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January 16, 2025

Reimagining Your SOC: How to Shift Away From Reactive Network Security

Reimagining your SOC Part 1/3: This blog shows how security teams can move to autonomous detection and investigation of novel threats, reducing alert fatigue, and enabling tailored, real-time threat response.
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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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16
Jan 2025

Introduction: Challenges and solutions to SOC efficiency

For Security Operation Centers (SOCs), reliance on signature or rule-based tools – solutions that are always chasing the latest update to prevent only what is already known – creates an excess of false positives. SOC analysts are therefore overwhelmed by a high volume of context-lacking alerts, with human analysts able to address only about 10% due to time and resource constraints. This forces many teams to accept the risks of addressing only a fraction of the alerts while novel threats go completely missed.

74% of practitioners are already grappling with the impact of an AI-powered threat landscape, which amplifies challenges like tool sprawl, alert fatigue, and burnout. Thus, achieving a resilient network, where SOC teams can spend most of their time getting proactive and stopping threats before they occur, feels like an unrealistic goal as attacks are growing more frequent.

Despite advancements in security technology (advanced detection systems with AI, XDR tools, SIEM aggregators, etc...), practitioners are still facing the same issues of inefficiency in their SOC, stopping them from becoming proactive. How can they select security solutions that help them achieve a proactive state without dedicating more human hours and resources to managing and triaging alerts, tuning rules, investigating false positives, and creating reports?

To overcome these obstacles, organizations must leverage security technology that is able to augment and support their teams. This can happen in the following ways:

  1. Full visibility across the modern network expanding into hybrid environments
  2. Have tools that identifies and stops novel threats autonomously, without causing downtime
  3. Apply AI-led analysis to reduce time spent on manual triage and investigation

Your current solutions might be holding you back

Traditional cybersecurity point solutions are reliant on using global threat intelligence to pattern match, determine signatures, and consequently are chasing the latest update to prevent only what is known. This means that unknown threats will evade detection until a patient zero is identified. This legacy approach to threat detection means that at least one organization needs to be ‘patient zero’, or the first victim of a novel attack before it is formally identified.

Even the point solutions that claim to use AI to enhance threat detection 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. The resulting homogenized dataset gets used to train AI systems — yours and everyone else’s — to recognize patterns of attack based on previously encountered threats.

While using AI in this way reduces the workload of security teams who would traditionally input this data by hand, it emanates the same risk – namely, that AI systems trained on known threats cannot deal with the threats of tomorrow. Ultimately, it is the unknown threats that bring down an organization.

The promise and pitfalls of XDR in today's threat landscape

Enter Extended Detection and Response (XDR): a platform approach aimed at unifying threat detection across the digital environment. XDR was developed to address the limitations of traditional, fragmented tools by stitching together data across domains, providing SOC teams with a more cohesive, enterprise-wide view of threats. This unified approach allows for improved detection of suspicious activities that might otherwise be missed in siloed systems.

However, XDR solutions still face key challenges: they often depend heavily on human validation, which can aggravate the already alarmingly high alert fatigue security analysts experience, and they remain largely reactive, focusing on detecting and responding to threats rather than helping prevent them. Additionally, XDR frequently lacks full domain coverage, relying on EDR as a foundation and are insufficient in providing native NDR capabilities and visibility, leaving critical gaps that attackers can exploit. This is reflected in the current security market, with 57% of organizations reporting that they plan to integrate network security products into their current XDR toolset[1].

Why settling is risky and how to unlock SOC efficiency

The result of these shortcomings within the security solutions market is an acceptance of inevitable risk. From false positives driving the barrage of alerts, to the siloed tooling that requires manual integration, and the lack of multi-domain visibility requiring human intervention for business context, security teams have accepted that not all alerts can be triaged or investigated.

While prioritization and processes have improved, the SOC is operating under a model that is overrun with alerts that lack context, meaning that not all of them can be investigated because there is simply too much for humans to parse through. Thus, teams accept the risk of leaving many alerts uninvestigated, rather than finding a solution to eliminate that risk altogether.

Darktrace / NETWORK is designed for your Security Operations Center to eliminate alert triage with AI-led investigations , and rapidly detect and respond to known and unknown threats. This includes the ability to scale into other environments in your infrastructure including cloud, OT, and more.

Beyond global threat intelligence: Self-Learning AI enables novel threat detection & response

Darktrace does not rely on known malware signatures, external threat intelligence, historical attack data, nor does it rely on threat trained machine learning to identify threats.

Darktrace’s unique Self-learning AI deeply understands your business environment by analyzing trillions of real-time events that understands your normal ‘pattern of life’, unique to your business. By connecting isolated incidents across your business, including third party alerts and telemetry, Darktrace / NETWORK uses anomaly chains to identify deviations from normal activity.

The benefit to this is that when we are not predefining what we are looking for, we can spot new threats, allowing end users to identify both known threats and subtle, never-before-seen indicators of malicious activity that traditional solutions may miss if they are only looking at historical attack data.

AI-led investigations empower your SOC to prioritize what matters

Anomaly detection is often criticized for yielding high false positives, as it flags deviations from expected patterns that may not necessarily indicate a real threat or issues. However, Darktrace applies an investigation engine to automate alert triage and address alert fatigue.

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst revolutionizes security operations by conducting continuous, full investigations across Darktrace and third-party alerts, transforming the alert triage process. Instead of addressing only a fraction of the thousands of daily alerts, Cyber AI Analyst automatically investigates every relevant alert, freeing up your team to focus on high-priority incidents and close security gaps.

Powered by advanced machine-learning techniques, including unsupervised learning, models trained by expert analysts, and tailored security language models, Cyber AI Analyst emulates human investigation skills, testing hypotheses, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions. According to Darktrace Internal Research, Cyber AI Analyst typically provides a SOC with up to  50,000 additional hours of Level 2 analysis and written reporting annually, enriching security operations by producing high level incident alerts with full details so that human analysts can focus on Level 3 tasks.

Containing threats with Autonomous Response

Simply quarantining a device is rarely the best course of action - organizations need to be able to maintain normal operations in the face of threats and choose the right course of action. Different organizations also require tailored response functions because they have different standards and protocols across a variety of unique devices. Ultimately, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to automated response actions puts organizations at risk of disrupting business operations.

Darktrace’s Autonomous Response tailors its actions to contain abnormal behavior across users and digital assets by understanding what is normal and stopping only what is not. Unlike blanket quarantines, it delivers a bespoke approach, blocking malicious activities that deviate from regular patterns while ensuring legitimate business operations remain uninterrupted.

Darktrace offers fully customizable response actions, seamlessly integrating with your workflows through hundreds of native integrations and an open API. It eliminates the need for costly development, natively disarming threats in seconds while extending capabilities with third-party tools like firewalls, EDR, SOAR, and ITSM solutions.

Unlocking a proactive state of security

Securing the network isn’t just about responding to incidents — it’s about being proactive, adaptive, and prepared for the unexpected. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) emphasizes this by highlighting the need for focused risk management, continuous incident response (IR) refinement, and seamless integration of these processes with your detection and response capabilities.

Despite advancements in security technology, achieving a proactive posture is still a challenge to overcome because SOC teams face inefficiencies from reliance on pattern-matching tools, which generate excessive false positives and leave many alerts unaddressed, while novel threats go undetected. If SOC teams are spending all their time investigating alerts then there is no time spent getting ahead of attacks.

Achieving proactive network resilience — a state where organizations can confidently address challenges at every stage of their security posture — requires strategically aligned solutions that work seamlessly together across the attack lifecycle.

Stay tuned for part 2/3

Part 2/3 in the "Reimagining your SOC" series is on improving analysis time and the modern challenges of SOC investigation.

Read more here: Reimagining your SOC: Overcoming Alert Fatigue with AI-Led Investigations

References

1.       Market Guide for Extended Detection and Response, Gartner, 17th August 2023 - ID G00761828

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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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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
Your data. Our AI.
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