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January 30, 2025

Reimagining Your SOC: Overcoming Alert Fatigue with AI-Led Investigations  

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30
Jan 2025
Reimagining your SOC Part 2/3: This blog explores how the challenges facing the modern SOC can be addressed by transforming the investigation process, unlocking efficiency and scalability in SOC operations with AI.

The efficiency of a Security Operations Center (SOC) hinges on its ability to detect, analyze and respond to threats effectively. With advancements in AI and automation, key early SOC team metrics such as Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) have seen significant improvements:

  • 96% of defenders believing AI-powered solutions significantly boost the speed and efficiency of prevention, detection, response, and recovery.
  • Organizations leveraging AI and automation can shorten their breach lifecycle by an average of 108 days compared to those without these technologies.

While tool advances have improved performance and effectiveness in the detection phase, this has not been as beneficial to the next step of the process where initial alerts are investigated further to determine their relevance and how they relate to other activities. This is often measured with the metric Mean Time to Analysis (MTTA), although some SOC teams operate a two-level process with teams for initial triage to filter out more obviously uninteresting alerts and for more detailed analysis of the remainder. SOC teams continue to grapple with alert fatigue, overwhelmed analysts, and inefficient triage processes, preventing them from achieving the operational efficiency necessary for a high-performing SOC.

Addressing this core inefficiency requires extending AI's capabilities beyond detection to streamline and optimize the following investigative workflows that underpin effective analysis.

Challenges with SOC alert investigation

Detecting cyber threats is only the beginning of a much broader challenge of SOC efficiency. The real bottleneck often lies in the investigation process.

Detection tools and techniques have evolved significantly with the use of machine learning methods, improving early threat detection. However, after a detection pops up, human analysts still typically step in to evaluate the alert, gather context, and determine whether it’s a true threat or a false alarm and why. If it is a threat, further investigation must be performed to understand the full scope of what may be a much larger problem. This phase, measured by the mean time to analysis, is critical for swift incident response.

Challenges with manual alert investigation:

  • Too many alerts
  • Alerts lack context
  • Cognitive load sits with analysts
  • Insufficient talent in the industry
  • Fierce competition for experienced analysts

For many organizations, investigation is where the struggle of efficiency intensifies. Analysts face overwhelming volumes of alerts, a lack of consolidated context, and the mental strain of juggling multiple systems. With a worldwide shortage of 4 million experienced level two and three SOC analysts, the cognitive burden placed on teams is immense, often leading to alert fatigue and missed threats.

Even with advanced systems in place not all potential detections are investigated. In many cases, only a quarter of initial alerts are triaged (or analyzed). However, the issue runs deeper. Triaging occurs after detection engineering and alert tuning, which often disable many alerts that could potentially reveal true threats but are not accurate enough to justify the time and effort of the security team. This means some potential threats slip through unnoticed.

Understanding alerts in the SOC: Stopping cyber incidents is hard

Let’s take a look at the cyber-attack lifecycle and the steps involved in detecting and stopping an attack:

First we need a trace of an attack…

The attack will produce some sort of digital trace. Novel attacks, insider threats, and attacker techniques such as living-off-the-land can make attacker activities extremely hard to distinguish.

A detection is created…

Then we have to detect the trace, for example some beaconing to a rare domain. Initial detection alerts being raised underpin the MTTD (mean time to detection). Reducing this initial unseen duration is where we have seen significant improvement with modern threat detection tools.

When it comes to threat detection, the possibilities are vast. Your initial lead could come from anything: an alert about unusual network activity, a potential known malware detection, or an odd email. Once that lead comes in, it’s up to your security team to investigate further and determine if this is this a legitimate threat or a false alarm and what the context is behind the alert.

Investigation begins…

It doesn’t just stop at a detection. Typically, humans also need to look at the alert, investigate, understand, analyze, and conclude whether this is a genuine threat that needs a response. We normally measure this as MTTA (mean time to analyze).

Conducting the investigation effectively requires a high degree of skill and efficiency, as every second counts in mitigating potential damage. Security teams must analyze the available data, correlate it across multiple sources, and piece together the timeline of events to understand the full scope of the incident. This process involves navigating through vast amounts of information, identifying patterns, and discerning relevant details. All while managing the pressure of minimizing downtime and preventing further escalation.

Containment begins…

Once we confirm something as a threat, and the human team determines a response is required and understand the scope, we need to contain the incident. That's normally the MTTC (mean time to containment) and can be further split into immediate and more permanent measures.

For more about how AI-led solutions can help in the containment stage read here: Autonomous Response: Streamlining Cybersecurity and Business Operations

The challenge is not only in 1) detecting threats quickly, but also 2) triaging and investigating them rapidly and with precision, and 3) prioritizing the most critical findings to avoid missed opportunities. Effective investigation demands a combination of advanced tools, robust workflows, and the expertise to interpret and act on the insights they generate. Without these, organizations risk delaying critical containment and response efforts, leaving them vulnerable to greater impacts.

While there are further steps (remediation, and of course complete recovery) here we will focus on investigation.

Developing an AI analyst: How Darktrace replicates human investigation

Darktrace has been working on understanding the investigative process of a skilled analyst since 2017. By conducting internal research between Darktrace expert SOC analysts and machine learning engineers, we developed a formalized understanding of investigative processes. This understanding formed the basis of a multi-layered AI system that systematically investigates data, taking advantage of the speed and breadth afforded by machine systems.

With this research we found that the investigative process often revolves around iterating three key steps: hypothesis creation, data collection, and results evaluation.

All these details are crucial for an analyst to determine the nature of a potential threat. Similarly, they are integral components of our Cyber AI Analyst which is an integral component across our product suite. In doing so, Darktrace has been able to replicate the human-driven approach to investigating alerts using machine learning speed and scale.

Here’s how it works:

  • When an initial or third-party alert is triggered, the Cyber AI Analyst initiates a forensic investigation by building multiple hypotheses and gathering relevant data to confirm or refute the nature of suspicious activity, iterating as necessary, and continuously refining the original hypothesis as new data emerges throughout the investigation.
  • Using a combination of machine learning including supervised and unsupervised methods, NLP and graph theory to assess activity, this investigation engine conducts a deep analysis with incidents raised to the human team only when the behavior is deemed sufficiently concerning.
  • After classification, the incident information is organized and processed to generate the analysis summary, including the most important descriptive details, and priority classification, ensuring that critical alerts are prioritized for further action by the human-analyst team.
  • If the alert is deemed unimportant, the complete analysis process is made available to the human team so that they can see what investigation was performed and why this conclusion was drawn.
Darktrace cyber ai analyst workflow, how it works

To illustrate this via example, if a laptop is beaconing to a rare domain, the Cyber AI Analyst would create hypotheses including whether this could be command and control traffic, data exfiltration, or something else. The AI analyst then collects data, analyzes it, makes decisions, iterates, and ultimately raises a new high-level incident alert describing and detailing its findings for human analysts to review and follow up.

Learn more about Darktrace's Cyber AI Analyst

  • Cost savings: Equivalent to adding up to 30 full-time Level 2 analysts without increasing headcount
  • Minimize business risk: Takes on the busy work from human analysts and elevates a team’s overall decision making
  • Improve security outcomes: Identifies subtle, sophisticated threats through holistic investigations

Unlocking an efficient SOC

To create a mature and proactive SOC, addressing the inefficiencies in the alert investigation process is essential. By extending AI's capabilities beyond detection, SOC teams can streamline and optimize investigative workflows, reducing alert fatigue and enhancing analyst efficiency.

This holistic approach not only improves Mean Time to Analysis (MTTA) but also ensures that SOCs are well-equipped to handle the evolving threat landscape. Embracing AI augmentation and automation in every phase of threat management will pave the way for a more resilient and proactive security posture, ultimately leading to a high-performing SOC that can effectively safeguard organizational assets.

Every relevant alert is investigated

The Cyber AI Analyst is not a generative AI system, or an XDR or SEIM aggregator that simply prompts you on what to do next. It uses a multi-layered combination of many different specialized AI methods to investigate every relevant alert from across your enterprise, native, 3rd party, and manual triggers, operating at machine speed and scale. This also positively affects detection engineering and alert tuning, because it does not suffer from fatigue when presented with low accuracy but potentially valuable alerts.

Retain and improve analyst skills

Transferring most analysis processes to AI systems can risk team skills if they don't maintain or build them and if the AI doesn't explain its process. This can reduce the ability to challenge or build on AI results and cause issues if the AI is unavailable. The Cyber AI Analyst, by revealing its investigation process, data gathering, and decisions, promotes and improves these skills. Its deep understanding of cyber incidents can be used for skill training and incident response practice by simulating incidents for security teams to handle.

Create time for cyber risk reduction

Human cybersecurity professionals excel in areas that require critical thinking, strategic planning, and nuanced decision-making. With alert fatigue minimized and investigations streamlined, your analysts can avoid the tedious data collection and analysis stages and instead focus on critical decision-making tasks such as implementing recovery actions and performing threat hunting.

Stay tuned for part 3/3

Part 3/3 in the Reimagine your SOC series explores the preventative security solutions market and effective risk management strategies.

Coming soon!

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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Brittany Woodsmall
Product Marketing Manager, AI & Attack Surface
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February 11, 2025

NIS2 Compliance: Interpreting 'State-of-the-Art' for Organisations

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NIS2 Background

17 October 2024 marked the deadline for European Union (EU) Member States to implement the NIS2 Directive into national law. The Directive aims to enhance the EU’s cybersecurity posture by establishing a high common level of cybersecurity for critical infrastructure and services. It builds on its predecessor, the 2018 NIS Directive, by expanding the number of sectors in scope, enforcing greater reporting requirements and encouraging Member States to ensure regulated organisations adopt ‘state-of-the-art' security measures to protect their networks, OT and IT systems.  

Timeline of NIS2
Figure 1: Timeline of NIS2

The challenge of NIS2 & 'state-of-the-art'

Preamble (51) - "Member States should encourage the use of any innovative technology, including artificial intelligence, the use of which could improve the detection and prevention of cyberattacks, enabling resources to be diverted towards cyberattacks more effectively."
Article 21 - calls on Member States to ensure that essential and important entities “take appropriate and proportionate” cyber security measures, and that they do so by “taking into account the state-of-the-art and, where applicable, relevant European and international standards, as well as the cost of implementation.”

Regulartory expectations and ambiguity of NIS2

While organisations in scope can rely on technical guidance provided by ENISA1 , the EU’s agency for cybersecurity, or individual guidelines provided by Member States or Public-Private Partnerships where they have been published,2 the mention of ‘state-of-the-art' remains up to interpretation in most Member States. The use of the phrase implies that cybersecurity measures must evolve continuously to keep pace with emerging threats and technological advancements without specifying what ‘state-of-the-art’ actually means for a given context and risk.3  

This ambiguity makes it difficult for organisations to determine what constitutes compliance at any given time and could lead to potential inconsistencies in implementation and enforcement. Moreover, the rapid pace of technological change means that what is considered "state-of-the-art" today will become outdated, further complicating compliance efforts.

However, this is not unique to NIS regulation. As EU scholars have noted, while “state-of-the-art" is widely referred to in legal text relating to technology, there is no standardised legal definition of what it actually constitutes.4

Defining state-of-the-art cybersecurity

In this blog, we outline technical considerations for state-of-the-art cybersecurity. We draw from expertise within our own business and in academia as well as guidelines and security standards set by national agencies, such as Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) or Spain’s National Security Framework (ENS), to put forward five criteria to define state-of-the-art cybersecurity.

The five core criteria include:

  • Continuous monitoring
  • Incident correlation
  • Detection of anomalous activity
  • Autonomous response
  • Proactive cyber resilience

These principles build on long-standing security considerations, such as business continuity, vulnerability management and basic security hygiene practices.  

Although these considerations are written in the context of the NIS2 Directive, they are likely to also be relevant for other jurisdictions. We hope these criteria help organisations understand how to best meet their responsibilities under the NIS2 Directive and assist Competent Authorities in defining compliance expectations for the organisations they regulate.  

Ultimately, adopting state-of-the-art cyber defences is crucial for ensuring that organisations are equipped with the best tools to combat new and fast-growing threats. Leading technical authorities, such as the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), recognise that adoption of AI-powered cyber defences will offset the increased volume and impact of AI on cyber threats.5

State of the art cybersecurity in the context of NIS2

1. Continuous monitoring

Continuous monitoring is required to protect an increasingly complex attack surface from attackers.

First, organisations' attack surfaces have expanded following the widespread adoption of hybrid or cloud infrastructures and the increased adoption of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices.6 This exponential growth creates a complex digital environment for organisations, making it difficult for security teams to track all internet-facing assets and identify potential vulnerabilities.

Second, with the significant increase in the speed and sophistication of cyber-attacks, organisations face a greater need to detect security threats and non-compliance issues in real-time.  

Continuous monitoring, defined by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as the ability to maintain “ongoing awareness of information security, vulnerabilities, and threats to support organizational risk management decisions,”7 has therefore become a cornerstone of an effective cybersecurity strategy. By implementing continuous monitoring, organisations can ensure a real-time understanding of their attack surface and that new external assets are promptly accounted for. For instance, Spain’s technical guidelines for regulation, as set forth by the National Security Framework (Royal Decree 311/2022), highlight the importance of adopting continuous monitoring to detect anomalous activities or behaviours and to ensure timely responses to potential threats (article 10).8  

This can be achieved through the following means:  

All assets that form part of an organisation's estate, both known and unknown, must be identified and continuously monitored for current and emerging risks. Germany’s BSI mandates the continuous monitoring of all protocol and logging data in real-time (requirement #110).9 This should be conducted alongside any regular scans to detect unknown devices or cases of shadow IT, or the use of unauthorised or unmanaged applications and devices within an organisation, which can expose internet-facing assets to unmonitored risks. Continuous monitoring can therefore help identify potential risks and high-impact vulnerabilities within an organisation's digital estate and eliminate potential gaps and blind spots.

Organisations looking to implement more efficient continuous monitoring strategies may turn to automation, but, as the BSI notes, it is important for responsible parties to be immediately warned if an alert is raised (reference 110).10 Following the BSI’s recommendations, the alert must be examined and, if necessary, contained within a short period of time corresponding with the analysis of the risk at hand.

Finally, risk scoring and vulnerability mapping are also essential parts of this process. Looking across the Atlantic, the US’ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines continuous monitoring as “maintaining ongoing awareness of information security, vulnerabilities, and threats to support organizational risk management decisions”.11 Continuous monitoring helps identify potential risks and significant vulnerabilities within an organisation's digital assets, fostering a dynamic understanding of risk. By doing so, risk scoring and vulnerability mapping allows organisations to prioritise the risks associated with their most critically exposed assets.

2. Correlation of incidents across your entire environment

Viewing and correlating incident alerts when working with different platforms and tools poses significant challenges to SecOps teams. Security professionals often struggle to cross-reference alerts efficiently, which can lead to potential delays in identifying and responding to threats. The complexity of managing multiple sources of information can overwhelm teams, making it difficult to maintain a cohesive understanding of the security landscape.

This fragmentation underscores the need for a centralised approach that provides a "single pane of glass" view of all cybersecurity alerts. These systems streamline the process of monitoring and responding to incidents, enabling security teams to act more swiftly and effectively. By consolidating alerts into a unified interface, organisations can enhance their ability to detect and mitigate threats, ultimately improving their overall security posture.  

To achieve consolidation, organisations should consider the role automation can play when reviewing and correlating incidents. This is reflected in Spain’s technical guidelines for national security regulations regarding the requirements for the “recording of activity” (reinforcement R5).12 Specifically, the guidelines state that:  

"The system shall implement tools to analyses and review system activity and audit information, in search of possible or actual security compromises. An automatic system for collection of records, correlation of events and automatic response to them shall be available”.13  

Similarly, the German guidelines stress that automated central analysis is essential not only for recording all protocol and logging data generated within the system environment but also to ensure that the data is correlated to ensure that security-relevant processes are visible (article 115).14

Correlating disparate incidents and alerts is especially important when considering the increased connectivity between IT and OT environments driven by business and functional requirements. Indeed, organisations that believe they have air-gapped systems are now becoming aware of points of IT/OT convergence within their systems. It is therefore crucial for organisations managing both IT and OT environments to be able to visualise and secure devices across all IT and OT protocols in real-time to identify potential spillovers.  

By consolidating data into a centralised system, organisations can achieve a more resilient posture. This approach exposes and eliminates gaps between people, processes, and technology before they can be exploited by malicious actors. As seen in the German and Spanish guidelines, a unified view of security alerts not only enhances the efficacy of threat detection and response but also ensures comprehensive visibility and control over the organisation's cybersecurity posture.

3. Detection of anomalous activity  

Recent research highlights the emergence of a "new normal" in cybersecurity, marked by an increase in zero-day vulnerabilities. Indeed, for the first time since sharing their annual list, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance reported that in 2023, the majority of the most routinely exploited vulnerabilities were initially exploited as zero-days.15  

To effectively combat these advanced threats, policymakers, industry and academic stakeholders alike recognise the importance of anomaly-based techniques to detect both known and unknown attacks.

As AI-enabled threats become more prevalent,16 traditional cybersecurity methods that depend on lists of "known bads" are proving inadequate against rapidly evolving and sophisticated attacks. These legacy approaches are limited because they can only identify threats that have been previously encountered and cataloged. However, cybercriminals are constantly developing new, never-before-seen threats, such as signatureless ransomware or living off the land techniques, which can easily bypass these outdated defences.

The importance of anomaly detection in cybersecurity can be found in Spain’s technical guidelines, which states that “tools shall be available to automate the prevention and response process by detecting and identifying anomalies17” (reinforcement R4 prevention and automatic response to "incident management”).  

Similarly, the UK NCSC’s Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) highlights how anomaly-based detection systems are capable of detecting threats that “evade standard signature-based security solutions” (Principle C2 - Proactive Security Event Discovery18). The CAF’s C2 principle further outlines:  

“The science of anomaly detection, which goes beyond using pre-defined or prescriptive pattern matching, is a challenging area. Capabilities like machine learning are increasingly being shown to have applicability and potential in the field of intrusion detection.”19

By leveraging machine learning and multi-layered AI techniques, organisations can move away from static rules and signatures, adopting a more behavioural approach to identifying and containing risks. This shift not only enhances the detection of emerging threats but also provides a more robust defence mechanism.

A key component of this strategy is behavioral zero trust, which focuses on identifying unauthorized and out-of-character attempts by users, devices, or systems. Implementing a robust procedure to verify each user and issuing the minimum required access rights based on their role and established patterns of activity is essential. Organisations should therefore be encouraged to follow a robust procedure to verify each user and issue the minimum required access rights based on their role and expected or established patterns of activity. By doing so, organisations can stay ahead of emerging threats and embrace a more dynamic and resilient cybersecurity strategy.  

4. Autonomous response

The speed at which cyber-attacks occur means that defenders must be equipped with tools that match the sophistication and agility of those used by attackers. Autonomous response tools are thus essential for modern cyber defence, as they enable organisations to respond to both known and novel threats in real time.  

These tools leverage a deep contextual and behavioral understanding of the organisation to take precise actions, effectively containing threats without disrupting business operations.

To avoid unnecessary business disruptions and maintain robust security, especially in more sensitive networks such as OT environments, it is crucial for organisations to determine the appropriate response depending on their environment. This can range from taking autonomous and native actions, such as isolating or blocking devices, or integrating their autonomous response tool with firewalls or other security tools to taking customized actions.  

Autonomous response solutions should also use a contextual understanding of the business environment to make informed decisions, allowing them to contain threats swiftly and accurately. This means that even as cyber-attacks evolve and become more sophisticated, organisations can maintain continuous protection without compromising operational efficiency.  

Indeed, research into the adoption of autonomous cyber defences points to the importance of implementing “organisation-specific" and “context-informed” approaches.20  To decide the appropriate level of autonomy for each network action, it is argued, it is essential to use evidence-based risk prioritisation that is customised to the specific operations, assets, and data of individual enterprises.21

By adopting autonomous response solutions, organisations can ensure their defences are as dynamic and effective as the threats they face, significantly enhancing their overall security posture.

5. Proactive cyber resilience  

Adopting a proactive approach to cybersecurity is crucial for organisations aiming to safeguard their operations and reputation. By hardening their defences enough so attackers are unable to target them effectively, organisations can save significant time and money. This proactive stance helps reduce business disruption, reputational damage, and the need for lengthy, resource-intensive incident responses.

Proactive cybersecurity incorporates many of the strategies outlined above. This can be seen in a recent survey of information technology practitioners, which outlines four components of a proactive cybersecurity culture: (1) visibility of corporate assets, (2) leveraging intelligent and modern technology, (3) adopting consistent and comprehensive training methods and (4) implementing risk response procedures.22 To this, we may also add continuous monitoring which allows organisations to understand the most vulnerable and high-value paths across their architectures, allowing them to secure their critical assets more effectively.  

Alongside these components, a proactive cyber strategy should be based on a combined business context and knowledge, ensuring that security measures are aligned with the organisation's specific needs and priorities.  

This proactive approach to cyber resilience is reflected in Spain’s technical guidance (article 8.2): “Prevention measures, which may incorporate components geared towards deterrence or reduction of the exposure surface, should eliminate or reduce the likelihood of threats materializing.”23 It can also be found in the NCSC’s CAF, which outlines how organisations can achieve “proactive attack discovery” (see Principle C2).24 Likewise, Belgium’s NIS2 transposition guidelines mandate the use of preventive measures to ensure the continued availability of services in the event of exceptional network failures (article 30).25  

Ultimately, a proactive approach to cybersecurity not only enhances protection but also lowers regulatory risk and supports the overall resilience and stability of the organisation.

Looking forward

The NIS2 Directive marked a significant regulatory milestone in strengthening cybersecurity across the EU.26 Given the impact of emerging technologies, such as AI, on cybersecurity, it is to see that Member States are encouraged to promote the adoption of ‘state-of-the-art' cybersecurity across regulated entities.  

In this blog, we have sought to translate what state-of-the-art cybersecurity may look like for organisations looking to enhance their cybersecurity posture. To do so, we have built on existing cybersecurity guidance, research and our own experience as an AI-cybersecurity company to outline five criteria: continuous monitoring, incident correlation, detection of anomalous activity, autonomous response, and proactive cyber resilience.

By embracing these principles and evolving cybersecurity practices in line with the state-of-the-art, organisations can comply with the NIS2 Directive while building a resilient cybersecurity posture capable of withstanding evolutions in the cyber threat landscape. Looking forward, it will be interesting to see how other jurisdictions embrace new technologies, such as AI, in solving the cybersecurity problem.

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References

[1] https://www.enisa.europa.eu/publications/implementation-guidance-on-nis-2-security-measures

[2] https://www.teletrust.de/fileadmin/user_upload/2023-05_TeleTrusT_Guideline_State_of_the_art_in_IT_security_EN.pdf

[3] https://kpmg.com/uk/en/home/insights/2024/04/what-does-nis2-mean-for-energy-businesses.html

[4] https://orbilu.uni.lu/bitstream/10993/50878/1/SCHMITZ_IFIP_workshop_sota_author-pre-print.pdf

[5]https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/report/impact-of-ai-on-cyber-threat

[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949715923000793

[7] https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/information_security_continuous_monitoring

[8] https://ens.ccn.cni.es/es/docman/documentos-publicos/39-boe-a-2022-7191-national-security-framework-ens/file

[10] https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/KRITIS/Konkretisierung_Anforderungen_Massnahmen_KRITIS.html

[11] https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/legacy/sp/nistspecialpublication800-137.pdf

[12] https://ens.ccn.cni.es/es/docman/documentos-publicos/39-boe-a-2022-7191-national-security-framework-ens/file

[13] https://ens.ccn.cni.es/es/docman/documentos-publicos/39-boe-a-2022-7191-national-security-framework-ens/file

[14] https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/KRITIS/Konkretisierung_Anforderungen_Massnahmen_KRITIS.html

[15] https://therecord.media/surge-zero-day-exploits-five-eyes-report

[16] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/report/impact-of-ai-on-cyber-threat

[17] https://ens.ccn.cni.es/es/docman/documentos-publicos/39-boe-a-2022-7191-national-security-framework-ens/file

[18] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/cyber-assessment-framework/caf-objective-c-detecting-cyber-security-events/principle-c2-proactive-security-event-discovery

[19] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/cyber-assessment-framework/caf-objective-c-detecting-cyber-security-events/principle-c2-proactive-security-event-discovery

[20] https://cetas.turing.ac.uk/publications/autonomous-cyber-defence-autonomous-agents

[21] https://cetas.turing.ac.uk/publications/autonomous-cyber-defence-autonomous-agents

[22] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376170443_Cultivating_Proactive_Cybersecurity_Culture_among_IT_Professional_to_Combat_Evolving_Threats

[23] https://ens.ccn.cni.es/es/docman/documentos-publicos/39-boe-a-2022-7191-national-security-framework-ens/file

[24] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/cyber-assessment-framework/caf-objective-c-detecting-cyber-security-events/principle-c2-proactive-security-event-discovery

[25] https://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/mopdf/2024/05/17_1.pdf#page=49

[26] ENISA, NIS Directive 2

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About the author
Livia Fries
Public Policy Manager, EMEA

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February 11, 2025

Defending Against Living-off-the-Land Attacks: Anomaly Detection in Action

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What is living-off-the-land?

Threat actors employ a variety of techniques to compromise target networks, including exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities, abusing misconfigurations, deploying backdoors, and creating custom malware. However, these methods generate a lot of noise and are relatively easy for network and host-based monitoring tools to detect, especially once indicators of compromise (IoCs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are published by the cybersecurity community.

Living-off-the-Land (LOTL) techniques, however, allow attacks to remain nearly invisible to Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools – leveraging trusted protocols, applications and native systems to carry out malicious activity. While mitigations exist, they are often poorly implemented. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) found that some organizations “lacked security baselines, allowing [Living-off-the-Land binaries (LOLBins)] to execute and leaving analysts unable to identify anomalous activity” and “organizations did not appropriately tune their detection tools to reduce alert noise, leading to an unmanageable level of alerts to sift through and action" [1].

Darktrace / NETWORK addresses this challenge across Information Technology (IT), Operational Technology (OT), and cloud environments by continuously analyzing network traffic and identifying deviations from normal behavior with its multi-layered AI – helping organizations detect and respond to LOTL attacks in real time.

Darktrace’s detection of LOTL attacks

This blog will review two separate attacks detected by Darktrace that leveraged LOTL techniques at several stages of the intrusion.

Case A

Reconnaissance

In September 2024, a malicious actor gained access to a customer network via their Virtual Private Network (VPN) from two desktop devices that had no prior connection history. Over two days, the attacker conducted multiple network scans, targeting ports associated with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and NTLM authentication. Darktrace detected this unusual activity, triggering multiple alerts for scanning and enumeration activity.

Unusual NTLM authentication attempts using default accounts like “Guest” and “Administrator” were detected. Two days after the initial intrusion, suspicious DRSGetNCChanges requests were observed on multiple domain controllers (DCs), targeting the Directory Replication Service RPC interface (i.e., drsuapi) – a technique used to extract account hashes from DCs. This process can be automated using tools like Mimikatz's DcSync and DCShadow

Around the same time, attacker-controlled devices were seen presenting an admin credential and another credential potentially granting access to Cisco Firewall systems, suggesting successful privilege escalation. Due to the severity of this activity, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response was triggered to prevent the device from further deviation from its normal behavior. However, because Autonomous Response was configured in Human Confirmation mode, the response actions had to be manually applied by the customer.

Cyber AI Analyst Critical Incident showing the unusual DRSGetNCChanges requests following unusual scanning activity.
Figure 1: Cyber AI Analyst Critical Incident showing the unusual DRSGetNCChanges requests following unusual scanning activity.

Lateral movement

Darktrace also detected anomalous RDP connections to domain controllers, originating from an attacker-controlled device using admin and service credentials. The attacker then successfully pivoted to a likely RDP server, leveraging the RDP protocol – one of the most commonly used for lateral movement in network compromises observed by Darktrace.

Cyber Analyst Incident displaying unusual RDP lateral movement connections
Figure 2: Cyber Analyst Incident displaying unusual RDP lateral movement connections.

Tooling

Following an incoming RDP connection, one of the DCs made a successful GET request to the URI '/download/122.dll' on the 100% rare IP, 146.70.145[.]189. The request returned an executable file, which open-source intelligence (OSINT) suggests is likely a CobaltStrike C2 sever payload [2] [3]. Had Autonomous Response been enabled here, it would have blocked all outgoing traffic from the DC allowing the customer to investigate and remediate.

Additionally, Darktrace detected a suspicious CreateServiceW request to the Service Control (SVCCTL) RPC interface on a server. The request executed commands using ‘cmd.exe’ to perform the following actions

  1. Used ‘tasklist’ to filter processes named ”lsass.exe” (Local Security Authority Subsystem Service) to find its specific process ID.
  2. Used “rundll32.exe” to execute the MiniDump function from the “comsvcs.dll” library, creating a memory dump of the “lsass.exe” process.
  3. Saved the output to a PNG file in a temporary folder,

Notably, “cmd.exe” was referenced as “CMd.EXE” within the script, likely an attempt to evade detection by security tools monitoring for specific keywords and patterns.

Model Alert Log showing the unusual SVCCTL create request.
Figure 3: Model Alert Log showing the unusual SVCCTL create request.

Over the course of three days, this activity triggered around 125 Darktrace / NETWORK alerts across 11 internal devices. In addition, Cyber AI Analyst launched an autonomous investigation into the activity, analyzing and connecting 16 separate events spanning multiple stages of the cyber kill chain - from initial reconnaissance to payload retrieval and lateral movement.

Darktrace’s comprehensive detection enabled the customer’s security team to remediate the compromise before any further escalation was observed.

Case B

Between late 2023 and early 2024, Darktrace identified a widespread attack that combined insider and external threats, leveraging multiple LOTL tools for reconnaissance and lateral movement within a customer's network.

Reconnaissance

Initially, Darktrace detected the use of a new administrative credential by a device, which then made unusual RDP connections to multiple internal systems, including a 30-minute connection to a DC. Throughout the attack, multiple unusual RDP connections using the new administrative credential “%admin!!!” were observed, indicating that this protocol was leveraged for lateral movement.

The next day, a Microsoft Defender Security Integration alert was triggered on the device due to suspicious Windows Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) credential dump behavior. Since the LSASS process memory can store operating system and domain admin credentials, obtaining this sensitive information can greatly facilitate lateral movement within a network using legitimate tools such as PsExec or Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) [4]. Security integrations with other security vendors like this one can provide insights into host-based processes, which are typically outside of Darktrace’s coverage. Darktrace’s anomaly detection and network activity monitoring help prioritize the investigation of these alerts.

Three days later, the attacker was observed logging into the DC and querying tickets for the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) service using the default credential “Administrator.” This activity, considered new by Darktrace, triggered an Autonomous Response action that blocked further connections on Kerberos port 88 to the DC. LDAP provides a central location to access and manage data about computers, servers, users, groups, and policies within a network. LDAP enumeration can provide valuable Active Directory (AD) object information to an attacker, which can be used to identify critical attack paths or accounts with high privileges.

Lateral movement

Following the incoming RDP connection, the DC began scanning activities, including RDP and Server Block Message (SMB) services, suggesting the attacker was using remote access for additional reconnaissance. Outgoing RDP connection attempts to over 100 internal devices were observed, with around 5% being successful, highlighting the importance of this protocol for the threat actor’s lateral movement.

Around the same time, the DC made WMI, PsExec, and service control connections to two other DCs, indicating further lateral movement using native administrative protocols and tools. These functions can be leveraged by attackers to query system information, run malicious code, and maintain persistent access to compromised devices while avoiding traditional security tool alarms. In this case, requested services included the IWbemServices (used to access WMI services) and IWbemFetchSmartEnum (used to retrieve a network-optimized enumerator interface) interfaces, with ExecQuery operations detected for the former. This method returns an enumerable collection of IWbemClassObject interface objects based on a query.

Additionally, unusual Windows Remote Management (WinRM) connections to another domain controller were observed. WinRM is a Microsoft protocol that allows systems to exchange and access management information over HTTP(S) across a network, such as running executables or modifying the registry and services.

Cyber AI Analyst Incident showing unusual WMI activity between the two DCs.
Figure 4: Cyber AI Analyst Incident showing unusual WMI activity between the two DCs.

The DC was also detected writing the file “PSEXESVC.exe” to the “ADMIN$” share of another internal device over the SMB file transfer network protocol. This activity was flagged as highly unusual by Darktrace, as these two devices had not previously engaged in this type of SMB connectivity.

It is rare for an attacker to immediately find the information or systems they are after, making it likely they will need to move around the network before achieving their objectives. Tools such as PsExec enable attackers to do this while largely remaining under the radar. With PsExec, attackers who gain access to a single system can connect to and execute commands remotely on other internal systems, access sensitive information, and spread their attack further into the environment.

Model Alert Event Log showing the new write of the file “PSEXESVC.exe” by one of the compromised devices over an SMB connection initiated at an unusual time.
Figure 5. Model Alert Event Log showing the new write of the file “PSEXESVC.exe” by one of the compromised devices over an SMB connection initiated at an unusual time.

Darktrace further observed the DC connecting to the SVCCTL endpoint on a remote device and performing the CreateServiceW operation, which was flagged as highly unusual based on previous behavior patterns between the two devices. Additionally, new ChangeServiceConfigW operations were observed from another device.

Aside from IWbemServices requests seen on multiple devices, Darktrace also detected multiple internal devices connecting to the ITaskSchedulerService interface over DCE-RPC and performing new SchRpcRegisterTask operations, which register a task on the destination system. Attackers can exploit the task scheduler to facilitate the initial or recurring execution of malicious code by a trusted system process, often with elevated permissions. The creation of these tasks was considered new or highly unusual and triggered several anomalous ITaskScheduler activity alerts.

Conclusion

As pointed out by CISA, threat actors frequently exploit the lack of implemented controls on their target networks, as demonstrated in the incidents discussed here. In the first case, VPN access was granted to all domain users, providing the attacker with a point of entry. In the second case, there were no restrictions on the use of RDP within the targeted network segment, allowing the attackers to pivot from device to device.

Darktrace assists security teams in monitoring for unusual use of LOTL tools and protocols that can be leveraged by threat actors to achieve a wide range of objectives. Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI sifts through the network traffic noise generated by these trusted tools, which are essential to administrators and developers in their daily tasks, and highlights any anomalous and potentially unexpected use.

Credit to Alexandra Sentenac (Senior Cyber Analyst) and Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

References

[1] https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/Joint-Guidance-Identifying-and-Mitigating-LOTL_V3508c.pdf

[2] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/ip-address/146.70.145.189/community

[3] https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/cc9a670b549d84084618267fdeea13f196e43ae5df0d88e2e18bf5aa91b97318

[4]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2022/10/05/detecting-and-preventing-lsass-credential-dumping-attacks

MITRE Mapping

INITIAL ACCESS - External Remote Services

DISCOVERY - Remote System Discovery

DISCOVERY - Network Service Discovery

DISCOVERY - File and Directory Discovery

CREDENTIAL ACCESS – OS Credential Dumping: LSASS Memory

LATERAL MOVEMENT - Remote Services: Remote Desktop Protocol

LATERAL MOVEMENT - Remote Services: SMB/Windows Admin Shares

EXECUTION - System Services: Service Execution

PERSISTENCE - Scheduled Task

COMMAND AND CONTROL - Ingress Tool Transfer

Darktrace Model Detections

Case A

Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity

Device / Network Scan

Device / ICMP Address Scan

Device / Reverse DNS Sweep

Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity

Device / Possible SMB/NTLM Reconnaissance

Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin SMB Session

Device / SMB Session Brute Force (Admin)

Device / Possible SMB/NTLM Brute Force

Device / SMB Lateral Movement

Device / Anomalous NTLM Brute Force

Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration

Device / SMB Session Brute Force (Non-Admin)

Device / Anomalous SMB Followed By Multiple Model Breaches

Anomalous Connection / Possible Share Enumeration Activity

Device / RDP Scan

Device / Anomalous RDP Followed By Multiple Model Breaches

Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin RDP Session

Anomalous Connection / Active Remote Desktop Tunnel

Anomalous Connection / Anomalous DRSGetNCChanges Operation

Anomalous Connection / High Priority DRSGetNCChanges

Compliance / Default Credential Usage

User / New Admin Credentials on Client

User / New Admin Credentials on Server

Device / Large Number of Model Breaches from Critical Network Device

User / New Admin Credential Ticket Request

Compromise / Unusual SVCCTL Activity

Anomalous Connection / New or Uncommon Service Control

Anomalous File / Script from Rare External Location

Anomalous Server Activity / Anomalous External Activity from Critical Network Device

Anomalous File / EXE from Rare External Location

Anomalous File / Numeric File Download

Device / Initial Breach Chain Compromise

Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches

Device / Large Number of Model Breaches

Compromise / Multiple Kill Chain Indicators

Case B

User / New Admin Credentials on Client

Compliance / Default Credential Usage

Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration

Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity

Device / RDP Scan

Device / New or Uncommon WMI Activity

Device / Anomaly Indicators / New or Uncommon WMI Activity Indicator

Device / New or Unusual Remote Command Execution

Anomalous Connection / New or Uncommon Service Control

Anomalous Connection / Active Remote Desktop Tunnel

Compliance / SMB Drive Write

Anomalous Connection / Anomalous DRSGetNCChanges Operation

Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches

Device / Anomalous ITaskScheduler Activity

Anomalous Connection / Unusual Admin RDP Session

Device / Large Number of Model Breaches from Critical Network Device

Compliance / Default Credential Usage

IOC - Type - Description/Probability

146.70.145[.]189 - IP Address - Likely C2 Infrastructure

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About the author
Alexandra Sentenac
Cyber Analyst
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