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January 14, 2025

Why AI-powered Email Protection Became Essential for this Global Financial Services Leader

Hear the cybersecurity transformation story of this leading money transmitter, who facilitates more than $9 billion in remittances via thousands of agent locations across the US serving more than two million active customers.
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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14
Jan 2025

When agile cyber-attackers don’t stop, but pivot  

When he first joined this leading financial services provider, it was clear to the CISO that email security needed to be a top priority. The organization provides transfer services to millions of consumers via a network of thousands of agent locations across the US. Those agents are connected to hundreds of thousands of global payers to complete consumer transfers, ranging from leading financial institutions to small local businesses.

With this vast network of agents and payers, the provider relies on email as its primary communications channel. Transmitting billions of dollars every year, the organization is a prime target for cyber criminals looking to steal credentials, financial assets, and sensitive data.

Vulnerable to attacks with gaps in email security and visibility

The CISO discovered that employees were under constant attack by phishing emails impersonating his company’s own executives. The business email compromise (BEC) attacks were designed to deceive employees into sharing credentials or clicking on malicious links.

Upon discovering that their Microsoft 365 tenant lacked secure configuration, the CISO implemented necessary changes to strengthen the service, including enabling authentication controls. While his efforts significantly reduced BEC attacks, cyber criminals changed their tactics, sending employees malicious phishing emails from seemingly valid email accounts from trusted domains like Google and Yahoo. The emails passed through the organization’s native email filters without detection.

The CISO also sought to strengthen defenses against third-party supply chain attacks that could originate with any of the hundreds of thousands of third-party agents and payers the company works with around the world. While the larger institutions typically have sophisticated email security strategies in place, the smaller businesses may lack the cybersecurity expertise needed to effectively secure and manage their data, putting the organization at risk.

While the CISO knew the company was vulnerable to phishing and third-party threats, he didn’t have visibility across the flow of email. Without access to key metrics and valuable data, he couldn’t get the crucial insights needed to quickly identify possible threats and adjust security protocols.  

Skilled analysts bogged down with low-level tasks

Like many enterprise organizations, this leading financial services provider relied on a crew of highly skilled analysts to respond to alerts and analyze and triage emails most of their workday. “That shouldn’t be how we operate,” said the CISO. “My role and the role of my staff should be to focus on more strategic projects, support the business, and work on important new product development.”

Balancing user experience with mitigating threats

Enabling greater email security measures without negatively impacting the business, user experience, and customer satisfaction was a daunting challenge the CISO and his security team faced. Imposing restrictions that are too stringent could restrict communication, delay the delivery of important messages, or block legitimate emails – potentially slowing down money transfers, frustrating customers, affecting employee productivity, and impacting revenue. However, maintaining controls that are too permissive could result in serious outcomes like data theft, financial fraud, operational disruption, compliance penalties, and customer attrition.  

Self-Learning AI is a game changer

After conducting a thorough POC with several modern security solution providers, this global financial services provider chose the Darktrace / EMAIL an AI-driven email security platform. The CISO said they chose the solution for two key reasons:

First, Darktrace / EMAIL offers modern capabilities

  • Self-Learning AI uses business data to recognize anomalies in communication patterns and user behavior to stop known and unknown threats
  • Secures the organization’s entire mailflow across all inbound, outbound, and lateral email
  • Protects against account takeover attacks by identifying subtle anomalies in cloud SaaS
  • Catches sophisticated threats like impersonations, session token misuse, adversary-in-the-middle attacks, credential theft, and data exfiltration

Second, they pointed to Darktrace’s experience, innovation, and expertise

  • Deep cybersecurity and industry knowledge
  • Demonstrated customers successes worldwide
  • At the forefront of innovation and research, establishing new thresholds in cybersecurity, with technology advances backed by over 200 patents and pending applications

Moreover, and most importantly, this organization trusted Darktrace to deliver on its promises.  And according to the CISO, that’s just what happened.

Significantly reduced phishing threats and business risk

Since implementing Darktrace / EMAIL, the threat posed by BEC attacks has dropped sharply. “Phishing is not an issue that concerns me anymore. I estimate we are now identifying and blocking more than 85% of threats our previous solution was missing,” said the CISO. The biggest factor contributing to this success? The power of AI.

With Darktrace / EMAIL, this leadingglobal financial services provider is identifying and blocking more than 85% ofthe phishing email threats its previous solution missed.

AI wasn’t originally on the financial service provider’s list of criteria. But after seeing AI in action and understanding its potential to vastly scale their detection and response capabilities–without adding headcount, the CISO determined AI wasn’t an option but an imperative. “AI is essential when it comes to email security, it’s an absolute necessity,” he said.  

Darktrace / EMAIL’s Self-Learning AI is uniquely powerful because it learns the content and context of every internal and external user and can spot the subtle differences in behavioral patterns that point to possible social engineering attacks. Through patented behavioral anomaly detection, Darktrace / EMAIL continuously learns about the organization’s business and users, based on its own operations and data, adjusting security protocols accordingly.  

For example, when clients are transferring large amounts of money, they are required to send photos of their driver’s licenses and passports via email to the organization for verification – accounting for a large percentage of its’ inbound email. Darktrace / EMAIL recognizes that it’s normal for customers to send this sensitive information, and it also knows that it’s not normal for that same sensitive information to leave the organization via outbound mail. In addition, Darktrace identifies patterns in user behavior, including who employees communicate with and what kind of information they share. When user behavior falls outside of established norms, such as an email sent from the CFO to employees the CEO would not typically communicate with, Darktrace can take the appropriate action to remove the threat.  

“After the implementation, we gave the solution two weeks to ingest our data and learn the specifics of our business. After that, it was perfect, just amazing,” said the CISO.  

Boosted team productivity and elevated value to the business

With Darktrace / EMAIL, the organization has successfully scaled its detection and response efforts without scaling personnel. The security team has reduced the number of emails requiring manual investigation by 90%. And because analysts now have the benefit of Darktrace / EMAIL’s analytics and reporting, the investigation process is much easier and faster. “The impact of this solution on my team has been very positive,” said the CISO. “Darktrace / EMAIL essentially manages itself, freeing up time for our skilled analysts–and for myself–to focus on more important projects.”  

The security team has scaled its detection and response efforts without scaling personnel,reducing the number of emails it manually investigates by 90%

Increased visibility delivers business-critical insights

You can’t control what you can’t see, and with zero visibility into critical data and metrics, this financial services provider was at a serious disadvantage. That has all changed. “Something that I love about Darktrace / EMAIL is the visibility that it provides into key metrics from a single dashboard. We can now understand the behavior of our email flow and data traffic and can make insight-driven decisions to continuously optimize our email security. It’s awesome,” said the CISO.  

An efficient user interface also improves productivity and reduces mean time to action by enabling teams to easily visualize key data points and quickly evaluate what actions need to be taken. Darktrace / EMAIL was developed with that experience in mind, allowing users to access data and take quick action without having to constantly log into the solution.

Keeping the business focused on cybersecurity

The leadership of this global organization takes information security very seriously, understanding that cyber-attacks aren’t just an IT problem but a business problem. When it came to evaluating Darktrace, the CISO said numerous stakeholders were involved including C-level executives, infrastructure, and IT, which operates separately from information security. The CISO initially identified the need, conducted the market research, engaged the target vendors, and then brought the other decision makers into the process for the solution evaluation and final decision. “Our IT group, infrastructure team, CTO and CEO are all involved when it comes to making major cybersecurity investments. We always try to make these decisions jointly to ensure we are taking everything into consideration.”

The organization has reached a higher level of maturity when it comes to email cybersecurity. The ability to automate routine email detection and investigation tasks has both strengthened the organization’s cyber resilience and enabled the CISO and his team to contribute more to the business. His advice for other IT leaders facing the same email security and visibility challenges he once experienced: “For those companies that need greater insight and control over their email but have limited resources and people, AI is the answer.”  

Darktrace / Email solution brief screenshot

Secure Your Inbox with Cutting-Edge AI Email Protection

Discover the most advanced cloud-native AI email security solution to protect your domain and brand while preventing phishing, novel social engineering, business email compromise, account takeover, and data loss.

  • Gain up to 13 days of earlier threat detection and maximize ROI on your current email security
  • Experience 20-25% more threat blocking power with Darktrace / EMAIL
  • Stop the 58% of threats bypassing traditional email 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
The Darktrace Community

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September 9, 2025

The benefits of bringing together network and email security

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In many organizations, network and email security operate in isolation. Each solution is tasked with defending its respective environment, even though both are facing the same advanced, multi-domain threats.  

This siloed approach overlooks a critical reality: email remains the most common vector for initiating cyber-attacks, while the network is the primary stage on which those attacks progress. Without direct integration between these two domains, organizations risk leaving blind spots that adversaries can exploit.  

A modern security strategy needs to unify email and network defenses, not just in name, but in how they share intelligence, conduct investigations, and coordinate response actions. Let’s take a look at how this joined-up approach delivers measurable technical, operational, and commercial benefits.

Technical advantages

Pre-alert intelligence: Gathering data before the threat strikes

Most security tools start working when something goes wrong – an unusual login, a flagged attachment, a confirmed compromise. But by then, attackers may already be a step ahead.

By unifying network and email security under a single AI platform (like the Darktrace Active AI Security Platform), you can analyze patterns across both environments in real time, even when there are no alerts. This ongoing monitoring builds a behavioral understanding of every user, device, and domain in your ecosystem.

That means when an email arrives from a suspicious domain, the system already knows whether that domain has appeared on your network before – and whether its behavior has been unusual. Likewise, when new network activity involves a domain first spotted in an email, it’s instantly placed in the right context.

This intelligence isn’t built on signatures or after-the-fact compromise indicators – it’s built on live behavioral baselines, giving your defenses the ability to flag threats before damage is done.

Alert-related intelligence: Connecting the dots in real time

Once an alert does fire, speed and context matter. The Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst can automatically investigate across both environments, piecing together network and email evidence into a single, cohesive incident.

Instead of leaving analysts to sift through fragmented logs, the AI links events like a phishing email to suspicious lateral movement on the recipient’s device, keeping the full attack chain intact. Investigations that might take hours – or even days – can be completed in minutes, with far fewer false positives to wade through.

This is more than a time-saver. It ensures defenders maintain visibility after the first sign of compromise, following the attacker as they pivot into network infrastructure, cloud services, or other targets. That cross-environment continuity is impossible to achieve with disconnected point solutions or siloed workflows.

Operational advantages

Streamlining SecOps across teams

In many organizations, email security is managed by IT, while network defense belongs to the SOC. The result? Critical information is scattered between tools and teams, creating blind spots just when you need clarity.

When email and network data flow into a single platform, everyone is working from the same source of truth. SOC analysts gain immediate visibility into email threats without opening another console or sending a request to another department. The IT team benefits from the SOC’s deeper investigative context.

The outcome is more than convenience: it’s faster, more informed decision-making across the board.

Reducing time-to-meaning and enabling faster response

A unified platform removes the need to manually correlate alerts between tools, reducing time-to-meaning for every incident. Built-in AI correlation instantly ties together related events, guiding analysts toward coordinated responses with higher confidence.

Instead of relying on manual SIEM rules or pre-built SOAR playbooks, the platform connects the dots in real time, and can even trigger autonomous response actions across both environments simultaneously. This ensures attacks are stopped before they can escalate, regardless of where they begin.

Commercial advantages

While purchasing “best-of-breed" for all your different tools might sound appealing, it often leads to a patchwork of solutions with overlapping costs and gaps in coverage. However good a “best-in-breed" email security solution might be in the email realm, it won't be truly effective without visibility across domains and an AI analyst piecing intelligence together. That’s why we think “best-in-suite" is the only “best-in-breed" approach that works – choosing a high-quality platform ensures that every new capability strengthens the whole system.  

On top of that, security budgets are under constant pressure. Managing separate vendors for email and network defense means juggling multiple contracts, negotiating different SLAs, and stitching together different support models.

With a single provider for both, procurement and vendor management become far simpler. You deal with one account team, one support channel, and one unified strategy for both environments. If you choose to layer on managed services, you get consistent expertise across your whole security footprint.

Even more importantly, an integrated AI platform sets the stage for growth. Once email and network are under the same roof, adding coverage for other attack surfaces – like cloud or identity – is straightforward. You’re building on the same architecture, not bolting on new point solutions that create more complexity.

Check out the white paper, The Modern Security Stack: Why Your NDR and Email Security Solutions Need to Work Together, to explore these benefits in more depth, with real-world examples and practical steps for unifying your defenses.

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Mikey Anderson
Product Marketing Manager, Network Detection & Response

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September 9, 2025

Unpacking the Salesloft Incident: Insights from Darktrace Observations

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Introduction

On August 26, 2025, Google Threat intelligence Group released a report detailing a widespread data theft campaign targeting the sales automation platform Salesloft, via compromised OAuth tokens used by the third-party Drift AI chat agent [1][2].  The attack has been attributed to the threat actor UNC6395 by Google Threat Intelligence and Mandiant [1].

The attack is believed to have begun in early August 2025 and continued through until mid-August 2025 [1], with the threat actor exporting significant volumes of data from multiple Salesforce instances [1]. Then sifting through this data for anything that could be used to compromise the victim’s environments such as access keys, tokens or passwords. This had led to Google Threat Intelligence Group assessing that the primary intent of the threat actor is credential harvesting, and later reporting that it was aware of in excess of 700 potentially impacted organizations [3].

Salesloft previously stated that, based on currently available data, customers that do not integrate with Salesforce are unaffected by this campaign [2]. However, on August 28, Google Threat Intelligence Group announced that “Based on new information identified by GTIG, the scope of this compromise is not exclusive to the Salesforce integration with Salesloft Drift and impacts other integrations” [2]. Google Threat Intelligence has since advised that any and all authentication tokens stored in or connected to the Drift platform be treated as potentially compromised [1].

This campaign demonstrates how attackers are increasingly exploiting trusted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) integrations as a pathway into enterprise environment.

By abusing these integrations, threat actors were able to exfiltrate sensitive business data at scale, bypassing traditional security controls. Rather than relying on malware or obvious intrusion techniques, the adversaries leveraged legitimate credentials and API traffic that resembled legitimate Salesforce activity to achieve their goals. This type of activity is far harder to detect with conventional security tools, since it blends in with the daily noise of business operations.

The incident underscores the escalating significance of autonomous coverage within SaaS and third-party ecosystems. As businesses increasingly depend on interconnected platforms, visibility gaps become evident that cannot be managed by conventional perimeter and endpoint defenses.

By developing a behavioral comprehension of each organization's distinct use of cloud services, anomalies can be detected, such as logins from unexpected locations, unusually high volumes of API requests, or unusual document activity. These indications serve as an early alert system, even when intruders use legitimate tokens or accounts, enabling security teams to step in before extensive data exfiltration takes place

What happened?

The campaign is believed to have started on August 8, 2025, with malicious activity continuing until at least August 18. The threat actor, tracked as UNC6395, gained access via compromised OAuth tokens associated with Salesloft Drift integrations into Salesforce [1]. Once tokens were obtained, the attackers were able to issue large volumes of Salesforce API requests, exfiltrating sensitive customer and business data.

Initial Intrusion

The attackers first established access by abusing OAuth and refresh tokens from the Drift integration. These tokens gave them persistent access into Salesforce environments without requiring further authentication [1]. To expand their foothold, the threat actor also made use of TruffleHog [4], an open-source secrets scanner, to hunt for additional exposed credentials. Logs later revealed anomalous IAM updates, including unusual UpdateAccessKey activity, which suggested attempts to ensure long-term persistence and control within compromised accounts.

Internal Reconnaissance & Data Exfiltration

Once inside, the adversaries began exploring the Salesforce environments. They ran queries designed to pull sensitive data fields, focusing on objects such as Cases, Accounts, Users, and Opportunities [1]. At the same time, the attackers sifted through this information to identify secrets that could enable access to other systems, including AWS keys and Snowflake credentials [4]. This phase demonstrated the opportunistic nature of the campaign, with the actors looking for any data that could be repurposed for further compromise.

Lateral Movement

Salesloft and Mandiant investigations revealed that the threat actor also created at least one new user account in early September. Although follow-up activity linked to this account was limited, the creation itself suggested a persistence mechanism designed to survive remediation efforts. By maintaining a separate identity, the attackers ensured they could regain access even if their stolen OAuth tokens were revoked.

Accomplishing the mission

The data taken from Salesforce environments included valuable business records, which attackers used to harvest credentials and identify high-value targets. According to Mandiant, once the data was exfiltrated, the actors actively sifted through it to locate sensitive information that could be leveraged in future intrusions [1]. In response, Salesforce and Salesloft revoked OAuth tokens associated with Drift integrations on August 20 [1], a containment measure aimed at cutting off the attackers’ primary access channel and preventing further abuse.

How did the attack bypass the rest of the security stack?

The campaign effectively bypassed security measures by using legitimate credentials and OAuth tokens through the Salesloft Drift integration. This rendered traditional security defenses like endpoint protection and firewalls ineffective, as the activity appeared non-malicious [1]. The attackers blended into normal operations by using common user agents and making queries through the Salesforce API, which made their activity resemble legitimate integrations and scripts. This allowed them to operate undetected in the SaaS environment, exploiting the trust in third-party connections and highlighting the limitations of traditional detection controls.

Darktrace Coverage

Anomalous activities have been identified across multiple Darktrace deployments that appear associated with this campaign. This included two cases on customers based within the United States who had a Salesforce integration, where the pattern of activities was notably similar.

On August 17, Darktrace observed an account belonging to one of these customers logging in from the rare endpoint 208.68.36[.]90, while the user was seen active from another location. This IP is a known indicator of compromise (IoC) reported by open-source intelligence (OSINT) for the campaign [2].

Cyber AI Analyst Incident summarizing the suspicious login seen for the account.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst Incident summarizing the suspicious login seen for the account.

The login event was associated with the application Drift, further connecting the events to this campaign.

Advanced Search logs showing the Application used to login.
Figure 2: Advanced Search logs showing the Application used to login.

Following the login, the actor initiated a high volume of Salesforce API requests using methods such as GET, POST, and DELETE. The GET requests targeted endpoints like /services/data/v57.0/query and /services/data/v57.0/sobjects/Case/describe, where the former is used to retrieve records based on a specific criterion, while the latter provides metadata for the Case object, including field names and data types [5,6].

Subsequently, a POST request to /services/data/v57.0/jobs/query was observed, likely to initiate a Bulk API query job for extracting large volumes of data from the Ingest Job endpoint [7,8].

Finally, a DELETE request to remove an ingestion job batch, possibly an attempt to obscure traces of prior data access or manipulation.

A case on another US-based customer took place a day later, on August 18. This again began with an account logging in from the rare IP 208.68.36[.]90 involving the application Drift. This was followed by Salesforce GET requests targeting the same endpoints as seen in the previous case, and then a POST to the Ingest Job endpoint and finally a DELETE request, all occurring within one minute of the initial suspicious login.

The chain of anomalous behaviors, including a suspicious login and delete request, resulted in Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability suggesting a ‘Disable user’ action. However, the customer’s deployment configuration required manual confirmation for the action to take effect.

An example model alert for the user, triggered due to an anomalous API DELETE request.
Figure 3: An example model alert for the user, triggered due to an anomalous API DELETE request.
Figure 4: Model Alert Event Log showing various model alerts for the account that ultimately led to an Autonomous Response model being triggered.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this incident underscores the escalating risks of SaaS supply chain attacks, where third-party integrations can become avenues for attacks. It demonstrates how adversaries can exploit legitimate OAuth tokens and API traffic to circumvent traditional defenses. This emphasizes the necessity for constant monitoring of SaaS and cloud activity, beyond just endpoints and networks, while also reinforcing the significance of applying least privilege access and routinely reviewing OAuth permissions in cloud environments. Furthermore, it provides a wider perspective into the evolution of the threat landscape, shifting towards credential and token abuse as opposed to malware-driven compromise.

Credit to Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead), Calum Hall (Technical Content Researcher), Signe Zaharka (Principal Cyber Analyst), Min Kim (Senior Cyber Analyst), Nahisha Nobregas (Senior Cyber Analyst), Priya Thapa (Cyber Analyst)

Appendices

Darktrace Model Detections

·      SaaS / Access / Unusual External Source for SaaS Credential Use

·      SaaS / Compromise / Login From Rare Endpoint While User Is Active

·      SaaS / Compliance / Anomalous Salesforce API Event

·      SaaS / Unusual Activity / Multiple Unusual SaaS Activities

·      Antigena / SaaS / Antigena Unusual Activity Block

·      Antigena / SaaS / Antigena Suspicious Source Activity Block

Customers should consider integrating Salesforce with Darktrace where possible. These integrations allow better visibility and correlation to spot unusual behavior and possible threats.

IoC List

(IoC – Type)

·      208.68.36[.]90 – IP Address

References

1.     https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/data-theft-salesforce-instances-via-salesloft-drift

2.     https://trust.salesloft.com/?uid=Drift+Security+Update%3ASalesforce+Integrations+%283%3A30PM+ET%29

3.     https://thehackernews.com/2025/08/salesloft-oauth-breach-via-drift-ai.html

4.     https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/threat-brief-compromised-salesforce-instances/

5.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/resources_query.htm

6.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/resources_sobject_describe.htm

7.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_asynch.meta/api_asynch/get_job_info.htm

8.     https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_asynch.meta/api_asynch/query_create_job.htm

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About the author
Emma Foulger
Global Threat Research Operations Lead
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