Stay informed on cybersecurity trends! Read about a BlackMatters ransom attack incident and Darktrace's analysis on how RESPOND could have stopped the attack.
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 Analyst Team
Share
04
Jan 2023
Only a few years ago, popular reporting announced that the days of smash-and-grab attacks were over and that a new breed of hackers were taking over with subtler, ‘low-and-slow’ tactics [1]. Although these have undoubtedly appeared, smash-and-grab have quickly become overlooked – perhaps with worrying consequences. Last year, Google saw repeated phishing campaigns using cookie theft malware and most recently, reports of hacktivists using similar techniques have been identified during the 2022 Ukraine Conflict [2 & 3]. Where did their inspiration come from? For larger APT groups such as BlackMatter, which first appeared in the summer of 2021, smash-and-grabs never went out of fashion.
This blog dissects a BlackMatter ransomware attack that hit an organization trialing Darktrace back in 2021. The case reveals what can happen when a security team does not react to high-priority alerts.
When entire ransomware attacks can be carried out over the course of just 48 hours, there is a high risk to relying on security teams to react to detection notifications and prevent damage before the threat escalates. Although there has been hesitancy in its uptake [4], this blog also demonstrates the need for automated response solutions like Darktrace RESPOND.
The Name Game: Untangling BlackMatter, REvil, and DarkSide
Despite being a short-lived criminal organization on the surface [5], a number of parallels have now been drawn between the TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) of the newer BlackMatter group and those of the retired REvil and DarkSide organizations [6].
Prior to their retirement, DarkSide and REvil were perhaps the biggest names in cyber-crime, responsible for two of last year’s most devastating ransomware attacks. Less than two weeks after the Colonial Pipeline attack, DarkSide announced it was shutting down its operation [7]. Meanwhile the FBI shutdown REvil in January 2022 after its devastating Fourth of July Kaseya attacks and a failed return in September [8]. It is now suspected that members from one or both went on to form BlackMatter.
This rebranding strategy parallels the smash-and-grab attacks these groups now increasingly employ: they make their money, and a lot of noise, and when they’re found out, they disappear before organizations or governments can pull together their threat intelligence and organize an effective response. When they return days, weeks or months later, they do so having implemented enough small changes to render themselves and their attacks unrecognizable. That is how DarkSide can become BlackMatter, and how its attacks can slip through security systems trained on previously encountered threats.
Attack Details
In September 2021 Darktrace was monitoring a US marketing agency which became the victim of a double extortion ransomware attack that bore hallmarks of a BlackMatter operation. This began when a single domain-authenticated device joined the company’s network. This was likely a pre-infected company device being reconnected after some time offline.
Only 15 minutes after joining, the device began SMB and ICMP scanning activities towards over 1000 different internal IPs. There was also a large spike of requests for Epmapper, which suggested an intent for RPC-based lateral movement. Although one credential was particularly prominent, multiple were used including labelled admin credentials. Given it’s unexpected nature, this recon quickly triggered a chain of DETECT/Network model breaches which ensured that Darktrace’s SOC were alerted via the Proactive Threat Notification service. Whilst SOC analysts began to triage the activity, the organization failed to act on any of the alerts they received, leaving the detected threat to take root within their digital environment.
Shortly after, a series of C2 beaconing occurred towards an endpoint associated with Cobalt Strike [9]. This was accompanied by a range of anomalous WMI bind requests to svcctl, SecAddr and further RPC connections. These allowed the initial compromised device to quickly infect 11 other devices. With continued scanning over the next day, valuable data was soon identified. Across several transfers, 230GB of internal data was then exfiltrated from four file servers via SSH port 22. This data was then made unusable to the organization through encryption occurring via SMB Writes and Moves/Renames with the randomly generated extension ‘.qHefKSmfd’. Finally a ransom note titled ‘qHefKSmfd.README.txt’ was dropped.
This ransom note was appended with the BlackMatter ASCII logo:
Figure 1- The ASCII logo which accompanied BlackMatter’s ransom note
Although Darktrace DETECT and Cyber AI Analyst continued to provide live alerting, the actor successfully accomplished their mission.
There are numerous reasons that an organization may fail to organize a response to a threat, (including resource shortages, out of hours attacks, and groups that simply move too fast). Without Darktrace’s RESPOND capabilities enabled, the threat actors could proceed this attack without obstacles.
Figure 2- Cyber AI Analyst breaks down the stages of the attack [Note: this screenshot is from V5 of DETECT/Network]
How would the attack have unfolded with RESPOND?
Armed with Darktrace’s evolving knowledge of ‘self’ for the customer’s unique digital environment, RESPOND would have activated within seconds of the first network scan, which was recognized as highly anomalous. The standard action taken here would usually involve enforcing the standard ‘pattern of life’ for the compromised device over a set time period in order to halt the anomaly while allowing the business to continue operating as normal.
RESPOND constantly re-evaluates threats as attacks unfold. Had the first stage still been successful, it would have continued to take targeted action at each corresponding stage of this attack. RESPOND models would have alerted to block the external connections to C2 servers over port 443, the outbound exfil attempts and crucially the SMB write activity over port 445 related to encryption.
As DETECT and RESPOND feed into one another, Darktrace would have continued to assess its actions as BlackMatter pivoted tactics. These actions buy back critical time for security teams that may not be in operation over the weekend, and stun the attacker into place without applying overly aggressive responses that create more problems than they solve.
Ultimately although this incident did not resolve autonomously, in response to the ransom event, Darktrace offered to enable RESPOND and set it in active mode for ransomware indicators across all client and server devices. This ensured an event like this would not occur again.
Why does RESPOND work?
Response solutions must be accurate enough to fire only when there is a genuine threat, configurable enough to let the user stay in the driver’s seat, and intelligent enough to know the right action to take to contain only the malicious activity- without disrupting normal business operations.
This is only possible if you can establish what ‘normal’ is for any one organization. And this is how Darktrace’s RESPOND product family ensures its actions are targeted and proportionate. By feeding off DETECT alerting which highlights subtle or large deviations across the network, cloud and SaaS, RESPOND can provide a measured response to the potential threat. This includes actions such as:
Enforcing the device’s ‘pattern of life’ for a given length of time
Enforcing the ‘group pattern of life’ (stopping a device from doing anything its peers haven’t done in the past)
Blocking connections of a certain type to a certain destination
Logging out of a cloud account
‘Smart quarantining’ an endpoint device- maintaining access to VPNs and company’s AV solution
Conclusion
In its report on BlackMatter [10], CISA recommended that organizations invest in network monitoring tools with the capacity to investigate anomalous activity. Picking up on unusual behavior rather than predetermined rules and signatures is an important step in fighting back against new threats. As this particular story shows, however, detection alone is not always enough. Turning on RESPOND, which takes immediate and precise action to contain threats, regardless of when and where they come in, is the best way to counter smash-and-grab attacks and protect organizations’ digital assets. There is little doubt that the threat actors behind BlackMatter will or have already returned with new names and strategies- but organizations with RESPOND will be ready for them.
Appendices
Darktrace Model Detections (in order of breach)
Those with the ‘PTN’ prefix were alerted directly to Darktrace’s 24/7 SOC team.
Device / ICMP Address Scan
Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity
(PTN) Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity
Anomalous Connection / SMB Enumeration
Device / Possible RPC Lateral Movement
Device / Active Directory Reconnaissance
Unusual Activity / Possible RPC Recon Activity
Device / Possible SMB/NTLM Reconnaissance
Compliance / Default Credential Usage
Device / New or Unusual Remote Command Execution
Anomalous Connection / New or Uncommon Service Control
Device / New or Uncommon SMB Named Pipe
Device / SMB Session Bruteforce
Device / New or Uncommon WMI Activity
(PTN) Device / Multiple Lateral Movement Model Breaches
Compromise / Sustained SSL or HTTP Increase
Compromise / SSL or HTTP Beacon
Compromise / Sustained TCP Beaconing Activity To Rare Endpoint
Device / Anomalous SMB Followed By Multiple Model Breaches
Device / Anomalous RDP Followed By Multiple Model Breaches
Anomalous Server Activity / Rare External from Server
Anomalous Connection / Anomalous SSL without SNI to New External
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.
Under Medusa’s Gaze: How Darktrace Uncovers RMM Abuse in Ransomware Campaigns
Medusa ransomware increasingly exploits remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools for persistence, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. This blog explores Medusa’s tactics, real-world detections, and how anomaly-based solutions with Autonomous Response can stop attacks.
React2Shell: How Opportunist Attackers Exploited CVE-2025-55182 Within Hours
Darktrace observed opportunistic exploitation of the React2Shell vulnerability within minutes of honeypot deployment. Attackers leveraged shell scripts, HTTP beaconing, and cryptomining activity, highlighting rapid adaptation to unpatched flaws.
Atomic Stealer: Darktrace’s Investigation of a Growing macOS Threat
Atomic Stealer is rapidly emerging as a significant macOS threat, using infostealing and backdoor capabilities to target Apple users worldwide. Darktrace observed campaigns in 24 countries, detecting activity across multiple kill chain stages and providing recommended actions to contain attacks.
Under Medusa’s Gaze: How Darktrace Uncovers RMM Abuse in Ransomware Campaigns
What is Medusa Ransomware in 2025?
In 2025, the Medusa Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) emerged as one of the top 10 most active ransomware threat actors [1]. Its growing impact prompted a joint advisory from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) [3]. As of January 2026, more than 500 organizations have fallen victim to Medusa ransomware [2].
Darktrace previously investigated Medusa in a 2024 blog, but the group’s rapid expansion and new intelligence released in late 2025 has lead Darktrace’s Threat Research team to investigate further. Recent findings include Microsoft’s research on Medusa actors exploiting a vulnerability in Fortra’s GoAnywhere MFT License Servlet (CVE-2025-10035)[4] and Zencec’s report on Medusa’s abuse of flaws in SimpleHelp’s remote support software (CVE-2024-57726, CVE-2024-57727, CVE-2024-57728) [5].
Reports vary on when Medusa first appeared in the wild. Some sources mention June 2021 as the earliest sightings, while others point to late 2022, when its developers transitioned to the RaaS model, as the true beginning of its operation [3][11].
Madusa Ransomware history and background
The group behind Medusa is known by several aliases, including Storm-1175 and Spearwing [4] [7]. Like its mythological namesake, Medusa has many “heads,” collaborating with initial access brokers (IABs) and, according to some evidence, affiliating with Big Game Hunting (BGH) groups such as Frozen Spider, as well as the cybercriminal group UNC7885 [3][6][13].
Use of Cyrillic in its scripts, activity on Russian-language cybercrime forums, slang unique to Russian criminal subcultures, and avoidance of targets in Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries suggest that Medusa operates from Russia or an allied state [11][12].
Medusa ransomware should not be confused with other similarly named malware, such as the Medusa Android Banking Trojan, the Medusa Botnet/Medusa Stealer, or MedusaLocker ransomware. It is easily distinguishable from these variants because it appends the extension .MEDUSA to encrypted files and drops the ransom note !!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt on compromised systems [8].
Who does Madusa Ransomware target?
The group appears to show little restraint, indiscriminately attacking organizations across all sectors, including healthcare, and is known to employ triple extortion tactics whereby sensitive data is encrypted, victims are threatened with data leaks, and additional pressure is applied through DDoS attacks or contacting the victim’s customers, rather than the more common double extortion model [13].
Madusa Ransomware TTPs
To attain initial access, Medusa actors typically purchase access to already compromised devices or accounts via IABs that employ phishing, credential stuffing, or brute-force attacks, and also target vulnerable or misconfigured Internet-facing systems.
Between December 2023 and November 2025, Darktrace observed multiple cases of file encryption related to Medusa ransomware across its customer base. When enabled, Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability intervened early in the attack chain, blocking malicious activity before file encryption could begin.
Some of the affected were based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), others in the Americas (AMS), and the remainder in the Asia-Pacific and Japan region. The most impacted sectors were financial services and the automotive industry, followed by healthcare, and finally organizations in arts, entertainment and recreation, ICT, and manufacturing.
Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool abuse
In most customer environments where Medusa file encryption attempts were observed, and in one case where the compromise was contained before encryption, unusual external HTTP connections associated with JWrapper were also detected. JWrapper is a legitimate tool designed to simplify the packaging, distribution, and management of Java applications, enabling the creation of executables that run across different operating systems. Many of the destination IP addresses involved in this activity were linked to SimpleHelp servers or associated with Atera.
Medusa actors appear to favor RMM tools such as SimpleHelp. Unpatched or misconfigured SimpleHelp RMM servers can serve as an initial access vector to the victims’ infrastructure. After gaining access to SimpleHelp management servers, the threat actors edit server configuration files to redirect existing SimpleHelp RMM agents to communicate with unauthorized servers under their control.
The SimpleHelp tool is not only used for command-and-control (C2) and enabling persistence but is also observed during lateral movement within the network, downloading additional attack tools, data exfiltration, and even ransomware binary execution. Other legitimate remote access tools abused by Medusa in a similar manner to evade detection include Atera, AnyDesk, ScreenConnect, eHorus, N-able, PDQ Deploy/Inventory, Splashtop, TeamViewer, NinjaOne, Navicat, and MeshAgent [4][5][15][16][17].
Data exfiltration
Another correlation among Darktrace customers affected by Medusa was observed during the data exfiltration phase. In several environments, data was exfiltrated to the endpoints erp.ranasons[.]com or pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx (143.110.243[.]154, 144.217.181[.]205) over ports 443, 445, and 80. erp.ranasons[.]com was seemingly active between November 2024 and September 2025, while pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx was seen from November 2024 to March 2025. Evidence suggests that pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx previously hosted a SimpleHelp server [22][23].
Apart from RMM tools, Medusa is also known to use Rclone and Robocopy for data exfiltration [3][19]. During one Medusa compromise detected in mid-2024, the customer’s data was exfiltrated to external destinations associated with the Ngrok proxy service using an SSH-2.0-rclone client.
Medusa Compromise Leveraging SimpleHelp
In Q4 2025, Darktrace assisted a European company impacted by Medusa ransomware. The organization had partial Darktrace / NETWORK coverage and had configured Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability to require manual confirmation for all actions. Despite these constraints, data received through the customer’s security integration with CrowdStrike Falcon enabled Darktrace analysts to reconstruct the attack chain, although the initial access vector remains unclear due to limited visibility.
In late September 2025, a device out of the scope of Darktrace's visibility began scanning the network and using RDP, NTLM/SMB, DCE_RPC, and PowerShell for lateral movement.
CrowdStrike “Defense Evasion: Disable or Modify Tools” alerts related to a suspicious driver (c:\windows\[0-9a-b]{4}.exe) and a PDQ Deploy executable (share=\\<device_hostname>\ADMIN$ file=AdminArsenal\PDQDeployRunner\service-1\exec\[0-9a-b]{4}.exe) suggest that the attackers used the Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver (BYOVD) technique to terminate antivirus processes on network devices, leveraging tools such as KillAV or AbyssWorker along with the PDQ Software Deployment solution [19][26].
A few hours later, Darktrace observed the same device that had scanned the network writing Temp\[a-z]{2}.exe over SMB to another device on the same subnet. According to data from the CrowdStrike alert, this executable was linked to an RMM application located at C:\Users\<compromised_user>\Documents\[a-z]{2}.exe. The same compromised user account later triggered a CrowdStrike “Command and Control: Remote Access Tools” alert when accessing C:\ProgramData\JWrapper-Remote Access\JWrapper-Remote Access Bundle-[0-9]{11}\JWrapperTemp-[0-9]{10}-[0-9]{1}-app\bin\windowslauncher.exe [27].
Figure 1: An executable file associated with the SimpleHelp RMM tool being written to other devices using the SMB protocol, as detected by Darktrace.
Soon after, the destination device and multiple other network devices began establishing connections to 31.220.45[.]120 and 213.183.63[.]41, both of which hosted malicious SimpleHelp RMM servers. These C2 connections continued for more than 20 days after the initial compromise.
CrowdStrike integration alerts for the execution of robocopy . "c:\windows\\" /COPY:DT /E /XX /R:0 /W:0 /NP /XF RunFileCopy.cmd /IS /IT commands on several Windows servers, suggested that this utility was likely used to stage files in preparation for data exfiltration [19].
Around two hours later, Darktrace detected another device connecting to the attacker’s SimpleHelp RMM servers. This internal server had ‘doc’ in its hostname, indicating it was likely a file server. It was observed downloading documents from another internal server over SMB and uploading approximately 70 GiB of data to erp.ranasons[.]com (143.110.243[.]154:443).
Figure 2: Data uploaded to erp.ranasons[.]com and the number of model alerts from the exfiltrating device, represented by yellow and orange dots.
Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst autonomously investigated the unusual connectivity, correlating the separate C2 and data exfiltration events into a single incident, providing greater visibility into the ongoing attack.
Figure 3: Cyber AI Analyst identified a file server making C2 connections to an attacker-controlled SimpleHelp server (213.183.63[.]41) and exfiltrating data to erp.ranasons[.]com.
Figure 4: The same file server that connected to 213.183.63[.]41 and exfiltrated data to erp.ranasons[.]com was also observed attempting to connect to an IP address associated with Moscow, Russia (193.37.69[.]154:7070).
One of the devices connecting to the attacker's SimpleHelp RMM servers was also observed downloading 35 MiB from [0-9]{4}.filemail[.]com. Filemail, a legitimate file-sharing service, has reportedly been abused by Medusa actors to deliver additional malicious payloads [11].
Figure 5: A device controlled remotely via SimpleHelp downloading additional tooling from the Filemail file-sharing service.
Finally, integration alerts related to the ransomware binary, such as c:\windows\system32\gaze.exe and <device_hostname>\ADMIN$ file=AdminArsenal\PDQDeployRunner\service-1\exec\gaze.exe, along with “!!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt” ransom notes were observed on network devices. This indicates that file encryption in this case was most likely carried out directly on the victim hosts rather than via the SMB protocol [3].
Conclusion
Threat actors, including nation-state actors and ransomware groups like Medusa, have long abused legitimate commercial RMM tools, typically used by system administrators for remote monitoring, software deployment, and device configuration, instead of relying on remote access trojans (RATs).
Attackers employ existing authorized RMM tools or install new remote administration software to enable persistence, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and ingress tool transfer. By mimicking legitimate administrative behavior, RMM abuse enables attackers to evade detection, as security software often implicitly trusts these tools, allowing attackers to bypass traditional security controls [28][29][30].
To mitigate such risks, organizations should promptly patch publicly exposed RMM servers and adopt anomaly-based detection solutions, like Darktrace / NETWORK, which can distinguish legitimate administrative activity from malicious behavior, applying rapid response measures through its Autonomous Response capability to stop attacks in their tracks.
Darktrace delivers comprehensive network visibility and Autonomous Response capabilities, enabling real-time detection of anomalous activity and rapid mitigation, even if an organization fall under Medusa’s gaze.
Credit to Signe Zaharka (Principal Cyber Analyst) and Emma Foulger (Global Threat Research Operations Lead
Edited by Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)
Appendices
List of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs)
IoC - Type - Description + Confidence + Time Observed
185.108.129[.]62 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - March 7, 2023
185.126.238[.]119 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - November 26-27, 2024
213.183.63[.]41 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - November 28, 2024 - Sep 30, 2025
213.183.63[.]42 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - July 4 -9 , 2024
31.220.45[.]120 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - September 12 - Oct 20 , 2025
91.92.246[.]110 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - May 24, 2024
45.9.149[.]112:15330 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - June 21, 2024
89.36.161[.]12 IP address Malicious SimpleHelp server observed during Medusa attacks (High confidence) - June 26-28, 2024
193.37.69[.]154:7070 IP address Suspicious RU IP seen on a device being controlled via SimpleHelp and exfiltrating data to a Medusa related endpoint - September 30 - October 20, 2025
erp.ranasons[.]com·143.110.243[.]154 Hostname Data exfiltration destination - November 27, 2024 - September 30, 2025
pruebas.pintacuario[.]mx·144.217.181[.]205 - Hostname Data exfiltration destination - November 27, 2024 - March 26, 2025
lirdel[.]com · 44.235.83[.]125/a.msi (1b9869a2e862f1e6a59f5d88398463d3962abe51e19a59) File & hash Atera related file downloaded with PowerShell - June 20, 2024
wizarr.manate[.]ch/108.215.180[.]161:8585/$/1dIL5 File Suspicious file observed on one of the devices exhibiting unusual activity during a Medusa compromise - February 28, 2024
!!!READ_ME_MEDUSA!!!.txt" File - Ransom note
*.MEDUSA - File extension File extension added to encrypted files
gaze.exe – File - Ransomware binary
Darktrace Model Coverage
Darktrace / NETWORK model detections triggered during connections to attacker controlled SimpleHelp servers:
Anomalous Connection/Anomalous SSL without SNI to New External
Anomalous Connection/Multiple Connections to New External UDP Port
Anomalous Connection/New User Agent to IP Without Hostname
How a leading bank is prioritizing risk management to power a resilient future
As one of the region’s most established financial institutions, this bank sits at the heart of its community’s economic life – powering everything from daily transactions to business growth and long-term wealth planning. Its blend of physical branches and advanced digital services gives customers the convenience they expect and the personal trust they rely on. But as the financial world becomes more interconnected and adversaries more sophisticated, safeguarding that trust requires more than traditional cybersecurity. It demands a resilient, forward-leaning approach that keeps pace with rising threats and tightening regulatory standards.
A complex risk landscape demands a new approach
The bank faced a challenge familiar across the financial sector: too many tools, not enough clarity. Vulnerability scans, pen tests, and risk reports all produced data, yet none worked together to show how exposures connected across systems or what they meant for day-to-day operations. Without a central platform to link and contextualize this data, teams struggled to see how individual findings translated into real exposure across the business.
Fragmented risk assessments: Cyber and operational risks were evaluated in silos, often duplicated across teams, and lacked the context needed to prioritize what truly mattered.
Limited executive visibility: Leadership struggled to gain a complete, real-time view of trends or progress, making risk ownership difficult to enforce.
Emerging compliance pressure: This gap also posed compliance challenges under the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which requires financial institutions to demonstrate continuous oversight, effective reporting, and the ability to withstand and recover from cyber and IT disruptions.
“The issue wasn’t the lack of data,” recalls the bank’s Chief Technology Officer. “The challenge was transforming that data into a unified, contextualized picture we could act on quickly and decisively.”
As the bank advanced its digital capabilities and embraced cloud services, its risk environment became more intricate. New pathways for exploitation emerged, human factors grew harder to quantify, and manual processes hindered timely decision-making. To maintain resilience, the security team sought a proactive, AI-powered platform that could consolidate exposures, deliver continuous insight, and ensure high-value risks were addressed before they escalated.
Choosing Darktrace to unlock proactive cyber resilience
To reclaim control over its fragmented risk landscape, the bank selected Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management™ for cyber risk insight. The solution’s ability to consolidate scanner outputs, pen test results, CVE data, and operational context into one AI-powered view made it the clear choice. Darktrace delivered comprehensive visibility the team had long been missing.
By shifting from a reactive model to proactive security, the bank aimed to:
Improve resilience and compliance with DORA
Prioritize remediation efforts with greater accuracy
Eliminate duplicated work across teams
Provide leadership with a complete view of risk, updated continuously
Reduce the overall likelihood of attack or disruption
The CTO explains: “We needed a solution that didn’t just list vulnerabilities but showed us what mattered most for our business – how risks connected, how they could be exploited, and what actions would create the biggest reduction in exposure. Darktrace gave us that clarity.”
Targeting the risks that matter most
Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management offered the bank a new level of visibility and control by continuously analyzing misconfigurations, critical attack paths, human communication patterns, and high-value assets. Its AI-driven risk scoring allowed the team to understand which vulnerabilities had meaningful business impact, not just which were technically severe.
Unifying exposure across architectures
Darktrace aggregates and contextualizes data from across the bank’s security stack, eliminating the need to manually compile or correlate findings. What once required hours of cross-team coordination now appears in a single, continuously updated dashboard.
Revealing an adversarial view of risk
The solution maps multi-stage, complex attack paths across network, cloud, identity systems, email environments, and endpoints – highlighting risks that traditional CVE lists overlook.
Identifying misconfigurations and controlling gaps
Using Self-Learning AI, Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management spots misconfigurations and prioritizes them based on MITRE adversary techniques, business context, and the bank’s unique digital environment.
Enhancing red-team and pen test effectiveness
By directing testers to the highest-value targets, Darktrace removes guesswork and validates whether defenses hold up against realistic adversarial behavior.
Supporting DORA compliance
From continuous monitoring to executive-ready reporting, the solution provides the transparency and accountability the bank needs to demonstrate operational resilience frameworks.
Proactive security delivers tangible outcomes
Since deploying Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management, the bank has significantly strengthened its cybersecurity posture while improving operational efficiency.
Security teams are now saving more than four hours per week previously spent aggregating and analyzing risk data. With a unified view of their exposure, they can focus directly on remediation instead of manually correlating multiple reports.
Because risks are now prioritized based on business impact and real-time operational context, they no longer waste time on low-value tasks. Instead, critical issues are identified and resolved sooner, reducing potential windows for exploitation and strengthening the bank’s ongoing resilience against both known and emerging threats.
“Our goal was to move from reactive to proactive security,” the CTO says. “Darktrace didn’t just help us achieve that, it accelerated our roadmap. We now understand our environment with a level of clarity we simply didn’t have before.”
Leadership clarity and stronger governance
Executives and board stakeholders now receive clear, organization-wide visibility into the bank’s risk posture, supported by consistent reporting that highlights trends, progress, and areas requiring attention. This transparency has strengthened confidence in the bank’s cyber resilience and enabled leadership to take true ownership of risk across the institution.
Beyond improved visibility, the bank has also deepened its overall governance maturity. Continuous monitoring and structured oversight allow leaders to make faster, more informed decisions that strategically align security efforts with business priorities. With a more predictable understanding of exposure and risk movement over time, the organization can maintain operational continuity, demonstrate accountability, and adapt more effectively as regulatory expectations evolve.
Trading stress for control
With Darktrace, leaders now have the clarity and confidence they need to report to executives and regulators with accuracy. The ability to see organization-wide risk in context provides assurance that the right issues are being addressed at the right time. That clarity is also empowering security analysts who no longer shoulder the anxiety of wondering which risks matter most or whether something critical has slipped through the cracks. Instead, they’re working with focus and intention, redirecting hours of manual effort into strategic initiatives that strengthen the bank’s overall resilience.
Prioritizing risk to power a resilient future
For this leading financial institution, Darktrace / Proactive Exposure Management has become the foundation for a more unified, data-driven, and resilient cybersecurity program. With clearer, business-relevant priorities, stronger oversight, and measurable efficiency gains, the bank has strengthened its resilience and met demanding regulatory expectations without adding operational strain.
Most importantly, it shifted the bank’s security posture from a reactive stance to a proactive, continuous program. Giving teams the confidence and intelligence to anticipate threats and safeguard the people and services that depend on them.
.jpeg)
![Data uploaded to erp.ranasons[.]com and the number of model alerts from the exfiltrating device, represented by yellow and orange dots.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/69601f43842f8016c3898afd_Screenshot%202026-01-08%20at%201.18.52%E2%80%AFPM.png)
![Cyber AI Analyst identified a file server making C2 connections to an attacker-controlled SimpleHelp server (213.183.63[.]41) and exfiltrating data to erp.ranasons[.]com.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/69601f524d01b4d269313c38_Screenshot%202026-01-08%20at%201.19.06%E2%80%AFPM.png)
![The same file server that connected to 213.183.63[.]41 and exfiltrated data to erp.ranasons[.]com was also observed attempting to connect to an IP address associated with Moscow, Russia (193.37.69[.]154:7070).](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/626ff4d25aca2edf4325ff97/69601f6a598a3380572e284e_Screenshot%202026-01-08%20at%201.19.32%E2%80%AFPM.png)
