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May 23, 2025

Defending the Frontlines: Proactive Cybersecurity in Local Government

To quickly identify and respond to threats before damage occurs, this local government relies on Darktrace to improve network visibility, stop insider threats, protect its email systems, and accelerate incident investigations.
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.
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The Darktrace Community
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23
May 2025

Serving a population of over 165,000 citizens, this county government delivers essential services that enhance the quality of life for all of its residents in Florida, United States. From public safety and works to law enforcement, economic development, health, and community services, the county’s cybersecurity strategy plays a foundational role in protecting its citizens.

From flying blind to seeing the bigger picture

Safeguarding data from multiple systems, service providers, and citizens is a key aspect of the County’s Systems Management remit. Protecting sensitive information while enabling smooth engagement with multiple external partners poses a unique challenge; the types of data and potential threats are continuously evolving, but resources – both human and financial – remain consistently tight.

When the Chief Information Officer took on his role in 2024, building out a responsive defense-in-depth strategy was central to achieving these goals. However, with limited resources and complex needs, his small security team was struggling with high alert volumes, inefficient tools, and time-consuming investigations that frequently led nowhere.

Meanwhile, issues like insider threats, Denial of Service (DoS), and phishing attacks were growing; the inefficiencies were creating serious security vulnerabilities. As the CIO put it, he was flying blind. With so much data coming in, security analysts were in danger of missing the bigger picture.

“We would just see a single portion of data that could send us down a rabbit hole, thinking something’s going on – only to find out after spending days, weeks, or even months that it was nothing. If you’re only seeing one piece of the issue, it’s really difficult to identify whether something is a legitimate threat or a false positive.”

Local government’s unique cybersecurity challenges

According to the CIO, even with a bigger team, aligning and comparing all the data into a comprehensive, bigger picture would be a major challenge. “The thing about local government specifically is that it’s a complex security environment. We bring together a lot of different individuals and organizations, from construction workers to people who bring projects into our community to better the County. What we work with varies from day to day.”

The challenge wasn’t just about identifying threats, but also about doing so quickly enough to respond before damage was done. The CIO said this was particularly concerning when dealing with sophisticated threats: “We’re dealing with nation-state attackers nowadays, as opposed to ‘script kiddies.’ There’s no time to lose. We’ve got to have cybersecurity that can respond as quickly as they can attack.”

To achieve this, among the most critical challenges the CIO and his team needed to address were:

  • Contextual awareness and visibility across the network: The County team lacked the granular visibility needed to identify potentially harmful behaviors. The IT team needed a tool that uncovered hidden activities and provided actionable insights, with minimal manual intervention.
  • Augmenting human expertise and improving response times: Hiring additional analysts to monitor the environment is prohibitively expensive for many local governments. The IT team needed a cybersecurity solution that could augment existing skills while automating day-to-day tasks. More effective resource allocation would drive improved response times.
  • Preventing email-based threats: Phishing and malicious email links present a persistent threat. The County team needed a way to flag, identify, and hold suspicious messages automatically and efficiently. Given the team’s public service remit, contextual awareness is crucial to ensuring that no legitimate communications are accidentally blocked. Accuracy is extremely important.
  • Securing access and managing insider threats: Having already managed insider threats posed by former staff members, the IT team wanted to adopt a more proactive, deterrent-based approach towards employee IT resource use, preventing incidents before they could occur.

Proactive cybersecurity

Recognizing these challenges, the CIO and County sought AI-driven solutions capable of acting autonomously to support a lean IT team and give the big picture view needed, without getting lost in false positive alerts.

Ease of deployment was another key requirement: the CIO wanted to quickly establish a security baseline for County that would not require extensive pre-planning or disrupt existing systems. Having worked with Darktrace in previous roles, he knew the solution had the capacity to make the critical connections he was looking for, while delivering fast response times and reducing the burden on security teams.

When every second counts, we want to be as close to the same resources as our attackers are utilizing. We have got to have something that can respond as quickly as they can attack. For the County, that’s Darktrace.” – CIO, County Systems Management Department.

Closing network visibility gaps with Darktrace / NETWORK

The County chose Darktrace / NETWORK for unparalleled visibility into the County’s network. With the solution in place, the CIO and his team were able to identify and address previously hidden activities, uncovering insider threats in unexpected places. For example, one team member had installed an unauthorized anonymizer plug-in on their browser, posing a potentially serious security risk via traffic being sent out to the internet. “Darktrace immediately alerted on it,” said CIO. “We were able to deal with the threat proactively and quickly.”

Darktrace / NETWORK continuously monitored and updated its understanding of the County environment, intelligently establishing the different behaviors and network activity. The end result was a level of context awareness that enabled the team to focus on the alerts that mattered most, saving time and effort.

“Darktrace brings all the data we need together, into one picture. We’re able to see what’s going on at a glance, as opposed to spending time trying to identify real threats from false positives,” said the CIO. The ability to automate actions freed the team up to focus on more complex tasks, with 66% of network response actions being applied autonomously, taking the right action at the right time to stop the earliest signs of threatening activity. This reduced pressure on the County’s team members, while buying valuable containment time to perform deeper investigations.

The agentless deployment advantage

For the CIO, one of the major benefits of Darktrace / NETWORK is that it’s agentless. “Agents alert attackers to the presence of security in your environment, it helps them to understand that there’s something else they need to bring down your defenses,” he said. Using Darktrace to mirror network traffic, the County can maintain full visibility across all network entities without alerting attackers and respond to threatening activity at machine speed. “It allows me to sleep better at night, knowing that this tool can effectively unplug the network cable from that device and bring it offline,” said CIO.

Streamlining investigations with Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst

For lean security teams, contextual awareness is crucial in reducing the burden of alert fatigue. Using Cyber AI Analyst, the County team is able to take the pressure off, automatically investigating every relevant event, and reducing thousands of individual alerts to only a small number of incidents that require manual review.

For the County team, the benefits are clear: 520 investigation hours saved in one month, with an average of just 11 minutes investigation time per incident. For the CIO, Darktrace goes beyond reducing workloads, it actually drives security: “It identifies threats almost instantly, bringing together logs and behaviors into a single, clear view.”

The efficiency gain has been so significant that the CIO believes Darktrace augments capabilities beyond the size of a team of analysts. “You could have three analysts working around the clock, but it’s hard to bring all those logs and behaviors together in one place and communicate everything in a coordinated way. Nothing does that as quickly as Darktrace can.”

Catching the threats from within: Defense in depth with Darktrace / IDENTITY

One of the key benefits of Darktrace for the County was its breadth of capability and responsiveness. “We’re looking at everything from multi-factor authentication, insider threats, distributed denial of service attacks,” said the CIO. “I’ve worked with other products in the past, but I’ve never found a tool as good as Darktrace.”

Further insider threats uncovered by Darktrace / IDENTITY included insecure access practices. Some users had logins and passwords on shared network resources or in plain-text files. Darktrace alerted the security team and the threats were mitigated before serious damage was done.

Darktrace / IDENTITY gives organizations advanced visibility of application user behavior from unusual authentication, password sprays, account takeover, resource theft, and admin abuse. Security teams can take targeted actions including the forced log-off of a user or temporary disabling of an account to give the team time to verify legitimacy.

First line of defense against the number one attack vector: Enhancing email security with Darktrace / EMAIL

Email-based threats, such as phishing, are among the most common attack vectors in modern cybersecurity, and a key vector for ransomware attacks. Post implementation performance was so strong that the organization now plans to retire other tools, cutting costs without compromising on security.

Darktrace / EMAIL was one of the first tools that I implemented when I started here,” said CIO. “I really recognize the value of it in our environment.” In addition to detecting and flagging potentially malicious email, the CIO said an unexpected benefit has been the reinforcement of more security-aware behaviors among end users. “People are checking their junk folders now, alerting us and checking to see if something is legitimate or not.”

The CIO said that, unlike traditional email security tools that basically perform only one function, Darktrace has multiple additional capabilities that deliver extra layers of protection compared to one-dimensional alternatives. For example, AI-employee feedback loops leverage insights gained from individual users to not only improve detection rates, but also provide end users with contextual security awareness training, to enhance greater understanding of the risks.

Straightforward integration, ease of use

The County wanted a powerful, responsive solution – without demanding pre-installation or integration needs, and with maximum ease of use. “The integration is relatively painless,” said the CIO. “That’s another real benefit, you can bring Darktrace into your environment and have it up and running faster than you could ever hire additional analysts to look at the same data.”

The team found that, compared to competing products, where there was extensive setup, overhead, and resources, “Darktrace is almost plug-and-play.” According to the CIO, the solution started ingesting information and providing notifications immediately: “You can turn on defense or response mechanisms at a granular level, for email or network – or both at the same time.”

The County sees Darktrace as an integral part of its cybersecurity strategy into the future. “Having worked with Darktrace in the past, it was an easy decision for me to agree to a multi-year partnership,” said the CIO “As we continue to build out our defense-in-depth strategy, the ability to use Darktrace to manage other data sources and identify new, additional behavior will be crucial to our proactive, risk-based approach.”

Darktrace has the capacity to meet the organization’s need for exceptional responsiveness, without burning out teams. “If you’re not overburdening the teams that you do have with significant workloads, they have a lot more agility to deal with things on the fly,” said the CIO.

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
The Darktrace Community

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July 9, 2025

Defending the Cloud: Stopping Cyber Threats in Azure and AWS with Darktrace

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Real-world intrusions across Azure and AWS

As organizations pursue greater scalability and flexibility, cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have become essential for enabling remote operations and digitalizing corporate environments. However, this shift introduces a new set of security risks, including expanding attack surfaces, misconfigurations, and compromised credentials frequently exploited by threat actors.

This blog dives into three instances of compromise within a Darktrace customer’s Azure and AWS environment which Darktrace.

  1. The first incident took place in early 2024 and involved an attacker compromising a legitimate user account to gain unauthorized access to a customer’s Azure environment.
  2. The other two incidents, taking place in February and March 2025, targeted AWS environments. In these cases, threat actors exfiltrated corporate data, and in one instance, was able to detonate ransomware in a customer’s environment.

Case 1 - Microsoft Azure

Simplified timeline of the attack on a customer’s Azure environment.
Figure 1: Simplified timeline of the attack on a customer’s Azure environment.

In early 2024, Darktrace identified a cloud compromise on the Azure cloud environment of a customer in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

Initial access

In this case, a threat actor gained access to the customer’s cloud environment after stealing access tokens and creating a rogue virtual machine (VM). The malicious actor was found to have stolen access tokens belonging to a third-party external consultant’s account after downloading cracked software.

With these stolen tokens, the attacker was able to authenticate to the customer’s Azure environment and successfully modified a security rule to allow inbound SSH traffic from a specific IP range (i.e., securityRules/AllowCidrBlockSSHInbound). This was likely performed to ensure persistent access to internal cloud resources.

Detection and investigation of the threat

Darktrace / IDENTITY recognized that this activity was highly unusual, triggering the “Repeated Unusual SaaS Resource Creation” alert.

Cyber AI Analyst launched an autonomous investigation into additional suspicious cloud activities occurring around the same time from the same unusual location, correlating the individual events into a broader account hijack incident.

Cyber AI Analyst’s investigation into unusual cloud activity performed by the compromised account.
Figure 2: Cyber AI Analyst’s investigation into unusual cloud activity performed by the compromised account.
Figure 2: Surrounding resource creation events highlighted by Cyber AI Analyst.
Figure 3: Surrounding resource creation events highlighted by Cyber AI Analyst.
Figure 4: Surrounding resource creation events highlighted by Cyber AI Analyst.

“Create resource service limit” events typically indicate the creation or modification of service limits (i.e., quotas) for a specific Azure resource type within a region. Meanwhile, “Registers the Capacity Resource Provider” events refer to the registration of the Microsoft Capacity resource provider within an Azure subscription, responsible for managing capacity-related resources, particularly those related to reservations and service limits. These events suggest that the threat actor was looking to create new cloud resources within the environment.

Around ten minutes later, Darktrace detected the threat actor creating or modifying an Azure disk associated with a virtual machine (VM), suggesting an attempt to create a rogue VM within the environment.

Threat actors can leverage such rogue VMs to hijack computing resources (e.g., by running cryptomining malware), maintain persistent access, move laterally within the cloud environment, communicate with command-and-control (C2) infrastructure, and stealthily deliver and deploy malware.

Persistence

Several weeks later, the compromised account was observed sending an invitation to collaborate to an external free mail (Google Mail) address.

Darktrace deemed this activity as highly anomalous, triggering a compliance alert for the customer to review and investigate further.

The next day, the threat actor further registered new multi-factor authentication (MFA) information. These actions were likely intended to maintain access to the compromised user account. The customer later confirmed this activity by reviewing the corresponding event logs within Darktrace.

Case 2 – Amazon Web Services

Simplified timeline of the attack on a customer’s AWS environment
Figure 5: Simplified timeline of the attack on a customer’s AWS environment

In February 2025, another cloud-based compromised was observed on a UK-based customer subscribed to Darktrace’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service.

How the attacker gained access

The threat actor was observed leveraging likely previously compromised credential to access several AWS instances within customer’s Private Cloud environment and collecting and exfiltrating data, likely with the intention of deploying ransomware and holding the data for ransom.

Darktrace alerting to malicious activity

This observed activity triggered a number of alerts in Darktrace, including several high-priority Enhanced Monitoring alerts, which were promptly investigated by Darktrace’s Security Operations Centre (SOC) and raised to the customer’s security team.

The earliest signs of attack observed by Darktrace involved the use of two likely compromised credentials to connect to the customer’s Virtual Private Network (VPN) environment.

Internal reconnaissance

Once inside, the threat actor performed internal reconnaissance activities and staged the Rclone tool “ProgramData\rclone-v1.69.0-windows-amd64.zip”, a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers, to an AWS instance whose hostname is associated with a public key infrastructure (PKI) service.

The threat actor was further observed accessing and downloading multiple files hosted on an AWS file server instance, notably finance and investment-related files. This likely represented data gathering prior to exfiltration.

Shortly after, the PKI-related EC2 instance started making SSH connections with the Rclone SSH client “SSH-2.0-rclone/v1.69.0” to a RockHoster Virtual Private Server (VPS) endpoint (193.242.184[.]178), suggesting the threat actor was exfiltrating the gathered data using the Rclone utility they had previously installed. The PKI instance continued to make repeated SSH connections attempts to transfer data to this external destination.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response

In response to this activity, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability intervened, blocking unusual external connectivity to the C2 server via SSH, effectively stopping the exfiltration of data.

This activity was further investigated by Darktrace’s SOC analysts as part of the MDR service. The team elected to extend the autonomously applied actions to ensure the compromise remained contained until the customer could fully remediate the incident.

Continued reconissance

Around the same time, the threat actor continued to conduct network scans using the Nmap tool, operating from both a separate AWS domain controller instance and a newly joined device on the network. These actions were accompanied by further internal data gathering activities, with around 5 GB of data downloaded from an AWS file server.

The two devices involved in reconnaissance activities were investigated and actioned by Darktrace SOC analysts after additional Enhanced Monitoring alerts had triggered.

Lateral movement attempts via RDP connections

Unusual internal RDP connections to a likely AWS printer instance indicated that the threat actor was looking to strengthen their foothold within the environment and/or attempting to pivot to other devices, likely in response to being hindered by Autonomous Response actions.

This triggered multiple scanning, internal data transfer and unusual RDP alerts in Darktrace, as well as additional Autonomous Response actions to block the suspicious activity.

Suspicious outbound SSH communication to known threat infrastructure

Darktrace subsequently observed the AWS printer instance initiating SSH communication with a rare external endpoint associated with the web hosting and VPS provider Host Department (67.217.57[.]252), suggesting that the threat actor was attempting to exfiltrate data to an alternative endpoint after connections to the original destination had been blocked.

Further investigation using open-source intelligence (OSINT) revealed that this IP address had previously been observed in connection with SSH-based data exfiltration activity during an Akira ransomware intrusion [1].

Once again, connections to this IP were blocked by Darktrace’s Autonomous Response and subsequently these blocks were extended by Darktrace’s SOC team.

The above behavior generated multiple Enhanced Monitoring alerts that were investigated by Darktrace SOC analysts as part of the Managed Threat Detection service.

Enhanced Monitoring alerts investigated by SOC analysts as part of the Managed Detection and Response service.
Figure 5: Enhanced Monitoring alerts investigated by SOC analysts as part of the Managed Detection and Response service.

Final containment and collaborative response

Upon investigating the unusual scanning activity, outbound SSH connections, and internal data transfers, Darktrace analysts extended the Autonomous Response actions previously triggered on the compromised devices.

As the threat actor was leveraging these systems for data exfiltration, all outgoing traffic from the affected devices was blocked for an additional 24 hours to provide the customer’s security team with time to investigate and remediate the compromise.

Additional investigative support was provided by Darktrace analysts through the Security Operations Service, after the customer's opened of a ticket related to the unfolding incident.

Simplified timeline of the attack
Figure 8: Simplified timeline of the attack

Around the same time of the compromise in Case 2, Darktrace observed a similar incident on the cloud environment of a different customer.

Initial access

On this occasion, the threat actor appeared to have gained entry into the AWS-based Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network via a SonicWall SMA 500v EC2 instance allowing inbound traffic on any port.

The instance received HTTPS connections from three rare Vultr VPS endpoints (i.e., 45.32.205[.]52, 207.246.74[.]166, 45.32.90[.]176).

Lateral movement and exfiltration

Around the same time, the EC2 instance started scanning the environment and attempted to pivot to other internal systems via RDP, notably a DC EC2 instance, which also started scanning the network, and another EC2 instance.  

The latter then proceeded to transfer more than 230 GB of data to the rare external GTHost VPS endpoint 23.150.248[.]189, while downloading hundreds of GBs of data over SMB from another EC2 instance.

Cyber AI Analyst incident generated following the unusual scanning and RDP connections from the initial compromised device.
Figure 7: Cyber AI Analyst incident generated following the unusual scanning and RDP connections from the initial compromised device.

The same behavior was replicated across multiple EC2 instances, whereby compromised instances uploaded data over internal RDP connections to other instances, which then started transferring data to the same GTHost VPS endpoint over port 5000, which is typically used for Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).

What Darktrace detected

Darktrace observed the threat actor uploading a total of 718 GB to the external endpoint, after which they detonated ransomware within the compromised VPC networks.

This activity generated nine Enhanced Monitoring alerts in Darktrace, focusing on the scanning and external data activity, with the earliest of those alerts triggering around one hour after the initial intrusion.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability was not configured to act on these devices. Therefore, the malicious activity was not autonomously blocked and escalated to the point of ransomware detonation.

Conclusion

This blog examined three real-world compromises in customer cloud environments each illustrating different stages in the attack lifecycle.

The first case showcased a notable progression from a SaaS compromise to a full cloud intrusion, emphasizing the critical role of anomaly detection when legitimate credentials are abused.

The latter two incidents demonstrated that while early detection is vital, the ability to autonomously block malicious activity at machine speed is often the most effective way to contain threats before they escalate.

Together, these incidents underscore the need for continuous visibility, behavioral analysis, and machine-speed intervention across hybrid environments. Darktrace's AI-driven detection and Autonomous Response capabilities, combined with expert oversight from its Security Operations Center, give defenders the speed and clarity they need to contain threats and reduce operational disruption, before the situation spirals.

Credit to Alexandra Sentenac (Senior Cyber Analyst) and Dylan Evans (Security Research Lead)

References

[1] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/67.217.57.252/community

Case 1

Darktrace / IDENTITY model alerts

IaaS / Compliance / Uncommon Azure External User Invite

SaaS / Resource / Repeated Unusual SaaS Resource Creation

IaaS / Compute / Azure Compute Resource Update

Cyber AI Analyst incidents

Possible Unsecured AzureActiveDirectory Resource

Possible Hijack of Office365 Account

Case 2

Darktrace / NETWORK model alerts

Compromise / SSH Beacon

Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Alerts

Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity

Device / SMB Lateral Movement

Compliance / SSH to Rare External Destination

Device / Anomalous SMB Followed By Multiple Model Alerts

Device / Anonymous NTLM Logins

Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration

Device / New or Uncommon SMB Named Pipe Device / Network Scan

Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity

Device / New Device with Attack Tools

Device / RDP Scan Device / Attack and Recon Tools

Compliance / High Priority Compliance Model Alert

Compliance / Outgoing NTLM Request from DC

Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Successful Connections

Device / Large Number of Model Alerts

Anomalous Connection / Multiple Failed Connections to Rare Endpoint

Unusual Activity / Internal Data Transfer

Anomalous Connection / Unusual Internal Connections

Device / Anomalous RDP Followed By Multiple Model Alerts

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Activity

Unusual Activity / Enhanced Unusual External Data Transfer

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data Transfer

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data to New Endpoint

Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port

Darktrace / Autonomous Response model alerts

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Server Block

Antigena / Network / Manual / Quarantine Device

Antigena / MDR / MDR-Quarantined Device

Antigena / MDR / Model Alert on MDR-Actioned Device

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Enhanced Monitoring from Client Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Alerts Over Time Block

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena Network Scan Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Significant Server Anomaly Block

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena SMB Enumeration Block

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Controlled and Model Alert

Antigena / Network / Significant Anomaly / Antigena Significant Anomaly from Client Block

Antigena / Network / External Threat / Antigena Suspicious Activity Block

Antigena / Network / Insider Threat / Antigena Internal Data Transfer Block

Cyber AI Analyst incidents

Possible Application Layer Reconnaissance Activity

Scanning of Multiple Devices

Unusual Repeated Connections

Unusual External Data Transfer

Case 3

Darktrace / NETWORK model alerts

Unusual Activity / Unusual Large Internal Transfer

Compliance / Incoming Remote Desktop

Unusual Activity / High Volume Server Data Transfer

Unusual Activity / Internal Data Transfer

Anomalous Connection / Unusual Internal Remote Desktop

Anomalous Connection / Unusual Incoming Data Volume

Anomalous Server Activity / Domain Controller Initiated to Client

Device / Large Number of Model Alerts

Anomalous Connection / Possible Flow Device Brute Force

Device / RDP Scan

Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity

Device / Network Scan

Anomalous Server Activity / Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device

Anomalous Connection / Download and Upload

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data Transfer

Unusual Activity / High Volume Client Data Transfer

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Activity

Anomalous Connection / Uncommon 1 GiB Outbound

Device / Increased External Connectivity

Compromise / Large Number of Suspicious Successful Connections

Anomalous Connection / Data Sent to Rare Domain

Anomalous Connection / Low and Slow Exfiltration to IP

Unusual Activity / Enhanced Unusual External Data Transfer

Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External TCP Port

Anomalous Server Activity / Outgoing from Server

Anomalous Connection / Multiple Connections to New External UDP Port

Anomalous Connection / Possible Data Staging and External Upload

Unusual Activity / Unusual External Data to New Endpoint

Device / Large Number of Model Alerts from Critical Network Device

Compliance / External Windows Communications

Anomalous Connection / Unusual Internal Connections

Cyber AI Analyst incidents

Scanning of Multiple Devices

Extensive Unusual RDP Connections

MITRE ATT&CK mapping

(Technique name – Tactic ID)

Case 1

Defense Evasion - Modify Cloud Compute Infrastructure: Create Cloud Instance

Persistence – Account Manipulation

Case 2

Initial Access - External Remote Services

Execution - Inter-Process Communication

Persistence - External Remote Services

Discovery - System Network Connections Discovery

Discovery - Network Service Discovery

Discovery - Network Share Discovery

Lateral Movement - Remote Desktop Protocol

Lateral Movement - Remote Services: SMB/Windows Admin Shares

Collection - Data from Network Shared Drive

Command and Control - Protocol Tunneling

Exfiltration - Exfiltration Over Asymmetric Encrypted Non-C2 Protocol

Case 3

Initial Access - Exploit Public-Facing Application

Discovery - Remote System Discovery

Discovery - Network Service Discovery

Lateral Movement - Remote Services

Lateral Movement - Remote Desktop Protocol  

Collection - Data from Network Shared Drive

Collection - Data Staged: Remote Data Staging

Exfiltration - Exfiltration Over C2 Channel

Command and Control - Non-Standard Port

Command and Control – Web Service

Impact - Data Encrypted for Impact

List of IoCs

IoC         Type      Description + Probability

193.242.184[.]178 - IP Address - Possible Exfiltration Server  

45.32.205[.]52  - IP Address  - Possible C2 Infrastructure

45.32.90[.]176 - IP Address - Possible C2 Infrastructure

207.246.74[.]166 - IP Address - Likely C2 Infrastructure

67.217.57[.]252 - IP Address - Likely C2 Infrastructure

23.150.248[.]189 - IP Address - Possible Exfiltration Server

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About the author
Alexandra Sentenac
Cyber Analyst

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July 8, 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.

[related-resource]

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About the author
Carlos Gray
Senior Product Marketing Manager, Email
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