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April 24, 2025

The Importance of NDR in Resilient XDR

Learn why EDR alone is not enough and how NDR uncovers and stops threats that disable or bypass endpoint security.
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
Nathaniel Jones
VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO
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24
Apr 2025

As threat actors become more adept at targeting and disabling EDR agents, relying solely on endpoint detection leaves critical blind spots.

Network detection and response (NDR) offers the visibility and resilience needed to catch what EDR can’t especially in environments with unmanaged devices or advanced threats that evade local controls.

This blog explores how threat actors can disable or bypass EDR-based XDR solutions and demonstrates how Darktrace’s approach to NDR closes the resulting security gaps with Self-Learning AI that enables autonomous, real-time detection and response.

Threat actors see local security agents as targets

Recent research by security firms has highlighted ‘EDR killers’: tools that deliberately target EDR agents to disable or damage them. These include the known malicious tool EDRKillShifter, the open source EDRSilencer, EDRSandblast and variants of Terminator, and even the legitimate business application HRSword.

The attack surface of any endpoint agent is inevitably large, whether the software is challenged directly, by contesting its local visibility and access mechanisms, or by targeting the Operating System it relies upon. Additionally, threat actors can readily access and analyze EDR tools, and due to their uniformity across environments an exploit proven in a lab setting will likely succeed elsewhere.

Sophos have performed deep research into the EDRShiftKiller tool, which ESET have separately shown became accessible to multiple threat actor groups. Cisco Talos have reported via TheRegister observing significant success rates when an EDR kill was attempted by ransomware actors.

With the local EDR agent silently disabled or evaded, how will the threat be discovered?

What are the limitations of relying solely on EDR?

Cyber attackers will inevitably break through boundary defences, through innovation or trickery or exploiting zero-days. Preventive measures can reduce but not completely stop this. The attackers will always then want to expand beyond their initial access point to achieve persistence and discover and reach high value targets within the business. This is the primary domain of network activity monitoring and NDR, which includes responsibility for securing the many devices that cannot run endpoint agents.

In the insights from a CISA Red Team assessment of a US CNI organization, the Red Team was able to maintain access over the course of months and achieve their target outcomes. The top lesson learned in the report was:

“The assessed organization had insufficient technical controls to prevent and detect malicious activity. The organization relied too heavily on host-based endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions and did not implement sufficient network layer protections.”

This proves that partial, isolated viewpoints are not sufficient to track and analyze what is fundamentally a connected problem – and without the added visibility and detection capabilities of NDR, any downstream SIEM or MDR services also still have nothing to work with.

Why is network detection & response (NDR) critical?

An effective NDR finds threats that disable or can’t be seen by local security agents and generally operates out-of-band, acquiring data from infrastructure such as traffic mirroring from physical or virtual switches. This means that the security system is extremely inaccessible to a threat actor at any stage.

An advanced NDR such as Darktrace / NETWORK is fully capable of detecting even high-end novel and unknown threats.

Detecting exploitation of Ivanti CS/PS with Darktrace / NETWORK

On January 9th 2025, two new vulnerabilities were disclosed in Ivanti Connect Secure and Policy Secure appliances that were under malicious exploitation. Perimeter devices, like Ivanti VPNs, are designed to keep threat actors out of a network, so it's quite serious when these devices are vulnerable.

An NDR solution is critical because it provides network-wide visibility for detecting lateral movement and threats that an EDR might miss, such as identifying command and control sessions (C2) and data exfiltration, even when hidden within encrypted traffic and which an EDR alone may not detect.

Darktrace initially detected suspicious activity connected with the exploitation of CVE-2025-0282 on December 29, 2024 – 11 days before the public disclosure of the vulnerability, this early detection highlights the benefits of an anomaly-based network detection method.

Throughout the campaign and based on the network telemetry available to Darktrace, a wide range of malicious activities were identified, including the malicious use of administrative credentials, the download of suspicious files, and network scanning in the cases investigated.

Darktrace / NETWORK’s autonomous response capabilities played a critical role in containment by autonomously blocking suspicious connections and enforcing normal behavior patterns. At the same time, Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst™ automatically investigated and correlated the anomalous activity into cohesive incidents, revealing the full scope of the compromise.

This case highlights the importance of real-time, AI-driven network monitoring to detect and disrupt stealthy post-exploitation techniques targeting unmanaged or unprotected systems.

Unlocking adaptive protection for evolving cyber risks

Darktrace / NETWORK uses unique AI engines that learn what is normal behavior for an organization’s entire network, continuously analyzing, mapping and modeling every connection to create a full picture of your devices, identities, connections, and potential attack paths.

With its ability to uncover previously unknown threats as well as detect known threats Darktrace is an essential layer of the security stack. Darktrace has helped secure customers against attacks including 2024 threat actor campaigns against Fortinet’s FortiManager , Palo Alto firewall devices, and more.  

Stay tuned for part II of this series which dives deeper into the differences between NDR types.

Credit to Nathaniel Jones VP, Security & AI Strategy, FCISO & Ashanka Iddya, Senior Director of Product Marketing for their contribution to this blog.

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
Nathaniel Jones
VP, Security & AI Strategy, Field CISO

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September 23, 2025

It’s Time to Rethink Cloud Investigations

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Cloud Breaches Are Surging

Cloud adoption has revolutionized how businesses operate, offering speed, scalability, and flexibility. But for security teams, this transformation has introduced a new set of challenges, especially when it comes to incident response (IR) and forensic investigations.

Cloud-related breaches are skyrocketing – 82% of breaches now involve cloud-stored data (IBM Cost of a Data Breach, 2023). Yet incidents often go unnoticed for days: according to a 2025 report by Cybersecurity Insiders, of the 65% of organizations experienced a cloud-related incident in the past year, only 9% detected it within the first hour, and 62% took more than 24 hours to remediate it (Cybersecurity Insiders, Cloud Security Report 2025).

Despite the shift to cloud, many investigation practices remain rooted in legacy on-prem approaches. According to a recent report, 65% of organizations spend approximately 3-5 days longer when investigating an incident in the cloud vs. on premises.

Cloud investigations must evolve, or risk falling behind attackers who are already exploiting the cloud’s speed and complexity.

4 Reasons Cloud Investigations Are Broken

The cloud’s dynamic nature – with its ephemeral workloads and distributed architecture – has outpaced traditional incident response methods. What worked in static, on-prem environments simply doesn’t translate.

Here’s why:

  1. Ephemeral workloads
    Containers and serverless functions can spin up and vanish in minutes. Attackers know this as well – they’re exploiting short-lived assets for “hit-and-run” attacks, leaving almost no forensic footprint. If you’re relying on scheduled scans or manual evidence collection, you’re already too late.
  2. Fragmented tooling
    Each cloud provider has its own logs, APIs, and investigation workflows. In addition, not all logs are enabled by default, cloud providers typically limit the scope of their logs (both in terms of what data they collect and how long they retain it), and some logs are only available through undocumented APIs. This creates siloed views of attacker activity, making it difficult to piece together a coherent timeline. Now layer in SaaS apps, Kubernetes clusters, and shadow IT — suddenly you’re stitching together 20+ tools just to find out what happened. Analysts call it the ‘swivel-chair Olympics,’ and it’s burning hours they don’t have.
  3. SOC overload
    Analysts spend the bulk of their time manually gathering evidence and correlating logs rather than responding to threats. This slows down investigations and increases burnout. SOC teams are drowning in noise; they receive thousands of alerts a day, the majority of which never get touched. False positives eat hundreds of hours a month, and consequently burnout is rife.  
  4. Cost of delay
    The longer an investigation takes, the higher its cost. Breaches contained in under 200 days save an average of over $1M compared to those that linger (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025).

These challenges create a dangerous gap for threat actors to exploit. By the time evidence is collected, attackers may have already accessed or exfiltrated data, or entrenched themselves deeper into your environment.

What’s Needed: A New Approach to Cloud Investigations

It’s time to ditch the manual, reactive grind and embrace investigations that are automated, proactive, and built for the world you actually defend. Here’s what the next generation of cloud forensics must deliver:

  • Automated evidence acquisition
    Capture forensic-level data the moment a threat is detected and before assets disappear.
  • Unified multi-cloud visibility
    Stitch together logs, timelines, and context across AWS, Azure, GCP, and hybrid environments into a single unified view of the investigation.
  • Accelerated investigation workflows
    Reduce time-to-insight from hours or days to minutes with automated analysis of forensic data, enabling faster containment and recovery.
  • Empowered SOC teams
    Fully contextualised data and collaboration workflows between teams in the SOC ensure seamless handover, freeing up analysts from manual collection tasks so they can focus on what matters: analysis and response.

Attackers are already leveraging the cloud’s agility. Defenders must do the same — adopting solutions that match the speed and scale of modern infrastructure.

Cloud Changed Everything. It’s Time to Change Investigations.  

The cloud fundamentally reshaped how businesses operate. It’s time for security teams to rethink how they investigate threats.

Forensics can no longer be slow, manual, and reactive. It must be instant, automated, and cloud-first — designed to meet the demands of ephemeral infrastructure and multi-cloud complexity.

The future of incident response isn’t just faster. It’s smarter, more scalable, and built for the environments we defend today, not those of ten years ago.  

On October 9th, Darktrace is revealing the next big thing in cloud security. Don’t miss it – sign up for the webinar.

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About the author
Kellie Regan
Director, Product Marketing - Cloud Security

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September 22, 2025

Understanding the Canadian Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act

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Introduction: The Canadian Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act

On 18 June 2025, the Canadian federal Government introduced Bill C-8 which, if adopted following completion of the legislative process, will enact the Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act (CCSPA) and give Canada its first federal, cross-sector and legally binding cybersecurity regime for designated critical infrastructure providers. As of August 2025, the Bill has completed first reading and stands at second reading in the Canadian House of Commons.

Political context

The measure revives most of the stalled 2022 Bill C-26 “An Act Respecting Cyber Security” which “died on Paper” when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025, in the wake of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation.

The new government, led by Mark Carney since March 2025, has re-tabled the package with the same two-part structure: (1) amendments to the Telecommunications Act that enable security directions to telecoms; and (2) a new CCSPA setting out mandatory cybersecurity duties for designated operators. This blog focuses on the latter.

If enacted, Canada will join fellow Five Eyes partners such as the United Kingdom and Australia, which already impose statutory cyber-security duties on operators of critical national infrastructure.

The case for new cybersecurity legislation in Canada

The Canadian cyber threat landscape has expanded. The country's national cyber authority, the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity (Cyber Centre), recently assessed that the number of cyber incidents has “sharply increased” in the last two years, as has the severity of those incidents, with essential services providers among the targets. Likewise, in its 2025-2026 National Cyber Threat Assessment, the Cyber Centre warned that AI technologies are “amplifying cyberspace threats” by lowering barriers to entry, improving the speed and sophistication of social-engineering attacks and enabling more precise operations.

This context mirrors what we are seeing globally: adversaries, including state actors, are taking advantage of the availability and sophistication of AI tools, which they have leverage to amplify the effectiveness of their operations. In this increasingly complex landscape, regulation must keep pace and evolve in step with the risk.

What the Canadian Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act aims to achieve

  • If enacted, the CCSPA will apply to operators in federally regulated critical infrastructure sectors which are vital to national security and public safety, as further defined in “Scope” below (the “Regulated Entities”), to adopt and comply with a minimum standard of cybersecurity duties (further described below)  which align with those its Five Eyes counterparts are already adhering to.

Who does the CCSPA apply to

The CCSPA would apply to designated operators that deliver services or systems within federal jurisdiction in the following priority areas:

  • telecommunications services
  • interprovincial or international pipeline and power line systems, nuclear energy systems, transportation systems
  • banking and clearing  
  • settlement systems

The CCSPA would also grant the Governor in Council (Federal Cabinet) with powers to add or remove entities in scope via regulation.

Scope of the CCSPA

The CCSPA introduces two key instruments:

First, it strengthens cyber threat information sharing between responsible ministers, sector regulators, and the Communications Security Establishment (through the Cyber Centre).

Second, it empowers the Governor in Council (GIC) to issue Cyber Security Directions (CSDs) - binding orders requiring a designated operator to implement specified measures to protect a critical cyber system within defined timeframes.

CSDs may be tailored to an individual operator or applied to a class of operators and can address technology, process, or supplier risks. To safeguard security and commercial confidentiality, the CCSPA restricts disclosure of the existence or content of a CSD except as necessary to carry it out.

Locating decision-making with the GIC ensures that CSDs are made with a cross-government view that weighs national security, economic priorities and international agreement.

New obligations for designated providers

The CCSPA would impose key cybersecurity compliance and obligations on designated providers. As it stands, this includes:

  1. Establishing and maintaining cybersecurity programs: these will need to be comprehensive, proportionate and developed proactively. Once implemented, they will need to be continuously reviewed
  2. Mitigating supply chain risks: Regulated Entities will be required to assess their third-party products and services by conducting a supply chain analysis, and take active steps to mitigate any identified risks
  3. Reporting incidents:  Regulated Entities will need to be more transparent with their reporting, by making the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) aware of any incident which has, or could potentially have, an impact on a critical system. The reports must be made within specific timelines, but in any event within no more than 72 hours;
  4. Compliance with cybersecurity directions:  the government will, under the CCSPA, have the authority to issue cybersecurity directives in an effort to remain responsive to emerging threats, which Regulated Entities will be required to follow once issued
  5. Record keeping: this shouldn’t be a surprise to many of those Regulated Entities which fall in scope, which are already likely to be subject to record keeping requirements. Regulated Entities should expect to be maintaining records and conducting audits of their systems and processes against the requirements of the CCSPA

It should be noted, however, that this may be subject to change, so Regulated Entities should keep an eye on the progress of the Bill as it makes its way through parliament.

Enforcement of the Act would be carried out by sector-specific regulators identified in the Act such as the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Minister of Transport, Canada Energy Regulator, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the Ministry of Industry.

What are the penalties for CCSPA non-compliance?

When assessing the penalties associated with non-compliance with the requirements of the CCSPA, it is clear that such non-compliance will be taken seriously, and the severity of the penalties follows the trend of those applied by the European Union to key pieces of EU legislation. The “administrative monetary penalties” (AMPs) set by regulation could see fines being applied of up to C$1 million for individuals and up to C$15 million for organizations.

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