As a major player in shipping and distribution supply chains, Ongweoweh prioritizes security at every turn. It participates in around 2,000 transactions a day with customers and vendors. As global events have shown how quickly consumers feel the effects of supply chain disruptions, Ongweoweh selected Darktrace to support its cyber security and ensure its commercial dependability. 

“My first and foremost goal is to make sure the company stays safe and secure and that we have business continuity so that no matter what happens, whether it’s on-prem, whether it’s cloud, our company can stay up and running,” said James Davies, Director of IT for Ongweoweh. “Pallets are needed for every aspect of our lives. We use them everywhere, whether we know it or not, we need them. If we get shut down, that impacts our customers, which impacts our entire country.”

Ongweoweh’s security team has relied on Darktrace DETECT^TM + Darktrace RESPOND^TM to identify and neutralize attacks against its network, email, and Microsoft 365. Yet the team wanted to expand its attack surface management, so it deployed Darktrace PREVENT^TM. 

“It’s good to have reaction in an AI that is almost instantaneous, but it’s still a reaction,” Davies said. “We wanted a way to get something like that, where we can go into our systems and proactively look at what’s going on around us. When PREVENT/Attack Surface Management^TM came out, it was exactly what we were looking for, exactly what we wanted.” 

PREVENT/Attack Surface Management provides an outside-in perspective, identifying all areas of an organization that are digitally exposed to the outside world. Using AI to differentiate a company’s assets from the rest of the global internet, PREVENT/ASM typically surfaces 30-50% more assets than a company realizes it has, and can flag potential hostile websites, shadow IT, and misconfigurations.  

“PREVENT/ASM allows me to go home and sleep really well and not have to worry about somebody buying a domain that looks like ours and not have to worry about emails coming from that domain, things of that nature. Darktrace made it so that we don’t worry so much. We know it’s taken care of. It’s that simple,” Davies said. 

To complement PREVENT/ASM, PREVENT/End-to-End leverages AI’s understanding of a company’s internal digital infrastructure and user behaviors to map potential attack pathways and prioritize critical targets.  

“We know that the bad guys are gaining knowledge every day. We need to as well. And I think that this type of approach, this proactive approach, is a requirement now. I don’t think it is an option,” Davies said. 

PREVENT feeds into DETECT + RESPOND as part of Darktrace’s Cyber AI Loop. In this always-on feedback system, AI engines from each of the product families work together to autonomously harden security infrastructure. 

Darktrace’s industry-first Cyber AI Loop has saved Ongweoweh’s security team time and resources. As the AI takes autonomous action, it allows the security team to concentrate on areas where the human side is needed and opens the door to work on other IT projects. 

“The amount of time our IT department used to spend checking system logs, verifying accounts, not even knowing if an account had been compromised. It was very time consuming and took hours out of our day, every day,” Davies said. “Darktrace PREVENT has proven itself. When it was first implemented, I checked everything. I kind of thought it was too good to be true. It really did exactly what it was supposed to do. I could not have been more impressed.”  

Even with a lean security team, Ongweoweh maintains a robust security stack. While not yet certified, Ongweoweh’s primary information security management system complies with ISO27001 and PCI/DS5. This would not be possible without Darktrace and its powerful AI.                               

“We have attempted to work with several companies throughout my tenure at Ongweoweh,” Davies said. “While they did the job, there was lacking in the ease of use. We needed somebody that would come alongside us and give us a single pane of glass view into our threats, into our network, and into places where we could improve. We didn’t just love Darktrace, we knew that we needed it. And it fit perfectly.”