Balancing innovation with cyber discipline

As a global Financial Technology (FinTech) services organization, Libertex Group faces constant pressure to stay ahead of evolving cyber threats and meet strict compliance regulations. At the same time, the company must move quickly to meet worldwide market demands – balancing speed and adaptability with caution and control to ensure its customers and business are protected. This tension between innovation and risk mitigation is especially challenging in the rapidly changing FinTech space, where competition is fierce.

Hidden risks in the cloud

Libertex Group struggled with blind spots in its cloud environment – particularly around misconfigurations and compliance-related settings. These gaps were potential vulnerabilities and barriers to operational flexibility and audit readiness.

Keeping pace with sophisticated threats

For the organization, cybersecurity isn't simply a departmental function – it’s a strategic pillar. As Libertex Group scaled operations, it was clear that traditional tools were no longer enough. The security team needed a smarter, more adaptive solution – one that could keep pace with rapid change, detect sophisticated threats in real time, and reduce manual effort through autonomous capabilities.

Security that’s smarter and faster

When evaluating cybersecurity solutions, Libertex Group considered multiple vendors, guided by a clear set of technical and operational priorities. The goal was to find a modern platform that could strike the right balance between speed and depth – enabling rapid deployment while maintaining persistent, intelligent monitoring.

A combined approach to cloud security. Unified control.

Given the diverse nature of its environment, Libertex Group was especially interested in combining agent-based and agentless approaches in cloud security. The strategy would strengthen overall protection and safeguard its assets more effectively, while also providing the flexibility, efficiency, and broad coverage the company needs to respond in the face of emerging threats and shifting regulatory landscapes.

Equally important was the need for consolidation. Rather than managing a patchwork of disconnected tools, the team sought a unified platform that could deliver multiple capabilities through a single dashboard – simplifying management while expanding visibility and control.

To strengthen its security posture and support rapid business growth, the company adopted the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform™ as a core part of its defense strategy, including:

• Darktrace / CLOUD™
• Darktrace / EMAIL™
• Darktrace / ENDPOINT™
• Darktrace / IDENTITY™
• Darktrace / NETWORK™
• Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst™

Eliminating cloud blind spots  

The company’s journey with Darktrace began with the deployment of Darktrace / CLOUD, a pivotal move toward unifying visibility and accelerating threat response across its hybrid environment. Quickly after deploying, the team realized significant improvements in collaboration between the security, IT, and DevOps teams. “Unified visibility and contextual alerts are starting to shift us towards faster, more coordinated responses,” said Boris Mercola, Operation Security Leader at Libertex Group. “As the platform continues to embed into our workflows, we expect incident response and cloud deployment processes to become significantly more streamlined.”

Darktrace / CLOUD identifies misconfigurations in real time by using automated cloud posture management tailored to the organization’s unique environment, ultimately reducing Mean Time To Respond (MTTR) and enhancing its compliance standing. "With Darktrace / CLOUD, we have clear reporting, documentation and audit-ready traceability – exactly what’s needed to meet European regulatory standards and the European Banking Authority guidelines," said Herber Herrera, Risk and Compliance Leader at Libertex Group.

Choosing a combined approach deployment model that leveraged both agent-based and agentless methods has proved critical to Libertex Group’s success. “If we need to secure a new part of our cloud, like a new AWS Virtual Private Cloud, we can do that quickly and easily with Darktrace / CLOUD. It’s fast, simple and effective,” said Mercola.

Mitigating risk with AI

Beyond cloud security, Libertex Group expanded its use of Darktrace to cover network, endpoint, email, and identity environments, redefining how threats are detected and responded to organization wide. By integrating Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI for autonomous threat detection and response, the team has accelerated threat identification and containment across all workloads.

One standout incident underscored the power of autonomous capabilities. The platform detected subtle, anomalous lateral movement in the cloud that traditional tools missed. Within seconds, Darktrace autonomously contained the threat and alerted the security operations team, which was able to investigate and mitigate the risk without business disruption. The use of the Darktrace Mobile App to receive real-time alerts has further accelerated response times, enabling the security team to act immediately – even when members are away from their desks.

Empowering analysts with autonomous response

With its ability to take action on lower-risk threats without escalating them to humans, the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform has significantly reduced the burden on analysts and enabled the team to focus on more complex investigations. For example, Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst conducted 4,478 total investigations within a three-month period, resolving 4,232 of those autonomously and escalating only 246 to analysts. An in just one month, Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst saved 979 analyst hours on investigations.

“We’ve gone from reactive to proactive,” said Mercola. “Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform stops many threats before they ever touch our broader systems.” While the team was already aware of some vulnerabilities, Darktrace gave it the data and confidence needed to take action. “Darktrace provides the evidence and proof we need to escalate issues to the right teams and drive meaningful change,” said Mercola.

Securing executive confidence with proven results

The platform’s flexibility and scalability – paired with tangible results – has earned executive support for continued investment in Darktrace. “Through clear metrics, our leadership team can see the difference Darktrace is making. This performance has made Darktrace an indispensable part of our security strategy,” said Mercola.

Beyond the hype: AI that delivers

When asked to reflect on how Darktrace has made the biggest impact on the business, Mercola said it comes to down to AI. For other organizations considering AI, he emphasized that AI is not just a feature – it’s a necessity. “Everyone’s talking about AI, but with Darktrace, it’s not just hype. It’s real, it works, and it learns how our specific business operates. Darktrace has fundamentally changed how we approach security operations.”