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April 8, 2025

Cloud Security Evolution: Why Security Teams are Taking the Lead

While many internal teams contribute to general cloud hygiene, the security team has increasingly taken the lead on cloud security. Learn how AI-powered cloud detection and response tools can help these teams with new responsibilities.
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
Pallavi Singh
Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance
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08
Apr 2025

Cloud adoption is rapidly on the rise. Gartner estimates that 90% of organizations will adopt hybrid clouds through 2027 [1].  

There are many reasons why organizations are migrating on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. It can increase the speed and scale of computing resources, improve reliability and resilience, and save time by outsourcing the spinning up, patching, and updating of infrastructure.  

However, despite these benefits, it is complex to secure. Public clouds operate with a shared responsibility model, meaning that while the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) maintains the physical infrastructure and services, customer organizations are responsible for their own security and compliance in their cloud deployments.  

This customer responsibility is crucial. Gartner forecasted that through 2025, 99% of cloud security failures would be the customer’s fault [2]. As cloud environments grow, security teams are taking on a greater share of the responsibility to protect these assets.

The many teams involved in cloud security

Several teams work across the cloud, and all of them can contribute to cloud security. For example, basic cyber-hygiene and Identity and Access Management (IAM) should be practiced across teams.  

Not every organization has the same categorization of teams, but some common ones include:

  • Security: assessing and mitigating vulnerabilities, risks, and threats. This team must be ready to identify, investigate, respond, and recover from incidents.
  • Infrastructure and ITOps: deploying and maintaining resources. Security must be considered across all layers of the cloud, including gateways, identity, encryption, and attack surface.
  • Research & development: building cloud-based applications. Security must be baked into code, referenced data, access, APIs, and third-party integrations.
  • DevOps: improving the software development process. Security must be applied to code across the development and production stages.
  • Compliance: adhering to industry standards and frameworks. Security often comes up in compliance regulations.  
  • End users: working in the cloud. Security must be taught through employee training sessions to adopt best practices and increase resistance against threats like phishing or data loss.

Traditionally, many organizations left cloud security to dedicated cloud teams. However, it is becoming more and more common for security teams to take on the responsibilities of securing the cloud. This is also true of organizations undergoing cloud migration and spinning up cloud infrastructure for the first time.

The complexity of cloud security

Most organizations using the cloud today have hybrid and/or multi-cloud deployments. Hybrid deployments combine public and private cloud environments and multi-cloud deployments use a combination of public cloud providers or regions where servers are stored. In fact, Deloitte reports that as many as 85% of businesses, a vast majority, use two or more cloud platforms, and 25% use at least five [3].

While these diverse deployments can boost resiliency, they also complicate security. Multiple environments increase the attack surface and reduce architectural visibility, making misconfigurations, unmanaged access, and inconsistent policies more likely. This complexity creates gaps in security that often require specialized teams and expert personnel to address.  

Challenges driving security teams’ responsibility

The usual approaches to other types of cybersecurity can’t be applied the exact same way to the cloud. With the inherent dynamism and flexibility of the cloud, the necessary security mindset differs greatly from those for networks or data centers, with which security teams may be more familiar.

For example, IAM is both critical and distinct to cloud computing, and the associated policies, rules, and downstream impacts require intentional care. IAM rules not only govern people, but also non-human entities like service accounts, API keys, and OAuth tokens. These considerations are unique to cloud security, and established teams may need to learn new skills to reduce security gaps in the cloud.

Additionally, there are greater compliance pressures from GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific regulations. While some companies have dedicated compliance teams, not every organization does and others are not always familiar with working in cloud environments. In these cases, responsibilities may fall to the security team.  

Finally, there has been a rise in sophisticated, cloud-based threats, such as account takeovers and misconfigurations. Preparing, responding to, and recovering from these cloud-specific threats lie with the security team as well.  

Learn more about the top risks and attacks faced in the cloud in the white paper: “Tackling the 11 Biggest Cloud Threats with AI-Powered Defense.

Solutions empowering security teams

The leading role of security teams in cloud security can put a strain on existing resources as well as exacerbate skills gaps. In response, security teams can turn to AI-powered tools like Darktrace / CLOUD to provide real-time detection and response in cloud environments.  

Darktrace uses multi-layered AI to learn normal ‘patterns of life’ for all users, technologies, and resources across the organization, enabling it to recognize the subtlest anomalies that point to an emerging threat.  

The use of AI allows for automation that reduces manual workloads and saves teams time. The self-learning capabilities also help the human team detect subtle indicators that can be hard to spot amid the immense noise of legitimate, day-to-day digital interactions.

With these, Darktrace can respond to both known and novel threats, helping security teams keep pace with today’s sophisticated threats, even if team members feel less confident in cloud environments.  

Crucially, Darktrace / CLOUD can enable proactive risk management as well. Attack Path Modeling for the cloud identifies exposed assets and highlights internal attack paths to give a dynamic view of the riskiest paths across cloud environments, network environments, and between – enabling security teams to prioritize based on unique business risk and address gaps to prevent future attacks.  

Darktrace / CLOUD dynamically adjusts its focus based on evolving risks, analyzing misconfigurations, and anomalous activity to prevent potential attacks. Its Entitlement Enumeration capability helps security teams gain visibility into all identities, roles, and permissions, allowing dynamic adjustments to stop insider threats and lateral movement.

In these ways, the AI-powered Darktrace / CLOUD can support security teams as they take on the lion’s share of responsibility in securing the cloud, regardless of any resource limitations or skills gaps.

Conclusion

Cloud security is both vital under the shared responsibility model and complex with hybrid and multi-cloud deployments and strict regulatory demands. While many teams contribute to cloud security, more and more responsibilities are shifting to security teams specifically.

AI-powered solutions that can detect and respond to threats spanning a wide range of risks and attack types can support security teams as they protect dynamic cloud environments. By adopting real-time cloud detection and response tools, security teams have more time to dedicate to proactive projects and high-level tasks as well as reduced burden on less specialized team members.  

Discover how advanced AI solutions like Darktrace / CLOUD can address evolving cloud security needs in the solution brief.  

Read more about the latest trends in cloud security in the blog “Protecting Your Hybrid Cloud: The Future of Cloud Security in 2025 and Beyond.”

References:

1. Gartner, November 19, 2024, “Cloud End-User Spending to Total $723 Billion in 2025”  

2. Gartner, October 10, 2019, “Is the Cloud Secure?

3. Deloitte, December 6, 2022, “Above the clouds: Taming multicloud chaos”  

Protect Your Hybrid Cloud

Discover how advanced AI solutions like Darktrace / CLOUD can address evolving cloud security needs in this solution brief

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
Pallavi Singh
Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance

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October 20, 2025

Salty Much: Darktrace’s view on a recent Salt Typhoon intrusion

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What is Salt Typhoon?

Salt Typhoon represents one of the most persistent and sophisticated cyber threats targeting global critical infrastructure today. Believed to be linked to state-sponsored actors from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this advanced persistent threat (APT) group has executed a series of high-impact campaigns against telecommunications providers, energy networks, and government systems—most notably across the United States.

Active since at least 2019, the group—also tracked as Earth Estries, GhostEmperor, and UNC2286—has demonstrated advanced capabilities in exploiting edge devices, maintaining deep persistence, and exfiltrating sensitive data across more than 80 countries. While much of the public reporting has focused on U.S. targets, Salt Typhoon’s operations have extended into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) where it has targeted telecoms, government entities, and technology firms. Its use of custom malware and exploitation of high-impact vulnerabilities (e.g., Ivanti, Fortinet, Cisco) underscores the strategic nature of its campaigns, which blend intelligence collection with geopolitical influence [1].

Leveraging zero-day exploits, obfuscation techniques, and lateral movement strategies, Salt Typhoon has demonstrated an alarming ability to evade detection and maintain long-term access to sensitive environments. The group’s operations have exposed lawful intercept systems, compromised metadata for millions of users, and disrupted essential services, prompting coordinated responses from intelligence agencies and private-sector partners worldwide. As organizations reassess their threat models, Salt Typhoon serves as a stark reminder of the evolving nature of nation-state cyber operations and the urgent need for proactive defense strategies.

Darktrace’s coverage

In this case, Darktrace observed activity in a European telecommunications organisation consistent with Salt Typhoon’s known tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), including dynamic-link library (DLL) sideloading and abuse of legitimate software for stealth and execution.

Initial access

The intrusion likely began with exploitation of a Citrix NetScaler Gateway appliance in the first week of July 2025. From there, the actor pivoted to Citrix Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) hosts in the client’s Machine Creation Services (MCS) subnet. Initial access activities in the intrusion originated from an endpoint potentially associated with the SoftEther VPN service, suggesting infrastructure obfuscation from the outset.

Tooling

Darktrace subsequently observed the threat actor delivering a backdoor assessed with high confidence to be SNAPPYBEE (also known as Deed RAT) [2][3] to multiple Citrix VDA hosts. The backdoor was delivered to these internal endpoints as a DLL alongside legitimate executable files for antivirus software such as Norton Antivirus, Bkav Antivirus, and IObit Malware Fighter. This pattern of activity indicates that the attacker relied on DLL side-loading via legitimate antivirus software to execute their payloads. Salt Typhoon and similar groups have a history of employing this technique [4][5], enabling them to execute payloads under the guise of trusted software and bypassing traditional security controls.

Command-and-Control (C2)

The backdoor delivered by the threat actor leveraged LightNode VPS endpoints for C2, communicating over both HTTP and an unidentified TCP-based protocol. This dual-channel setup is consistent with Salt Typhoon’s known use of non-standard and layered protocols to evade detection. The HTTP communications displayed by the backdoor included POST requests with an Internet Explorer User-Agent header and Target URI patterns such as “/17ABE7F017ABE7F0”. One of the C2 hosts contacted by compromised endpoints was aar.gandhibludtric[.]com (38.54.63[.]75), a domain recently linked to Salt Typhoon [6].

Detection timeline

Darktrace produced high confidence detections in response to the early stages of the intrusion, with both the initial tooling and C2 activities being strongly covered by both investigations by Darktrace Cyber AI AnalystTM investigations and Darktrace models. Despite the sophistication of the threat actor, the intrusion activity identified and remediated before escalating beyond these early stages of the attack, with Darktrace’s timely high-confidence detections likely playing a key role in neutralizing the threat.

Cyber AI Analyst observations

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst autonomously investigated the model alerts generated by Darktrace during the early stages of the intrusion. Through its investigations, Cyber AI Analyst discovered the initial tooling and C2 events and pieced them together into unified incidents representing the attacker’s progression.

Cyber AI Analyst weaved together separate events from the intrusion into broader incidents summarizing the attacker’s progression.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst weaved together separate events from the intrusion into broader incidents summarizing the attacker’s progression.

Conclusion

Based on overlaps in TTPs, staging patterns, infrastructure, and malware, Darktrace assesses with moderate confidence that the observed activity was consistent with Salt Typhoon/Earth Estries (ALA GhostEmperor/UNC2286). Salt Typhoon continues to challenge defenders with its stealth, persistence, and abuse of legitimate tools. As attackers increasingly blend into normal operations, detecting behavioral anomalies becomes essential for identifying subtle deviations and correlating disparate signals. The evolving nature of Salt Typhoon’s tradecraft, and its ability to repurpose trusted software and infrastructure, ensures it will remain difficult to detect using conventional methods alone. This intrusion highlights the importance of proactive defense, where anomaly-based detections, not just signature matching, play a critical role in surfacing early-stage activity.

Credit to Nathaniel Jones (VP, Security & AI Strategy, FCISO), Sam Lister (Specialist Security Researcher), Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Adam Potter (Senior Cyber Analyst)

Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

Appendices

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)

IoC-Type-Description + Confidence

89.31.121[.]101 – IP Address – Possible C2 server

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/WINMM.dll - URI – Likely SNAPPYBEE download

b5367820cd32640a2d5e4c3a3c1ceedbbb715be2 - SHA1 – Likely SNAPPYBEE download

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/NortonLog.txt - URI - Likely DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/123.txt - URI - Possible DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/123.tar - URI - Possible DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/pdc.exe - URI - Possible DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443//Dialog.dat - URI - Possible DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/fltLib.dll - URI - Possible DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/DisplayDialog.exe - URI - Possible DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/DgApi.dll - URI - Likely DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/dbindex.dat - URI - Likely DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/1.txt - URI - Possible DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/imfsbDll.dll – Likely DLL side-loading activity

hxxp://89.31.121[.]101:443/imfsbSvc.exe - URI – Likely DLL side-loading activity

aar.gandhibludtric[.]com – Hostname – Likely C2 server

38.54.63[.]75 – IP – Likely C2 server

156.244.28[.]153 – IP – Possible C2 server

hxxp://156.244.28[.]153/17ABE7F017ABE7F0 - URI – Possible C2 activity

MITRE TTPs

Technique | Description

T1190 | Exploit Public-Facing Application - Citrix NetScaler Gateway compromise

T1105 | Ingress Tool Transfer – Delivery of backdoor to internal hosts

T1665 | Hide Infrastructure – Use of SoftEther VPN for C2

T1574.001 | Hijack Execution Flow: DLL – Execution of backdoor through DLL side-loading

T1095 | Non-Application Layer Protocol – Unidentified application-layer protocol for C2 traffic

T1071.001| Web Protocols – HTTP-based C2 traffic

T1571| Non-Standard Port – Port 443 for unencrypted HTTP traffic

Darktrace Model Alerts during intrusion

Anomalous File::Internal::Script from Rare Internal Location

Anomalous File::EXE from Rare External Location

Anomalous File::Multiple EXE from Rare External Locations

Anomalous Connection::Possible Callback URL

Antigena::Network::External Threat::Antigena Suspicious File Block

Antigena::Network::Significant Anomaly::Antigena Significant Server Anomaly Block

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

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

Antigena::Network::External Threat::Antigena File then New Outbound Block  

References

[1] https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa25-239a

[2] https://www.trendmicro.com/en_gb/research/24/k/earth-estries.html

[3] https://www.trendmicro.com/content/dam/trendmicro/global/en/research/24/k/earth-estries/IOC_list-EarthEstries.txt

[4] https://www.trendmicro.com/en_gb/research/24/k/breaking-down-earth-estries-persistent-ttps-in-prolonged-cyber-o.html

[5] https://lab52.io/blog/deedrat-backdoor-enhanced-by-chinese-apts-with-advanced-capabilities/

[6] https://www.silentpush.com/blog/salt-typhoon-2025/

The content provided in this blog is published by Darktrace for general informational purposes only and reflects our understanding of cybersecurity topics, trends, incidents, and developments at the time of publication. While we strive to ensure accuracy and relevance, the information is provided “as is” without any representations or warranties, express or implied. Darktrace makes no guarantees regarding the completeness, accuracy, reliability, or timeliness of any information presented and expressly disclaims all warranties.

Nothing in this blog constitutes legal, technical, or professional advice, and readers should consult qualified professionals before acting on any information contained herein. Any references to third-party organizations, technologies, threat actors, or incidents are for informational purposes only and do not imply affiliation, endorsement, or recommendation.

Darktrace, its affiliates, employees, or agents shall not be held liable for any loss, damage, or harm arising from the use of or reliance on the information in this blog.

The cybersecurity landscape evolves rapidly, and blog content may become outdated or superseded. We reserve the right to update, modify, or remove any content.

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Nathaniel Jones
VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

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October 15, 2025

How a Major Civil Engineering Company Reduced MTTR across Network, Email and the Cloud with Darktrace

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Asking more of the information security team

“What more can we be doing to secure the company?” is a great question for any cyber professional to hear from their Board of Directors. After successfully defeating a series of attacks and seeing the potential for AI tools to supercharge incoming threats, a UK-based civil engineering company’s security team had the answer: Darktrace.

“When things are coming at you at machine speed, you need machine speed to fight it off – it’s as simple as that,” said their Information Security Manager. “There were incidents where it took us a few hours to get to the bottom of what was going on. Darktrace changed that.”

Prevention was also the best cure. A peer organization in the same sector was still in business continuity measures 18 months after an attack, and the security team did not want to risk that level of business disruption.

Legacy tools were not meeting the team’s desired speed or accuracy

The company’s native SaaS email platform took between two and 14 days to alert on suspicious emails, with another email security tool flagging malicious emails after up to 24 days. After receiving an alert, responses often took a couple of days to coordinate. The team was losing precious time.

Beyond long detection and response times, the old email security platform was no longer performing: 19% of incoming spam was missed. Of even more concern: 6% of phishing emails reached users’ inboxes, and malware and ransomware email was also still getting through, with 0.3% of such email-borne payloads reaching user inboxes.

Choosing Darktrace

“When evaluating tools in 2023, only Darktrace had what I was looking for: an existing, mature, AI-based cybersecurity solution. ChatGPT had just come out and a lot of companies were saying ‘AI this’ and ‘AI that’. Then you’d take a look, and it was all rules- and cases-based, not AI at all,” their Information Security Manager.

The team knew that, with AI-enabled attacks on the horizon, a cybersecurity company that had already built, fielded, and matured an AI-powered cyber defense would give the security team the ability to fend off machine-speed attacks at the same pace as the attackers.

Darktrace accomplishes this with multi-layered AI that learns each organization’s normal business operations. With this detailed level of understanding, Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI can recognize unusual activity that may indicate a cyber-attack, and works to neutralize the threat with precise response actions. And it does this all at machine speed and with minimal disruption.

On the morning the team was due to present its findings, the session was cancelled – for a good reason. The Board didn’t feel further discussion was necessary because the case for Darktrace was so conclusive. The CEO described the Darktrace option as ‘an insurance policy we can’t do without’.

Saving time with Darktrace / EMAIL

Darktrace / EMAIL reduced the discovery, alert, and response process from days or weeks to seconds .

Darktrace / EMAIL automates what was originally a time-consuming and repetitive process. The team has recovered between eight and 10 working hours a week by automating much of this process using / EMAIL.

Today, Darktrace / EMAIL prevents phishing emails from reaching employees’ inboxes. The volume of hostile and unsolicited email fell to a third of its original level after Darktrace / EMAIL was set up.

Further savings with Darktrace / NETWORK and Darktrace / IDENTITY

Since its success with Darktrace / EMAIL, the company adopted two more products from the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform – Darktrace / NETWORK and Darktrace / IDENTITY.

These have further contributed to cost savings. An initial plan to build a 24/7 SOC would have required hiring and retaining six additional analysts, rather than the two that currently use Darktrace, costing an additional £220,000 per year in salary. With Darktrace, the existing analysts have the tools needed to become more effective and impactful.

An additional benefit: Darktrace adoption has lowered the company’s cyber insurance premiums. The security team can reallocate this budget to proactive projects.

Detection of novel threats provides reassurance

Darktrace’s unique approach to cybersecurity added a key benefit. The team’s previous tool took a rules-based approach – which was only good if the next attack featured the same characteristics as the ones on which the tool was trained.

“Darktrace looks for anomalous behavior, and we needed something that detected and responded based on use cases, not rules that might be out of date or too prescriptive,” their Information Security Manager. “Our existing provider could take a couple of days to update rules and signatures, and in this game, speed is of the essence. Darktrace just does everything we need - without delay.”

Where rules-based tools must wait for a threat to emerge before beginning to detect and respond to it, Darktrace identifies and protects against unknown and novel threats, speeding identification, response, and recovery, minimizing business disruption as a result.

Looking to the future

With Darktrace in place, the UK-based civil engineering company team has reallocated time and resources usually spent on detection and alerting to now tackle more sophisticated, strategic challenges. Darktrace has also equipped the team with far better and more regularly updated visibility into potential vulnerabilities.

“One thing that frustrates me a little is penetration testing; our ISO accreditation mandates a penetration test at least once a year, but the results could be out of date the next day,” their Information Security Manager. “Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management will give me that view in real time – we can run it daily if needed - and that’s going to be a really effective workbench for my team.”

As the company looks to further develop its security posture, Darktrace remains poised to evolve alongside its partner.

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