetability and impact.
AI explains remediation tactics: Many OT devices run 24/7 operations and cannot be taken offline to apply a patch, assuming a patch is even available. Darktrace/OT uses natural language processing to provide and explain prioritized remediation and mitigation associated with a given cyber risk across all MITRE ATT&CK techniques. Thus, where a CVE exists but a patch cannot be applied, a different technical mitigation can be recommended to remove a potential attack path before it can be exploited, preemptively securing vital internal systems and assets.

Figure 2: A critical attack path which starts with the compromise of a PC in the internal IT network, and ends with a PLC in the OT network. Each step is mapped out to the real world TTPs including abuse of SSH sessions and the modifications of ICS programs

3. Simplify compliance and reporting

Organizations, regardless of size or resources, have compliance regulations they need to adhere to. What this creates is an increased workload for security professionals. For smaller organizations, security teams might lack the manpower or resources to report in the short time frame that is required. For large organizations, keeping track of a massive amount of assets proves to be a challenge. Both cases emanate the risk of reporting fatigue where organizations might be hesitant to report incidents due to the complexity and time requirements they demand.

An AI engine within the Darktrace/OT platform, Cyber AI analyst autonomously investigates incidents, summarize findings in natural language, and provides comprehensive insights into the nature and scope of cyber threats to improve the time it takes to triage and report on incidents. The ability to stitch together and present related security events provides a holistic understanding of the incident, enabling security analysts to identify patterns, assess the scope of potential threats, and prioritize responses effectively.

Darktrace's detection capabilities identify every stage of an intrusion, from a compromised domain controller to network reconnaissance and privilege escalation. The AI technology is capable of detecting infections across several devices and generating incident reports that piece together disparate events to give a clear security narrative containing details of the attack, bridging the communication gap between IT and OT specialists.

Post-incident, the technology assists in outlining timelines, discerning compromised data, pinpointing unusual activities, and aiding security teams in proactive threat mitigation.

With its capabilities, organizations can swiftly understand the attack timeline, affected assets, unauthorized accesses, compromised data points, and malicious interactions, facilitating appropriate communication and action. For example, when Cyber AI Analyst shows an attack path, the security team gains insight on the segmentation or lack thereof between two subnets allowing the security team to appropriately segment the subnets.

Cyber AI improves critical infrastructure operators’ ability to report major cyber-attacks to regulatory authorities. Considering that 72 hours is the reporting period for most significant incidents — and 24 hours for ransomware payments — Cyber AI Analyst is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have for critical infrastructure.

Figure 3: The tabs labeled 1-4 denote model breaches, each with a specific action and severity indicated by color dots. Darktrace integrates these breaches, offering the security team a unified view of interconnected security events.

The right AI for the right challenge

Incident Phase:

‍Protect

Role of AI:

Cyber risk prioritization

Attack path modelling

Compliance reporting

Darktrace Product:

PREVENT/OT

‍

Incident Phase:

Detect

Role of AI:

Anomaly detection

Triaging and investigating

Darktrace Product:

Cyber AI analyst

DETECT/OT

‍

Incident Phase:

Respond

Role of AI:

Autonomous response

Incident reporting

Darktrace Product:

RESPOND/OT

‍

Incident Phase:

Recover

Role of AI:

Incident preparedness

Incident simulations

Darktrace Product:

HEAL

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Credit to: Nicole Carignan, VP of Strategic Cyber AI - Kendra Gonzalez Duran, Director of Technology Innovation - & Daniel Simonds, Director of Operational Technology for their contribution to this blog.

Written by

Oakley Cox

Director of Product

Inside the SOC

Written by

Oakley Cox

Director of Product

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

Watch the NIS2 Webinar

Blog

Identity

July 3, 2025

Top Eight Threats to SaaS Security and How to Combat Them

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.

[related-resource]

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About the author

Carlos Gray

Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email

Blog

July 2, 2025

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

‍

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:

Related Darktrace blogs:

‍

*Self-reported by customer, confirmed afterwards.

**Updated January 2024 blog now reflects current findings

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Check out this article by Darktrace: Three Ways AI Secures OT & ICS from Cyber Attacks

Three Ways AI Secures OT & ICS from Cyber Attacks

What is OT and ICS?

The role of AI in defending OT/ICS networks

Three ways AI helps improves OT/ICS security

1. Anomaly detection and response

2. Vulnerability & Asset Management

3. Simplify compliance and reporting

The right AI for the right challenge

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

Top Eight Threats to SaaS Security and How to Combat Them

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Blog

Identity

July 3, 2025

Top Eight Threats to SaaS Security and How to Combat Them

The latest on the identity security landscape

What is SaaS security?

1. Account Takeover (ATO)

2. Privilege escalation

3. Lateral movement

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

5. OAuth token abuse

6. Insider threats

7. Application Programming Interface (API)-based attacks

8. Business Email Compromise (BEC) via SaaS

Protecting against these SaaS threats

AI-powered SaaS security stays ahead of the threat landscape

Blog

July 2, 2025

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

Detecting threats without relying on CVE disclosure

Below are 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

Autonomous Response

Conclusion

References and further reading:

Related Darktrace blogs: