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March 25, 2021

SANS ICS Security Summit 2021 recap: Industry on the move

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Mar 2021
This blog provides a concise overview of the key points from SANS Summit 2021. Knowing ‘self’ both defends against the growing tide of external threats and allows organizations to gain visibility into new vulnerable areas as ICS evolves.

Shining a light into the murky world of industrial cyber security — where major incidents can be kept hush, and information is often not made publicly available — the SANS Institute held its 16th annual ICS Security Summit in March. With virtual events across APAC, EMEA, and the US, the round-the-clock summit stressed the importance of having good visibility and a strong understanding of industrial networks for anomaly detection and incident response. Speakers at the event also emphasized how automation can be used in industrial security to address budget restraints and skill shortages.

The summit also detailed the direction of developments in both industrial technologies and the surrounding threat landscape, including the adoption of cloud technologies for Industrial Control Systems, the broadening scope of threat actors, and the inherent limitations of patching and vulnerability management.

In addition to framing the key points of the summit, this blog will hone in on the program’s most salient points: namely, how building an in-depth understanding of ‘self’ for an ICS ecosystem can help fend off the rising tide of threat actors, and at the same time allow organizations to embrace new technologies in the face of their associated risks. Ultimately, by ‘knowing thyself,’ organizations will be able to simultaneously fight external threats, and also gain visibility into new areas of vulnerability that arise inside an organization as it evolves its industrial environment.

SANS Summit 2021: An overview

The following provides a high-level overview of the major topics discussed throughout the SANS summit:

Attacker TTPs

Threat Trend: MITRE ATT&CK for ICS provides details of known attack tradecraft.

Industry Challenge: There has been a historic lack of sharing lessons learned within the community.

Recommendation: Understand attack TTPs and align your defences with those techniques.

Industry Trend: MITRE ATT&CK for ICS offers a big step forward for the community to learn from previous attacks.

Visibility

Threat Trend: The SolarWinds attack has emphasized the vulnerability of ICS e.g. exploiting SNMP communications in BMS.

Industry Challenge: The absence of logging and event management has hindered SolarWinds investigations in CNI.

Recommendation: Use active network monitoring for log generation, and increase network and host visibility.

Industry Trend: The SolarWinds attack has emphasized the importance of CNI cyber security to the Biden administration.

Test your defenses

Threat Trend: Common TTPs — misuse of valid accounts, abuse of remote services, phishing/spear phishing.

Industry Challenge: Vulnerability tracking is not adequate to defend ICS networks — vulnerability reporting is far from comprehensive, and attackers are exploiting legitimate tools to gain access.

Recommendation: Test your defenses and your defenders using lab environments, external pentests, and adversary simulations.

Industry Trend: Pentesting of ICS environments is being performed remotely as a result of lockdown restrictions.

Know thyself

Threat Trend: The barrier to hacking ICS is lowering — threat actors are expanding, from nation states to cyber-criminals e.g. EKANS.

Industry Challenge: OT security teams suffer from a skills shortage and tight budgets.

Recommendation: Make use of the defender’s home turf advantages — defense-in-depth, learn ‘normal’ network behavior, gain visibility over internal comms.

Industry Trend: Digital solutions, such as cloud and virtualization, are being used to solve many ICS challenges.

New solutions bring new risks

Threat Trend: Third-party risks, such as OEMs and remote access points, are being exploited to gain direct access into ICS environments.

Industry Challenge: New digital solutions bring new challenges — supply chain risk, IT/OT convergence, compliance obligations, vendor lock-in.

Recommendation: If you can’t see the network, you can’t defend the network — improve visibility, identify crown jewels, boost incident response capability, and validate network segmentation.

Industry Trend: Renewable Energy industry is a big adopter of innovative ICS solutions, such as cloud, remote management, and ICSaaS. The decision to migrate to these solutions increasingly seems to be when, not if.

‘Know thyself’: Learning ‘self’ to identify emerging threats

A wide variety of threat actors are making their debut in the global ICS threat landscape. First, new state-sponsored advanced persistant threat groups (APTs) are targeting industrial ecosystems every year. 2020 also saw the addition of organized crime groups targeting ICS with new ransomware strains such as EKANS.

Accordingly, cyber-attacks on industrial systems are no longer the sole domain of nation states. With ransomware-as-a-service becoming increasingly available on the Dark Web, the barrier of entry for attacking critical infrastructure and manufacturing is demonstrably lowering. In light of this, experts at the SANS conference recommend gaining a detailed understanding of your network and making use of the defender’s home advantage with defence-in-depth.

With attacks growing in scale and sophistication, there is a growing recognition that defenses that sit at the border of organizations and attempt to keep threats out are no longer enough. Organizations must move to a model that assumes a breach, and adopt technologies that can identify cyber-threats once they are inside. This can only be achieved with a real-time, granular understanding of ‘normal’ behavior for every device and controller.

By learning, from scratch, the normal ‘pattern of life’ for all devices, users, and peer groups across industrial networks, Darktrace’s Industrial Immune System builds a sense of self for everything seen in an ICS ecosystem, as well as the digital environment as a whole. In this way, Darktrace allows organizations to ‘know thyself’ to a unparalleled degree, building a dynamic understanding of normal rather than relying on static baselines.

New solutions bring new risks

Throughout the summit, speakers discussed how they have used digital solutions such as cloud and virtualization to solve problems and cut costs. In particular, the renewable energy sector is a big adopter of cloud solutions, or “ICS as a Service” (ICSaaS). A wind farm in California, for example, might be remotely controlled by engineers on the east coast, or a vendor might maintain and run equipment for a hydroelectric plant in Latin America from their European headquarters.

As customers move to adopt these kinds of digital solutions — and with these decisions typically being made at board-level, rather than by the engineers — it seems more a question of when, not if, we see wider adoption of these technologies in the ICS community.

As OT converges with IT in the cloud, so do their associated risks. These new risks create headwinds to change, but some sectors are still adopting these new solutions and making big savings. Unified visibility across IT, OT, and the cloud have thus become a necessity for organizations seeking to accelerate digital transformation while also managing the risks of digitization and of their increasingly dynamic workforces.

A changing landscape

In the face of a new era of cyber-threats, the focus for OT specialists should not be on reactive measures, but embracing new self-learning technologies that develop an evolving understanding of ‘normal’ across industrial systems, the corporate network, cloud environments, and beyond.

By adapting to changes in the digital infrastructure, AI-powered defenses can detect and respond to zero-day threats, while alleviating the burden of security teams by automating much of the manual processes required in post-incident investigation. And by unifying insights across a range of different technologies, organizations can benefit from an enterprise-wide approach to security rather than relying on siloed defenses that lack the context for accurate decision-making.

In this age of advanced cyber-criminal rings and state-sponsored attacks, critical infrastructure and other industrial environments are now the focal point for cyber espionage and intrusions seeking to disrupt operations. The SANS ICS Security Summit reminds us of the need for defenders to face this new landscape with new and adaptive technologies that can disrupt the early signs of a threat, whether known or unknown.

Thanks to Darktrace analyst Oakley Cox for his insights.

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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David Masson
VP, Field CISO

David Masson is VP, Field CISO at Darktrace, and has over two decades of experience working in fast moving security and intelligence environments in the UK, Canada and worldwide. With skills developed in the civilian, military and diplomatic worlds, he has been influential in the efficient and effective resolution of various unique national security issues. David is an operational solutions expert and has a solid reputation across the UK and Canada for delivery tailored to customer needs. At Darktrace, David advises strategic customers across North America and is also a regular contributor to major international and national media outlets in Canada where he is based. He holds a master’s degree from Edinburgh University.

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March 28, 2025

Darktrace Recognized as the Only Visionary in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for CPS Protection Platforms

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We are thrilled to announce that Darktrace has been named the only Visionary in the inaugural Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Protection Platforms. We feel This recognition highlights Darktrace’s AI-driven approach to securing industrial environments, where conventional security solutions struggle to keep pace with increasing cyber threats.

A milestone for CPS security

It's our opinion that the first-ever Gartner Magic Quadrant for CPS Protection Platforms reflects a growing industry shift toward purpose-built security solutions for critical infrastructure. As organizations integrate IT, OT, and cloud-connected systems, the cyber risk landscape continues to expand. Gartner evaluated 17 vendors based on their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision, establishing a benchmark for security leaders looking to enhance cyber resilience in industrial environments.

We believe the Gartner recognition of Darktrace as the only Visionary reaffirms the platform’s ability to proactively defend against cyber risks through AI-driven anomaly detection, autonomous response, and risk-based security strategies. With increasingly sophisticated attacks targeting industrial control systems, organizations need a solution that continuously evolves to defend against both known and unknown threats.

AI-driven security for CPS environments

Securing CPS environments requires an approach that adapts to the dynamic nature of industrial operations. Traditional security tools rely on static signatures and predefined rules, leaving gaps in protection against novel and sophisticated threats. Darktrace / OT takes a different approach, leveraging Self-Learning AI to detect and neutralize threats in real time, even in air-gapped or highly regulated environments.

Darktrace / OT continuously analyzes network behaviors to establish a deep understanding of what is “normal” for each industrial environment. This enables it to autonomously identify deviations that signal potential cyber threats, providing early warning and proactive defense before attacks can disrupt operations. Unlike rule-based security models that require constant manual updates, Darktrace / OT improves with the environment, ensuring long-term resilience against emerging cyber risks.

Bridging the IT-OT security gap

A major challenge for organizations protecting CPS environments is the disconnect between IT and OT security. While IT security has traditionally focused on data

protection and compliance, OT security is driven by operational uptime and safety, leading to siloed security programs that leave critical gaps in visibility and response.

Darktrace / OT eliminates these silos by providing unified visibility across IT, OT, and IoT assets, ensuring that security teams have a complete picture of their attack surface. Its AI-driven approach enables cross-domain threat detection, recognizing risks that move laterally between IT and OT environments. By seamlessly integrating with existing security architectures, Darktrace / OT helps organizations close security gaps without disrupting industrial processes.

Proactive OT risk management and resilience

Beyond detection and response, Darktrace / OT strengthens organizations’ ability to manage cyber risk proactively. By mapping vulnerabilities to real-world attack paths, it prioritizes remediation actions based on actual exploitability and business impact, rather than relying on isolated CVE scores. This risk-based approach enables security teams to focus resources where they matter most, reducing overall exposure to cyber threats.

With autonomous threat response capabilities, Darktrace / OT not only identifies risks but also contains them in real time, preventing attackers from escalating intrusions. Whether mitigating ransomware, insider threats, or sophisticated nation-state attacks, Darktrace / OT ensures that industrial environments remain secure, operational, and resilient, no matter how threats evolve.

AI-powered incident response and SOC automation

Security teams are facing an overwhelming volume of alerts, making it difficult to prioritize threats and respond effectively. Darktrace / OT’s Cyber AI Analyst acts as a force multiplier for security teams by automating threat investigation, alert triage, and response actions. By mimicking the workflow of a human SOC analyst, Cyber AI Analyst provides contextual insights that accelerate incident response and reduce the manual workload on security teams.

With 24/7 autonomous monitoring, Darktrace / OT ensures that threats are continuously detected and investigated in real time. Whether facing ransomware, insider threats, or sophisticated nation-state attacks, organizations can rely on AI-driven security to contain threats before they disrupt operations.

Trusted by customers: Darktrace / OT recognized in Gartner Peer Insights

Source: Gartner Peer Insights (Oct 28th)

Beyond our recognition in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, we feel Darktrace / OT is one of the highest-rated CPS security solutions on Gartner Peer Insights, reflecting strong customer trust and validation. With a 4.9/5 overall rating and the highest "Willingness to Recommend" score among CPS vendors, organizations across critical infrastructure and industrial sectors recognize the impact of our AI-driven security approach. Source: Gartner Peer Insights (Oct 28th)

This strong customer endorsement underscores why leading enterprises trust Darktrace / OT to secure their CPS environments today and in the future.

Redefining the future of CPS security

It's our view that Darktrace’s recognition as the only Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CPS Protection Platforms validates its leadership in next-generation industrial security. As cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure continue to rise, organizations must adopt AI-driven security solutions that can adapt, respond, and mitigate risks in real time.

We believe this recognition reinforces our commitment to innovation and our mission to secure the world’s most essential systems. This recognition reinforces our commitment to innovation and our mission to secure the world’s most essential systems.

® Download the full Gartner Magic Quadrant for CPS Protection Platforms

® Request a demo to see Darktrace OT in action.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for CPS Protection Platforms , Katell Thielemann, Wam Voster, Ruggero Contu 12 February 2025

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant and Peer Insights are a registered trademark, of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences with the vendors listed on the platform, should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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Pallavi Singh
Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance

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March 28, 2025

Survey Findings: AI Cybersecurity Priorities and Objectives in 2025

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AI is changing the cybersecurity field, both on the offensive and defensive sides. We surveyed over 1,500 cybersecurity professionals from around the world to uncover their attitudes, understanding, and priorities when it comes to AI cybersecurity in 2025. Our full report, unearthing some telling trends, is available now.  

Download the full report to explore these findings in depth

It is clear that security professionals know their field is changing fast, and that AI will continue to influence those changes. Our survey results show that they are aware that the rise of AI will require them to adopt new tools and learn to use them effectively. Still, they aren’t always certain about how to plan for the future, or what to invest in.

The top priorities of security stakeholders for improving their defenses against AI-powered threats include augmenting their existing tool stacks with AI-powered solutions and improving integration among their security tools.

Figure 1: Year-over-year changes to the priorities of securitystakeholders.

Increasing cybersecurity staff

As was also the case last year, security stakeholders are less interested in hiring additional staff than in adding new AI-powered tools onto their existing security stacks, with only with 11% (and only 8% of executives) planning to increase cybersecurity staff in 2025.

This suggests that leaders are looking for new methods to overcome talent resource shortages.

Adding AI-powered security tools to supplement existing solutions

Executives are particularly enthusiastic about adopting AI-driven tools. Within that goal, there is consensus about the qualities cyber professionals are looking for when purchasing new security capabilities or replacing existing products.

  • 87% of survey respondents prefer solutions that are part of a broader platform over individual point products

These results are similar to last year’s, where again, almost nine out of ten agreed that a platform-oriented security solution was more effective at stopping cyber threats than a collection of individual products.

  • 88% of survey respondents agree that the use of AI within the security stack is critical to freeing up time for security teams to become more proactive, compared to reactive

AI itself can contribute to this shift from reactive to proactive security, improving risk prioritization and automating preventative strategies like Attack Surface Management (ASM) and proactive exposure management.

  • 84% of survey respondents prefer defensive AI solutions that do not require the organization’s data to be shared externally

This preference may reflect increasing attention to the data privacy and security risks posed by generative AI (gen AI) adoption. It may also reflect growing awareness of data residency requirements and other restrictions that regulators are imposing.

Improving cybersecurity awareness training for end users

Based on the survey results, practitioners in SecOps are more interested in improving security awareness training.

This goal is not necessarily mutually exclusive from the addition of AI tools. For example, teams can leverage AI to build more effective security awareness training programs, and as gen AI tools are adopted, users will need to be taught about data privacy and associated security risks.

Looking towards the future

One conclusion we can draw from the attitudinal shifts from last year’s survey to this year’s: while hiring more security staff might be a nice-to-have, implementing AI-powered tools so that existing employees can work smarter is increasingly viewed as a must-have.

However, trending goals are not just about managing resources, whether headcount or AI investments, to keep up with workloads. Existing end users must also be trained to follow safe practices while using established and newly adopted tools.

Security professionals, including executives, SecOps, and every role in between, continue to shift their identified challenges and priorities as they gear up for the coming year in the Era of AI.

State of AI report

Download the full report to explore these findings in depth

The full report for Darktrace’s State of AI Cybersecurity is out now. Download the paper to dig deeper into these trends, and see how results differ by industry, region, organization size, and job title.  

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