The price of a ransomware attack goes far beyond the ransom itself. Cybercriminals often encrypt data on a victim’s device, steal sensitive information, and render systems completely unusable. Victims are typically asked to pay a ransom in exchange for a decryption key but paying the ransom doesn’t guarantee data recovery. Many victims still suffer data loss, extended downtime, and operational disruption. For businesses, ransomware can halt production, interrupt customer services, and lead to severe revenue loss. This makes strong ransomware protection an urgent priority.

A typical ransomware target is an organization that holds valuable, sensitive, or mission-critical data. Businesses deemed critical infrastructure typically providing essential services such as healthcare, energy, or education, are especially vulnerable due to the urgency of their operations. Organizations that handle large volumes of data or maintain confidential customer, employee, or financial information also face elevated risk. Attackers often seek out companies that store valuable assets, knowing disruption can pressure them to pay. Regardless of size, any company without adequate ransomware protection and anti-ransomware software could be a potential target. 

AI has changed the nature of ransomware both as a weapon and as a defense. Cybercriminals are now using AI to automate, scale, and augment ransomware attacks. These AI-powered threats move faster, adapt to environments, and evade traditional defenses.  

Ransomware protection tools trained on past threats can’t always detect novel attacks. However, Darktrace is a uniquely positioned ransomware solution that detects novel threats because it does not rely on signatures or known ransomware strains. Instead, it continuously learns what’s normal for each organization, spotting early signs of compromise by detecting subtle changes in behavior. This AI-driven approach to ransomware protection uncovers threats as they emerge, even if they’ve never been seen before. By identifying anomalies early, it helps stop ransomware before it can encrypt files or cause data loss. In today’s threat landscape, AI and ransomware prevention go hand in hand.

Yes, Darktrace / Incident Readiness & Recovery empowers teams to anticipate, withstand and recover better from cyber-attacks. Users can pre-emptively reduce disruption by initiating incident response earlier in the attack lifecycle with the AI Recovery Engine. Here, Darktrace provides tailored playbook steps for effective recovery, based on a deep understanding of your environment and each incident (without the need for regular upkeep).

The Darktrace Incident Interface brings together everything related to an incident like what actions were taken, any earlier risks that could have been stopped, and what they might have led to. It also integrates with EDRs, ticketing systems, and popular data recovery tools, so it fits easily into your existing incident response workflows.

Darktrace’s Readiness Reporting shows whether your technology and teams are prepared, giving you confidence that everything will work when it matters most. Incident Reports offer a clear, automated summary of attacks, while Playbook Reports explain the reasoning behind each action taken. These reports can be saved for future reference or shared with third parties like incident response partners or regulators.

Darktrace’s AI can respond at every stage of the incident kill chain. With Self-Learning AI, Darktrace detects early signs of a ransomware attack like phishing emails, unusual credential use, and privileged escalation. Also, Autonomous Response allows Darktrace to take action by rewriting malicious phishing links and halting malicious activity across the network.  

Darktrace products and solutions support a continuous threat and exposure management (CTEM) model approach to preventative cybersecurity. The two key products, Darktrace / Attack Surface Management provides a natural accompaniment to Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management, combining vulnerability and ASM tooling. Darktrace / Attack Surface Management will scope assets that are externally facing to the business, including Shadow IT. Those vulnerable assets ‘Identified in ASM’ will appear in attack paths and have altered exposure scores to account for their public visibility. Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management continuously assesses the most vulnerable and high-value attack paths across your business, helping prevent potential risks from escalating into real compromises.

Darktrace customers come from a wide array of industries and sizes. Darktrace has been at the forefront of ransomware protection for these organizations. Visit our customer page to learn more about which industries Darktrace covers. Also, visit our “Inside the SOC” blog where we dive into customer environments and show how Darktrace provides ransomware protection in customer environments.

How does Darktrace ensure business continuity during a ransomware attack?  

Darktrace does not require external connectivity or threat intelligence to detect threats, it learns from your unique business data to detect deviations from normal activity, meaning your data stays with you, in house. Additionally, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response technology is highly configurable, allowing end users to customize their response capabilities.

Darktrace is built with open architecture, making it easy to integrate with your existing security stack across several workflows. Whether you’re using third-party detection tools, incident response platforms, or cloud environments, Darktrace brings AI-driven insights and autonomous response directly to your data.

These integrations allow security teams to extend the reach of Darktrace’s AI, automate response actions across tools, and view threat intelligence wherever it’s needed without disrupting existing processes. The result is faster, smarter incident response across your entire ecosystem. Visit our integrations page to learn more.

How does Darktrace handle ransomware attacks in cloud environments?

Darktrace brings Self-Learning AI and advanced detection and response solutions to the cloud with Darktrace / CLOUD. Customers extending their data to the cloud benefit from multi-domain protection that detects threats wherever their data lives whether in SaaS applications, cloud infrastructure, or hybrid environments.

Darktrace is quick to deploy, often in minutes, and scales effortlessly to match the size and complexity of any organization. Darktrace / CLOUD continuously monitors activity across cloud assets, containers, APIs, and users correlated with detailed identity and network context to rapidly detect malicious activity and platform-native Autonomous Response neutralizes malicious activity with surgical accuracy while preventing disruption to cloud infrastructure or service