Press Release
Updated statement regarding LockBit claims
We have completed a thorough security investigation following yesterday’s tweets by LockBit claiming they had compromised Darktrace’s internal systems. We can confirm that there has been no compromise of our systems or any of our affiliate systems. Our service to our customers remains uninterrupted and is operating as normal and no further action is required.
Press Release
Statement regarding LockBit claims
Earlier this morning we became aware of tweets from LockBit, the cyber-criminal gang, claiming that they had compromised Darktrace’s internal security systems and had accessed our data. Our security teams have run a full review of our internal systems and can see no evidence of compromise. None of the LockBit social media posts link to any compromised Darktrace data. We will continue to monitor the situation extremely closely, but based on our current investigations we are confident that our systems remain secure and all customer data is fully protected.
Press Release
New Report Finds that 78% of Chief Information Security Officers Globally are Seeing a Significant Impact from AI-Powered Cyber Threats – up 5% from last year
Second annual Darktrace State of AI Cybersecurity report finds 60% of CISOs now feel prepared to defend against AI-powered cyber threats, an increase of 15% from 2024, but they still report insufficient AI knowledge and skills as a top inhibitor to successful defense.
March 4, 2025 – CAMBRIDGE, UK - Darktrace, a global leader in AI for cybersecurity, today unveiled its 2025 State of AI Cybersecurity report. The findings reveal that 78% of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) surveyed say that AI-powered threats are having a significant impact on their organizations, a 5% increase1 from 2024. While an increasing number of CISOs report feeling a significant impact from AI threats, more than 60% now say that they are adequately prepared to defend against these threats, an increase of nearly 15% year-over-year. However, insufficient AI knowledge and skills and a shortage of personnel and talent continue to be listed as the two top inhibitors to a successful defense.
"The impact of AI on cybersecurity is clear and increasing. There are more employees and enterprise applications using AI that must be protected. Adversaries are using it to make their attacks more targeted, scalable, and successful. All of this is unfolding in a highly volatile geopolitical environment that is creating more uncertainty," said Jill Popelka, CEO, Darktrace. "There has never been a more urgent need for AI in the SOC to augment teams and pre-empt threats so organizations can build their cyber resilience. That's why Darktrace continues to invest in new innovations to help customers manage risk and thrive in this new era of AI threats."
The second annual report surveyed over 1,500 cybersecurity professionals holding roles ranging from CISO to IT security managers, IT security analysts and incident responders, across 14 different countries.
Key findings from the report include:
- The increasing impact of AI-powered threats: This year, 78% of CISOs surveyed agreed that AI-powered cyber threats are having a significant impact on their organization, up 5% from 2024. AI combined with the increase of cybercrime-as-a-service and automation is increasing the sophistication and diversity of attack techniques faster than ever – from AI-enhanced phishing campaigns to evolving ransomware strains.
- A gap between confidence in AI and comprehension of how it can be best deployed: 95% of all cybersecurity professionals surveyed believe AI can improve the speed and efficiency of their ability to prevent, detect, respond and recover from threats, but significant knowledge gaps persist. Only 42% reported that they fully understand the types of AI in their current security stack. The gap increases across different roles, with 60% of CISOs reporting they know exactly what AI types are used versus 10% of IT security analysts/operators and 14% of IT security administrators. Moreover, two of the top three inhibitors reported to defending against AI-powered threats include insufficient knowledge or use of AI-driven countermeasures and insufficient knowledge/skills pertaining to AI technology.
- Teams are turning to AI to navigate talent and skills shortages: Despite respondents citing insufficient personnel to manage tools and alerts as the greatest inhibitor to defending against AI-powered threats, only 11% reported that they plan to increase cybersecurity staff in 2025, down from last year. AI is seen by this group as essential to augment human team members, with 64% reporting that they plan to add AI-powered solutions to their security stack in the next year and 88% reporting that the use of AI is critical to free up time for security teams to become more proactive.
- Managing risk is a priority, but more action is needed: 95% of all respondents report that their organization is either currently discussing (50%) or has already implemented (45%) a formal policy for safe and secure use of AI. This varies regionally and by industry. 52% of organizations in North America and 43% of organizations in EMEA report having a formal policy in place. Organizations in the financial services, retail and technology sectors globally report the highest level of policies currently in place. At the same time, only 45% of respondents report that they have a formal AI oversight and governance function and only 37% report that they regularly monitor or audit AI usage and outputs.
- Data privacy and a platform approach are top priorities: When asked about their cybersecurity technology preferences, respondents highlighted the importance of data privacy and a platform approach. Notably, 84% reported that they prefer solutions that don't require external data sharing and 87% indicated they prefer a platform approach over implementing a collection of point solutions.
- Cloud and network security seen as key areas for future impact of AI: When asked to look ahead at the future impact of AI in cyber defense, cloud security (66%) and network security (55%) are identified as two domains where cybersecurity professionals expect defensive AI to have the biggest impact.
"The integrity and reliability of IT systems are under increasing pressure as adversaries harness Generative AI to amplify their attacks. The rapid evolution of AI-powered threats is forcing security teams to rethink their defensive strategies, as traditional cybersecurity measures can no longer match the speed, scale, and sophistication of modern attacks,” said Jon Mendoza, CISO of Technologent, a global provider of IT solutions and services for Fortune 1000 companies. “To stay ahead, organizations must integrate AI-driven security solutions that not only detect and respond to threats but proactively anticipate them. True resilience comes not just from deploying AI but from empowering security teams with the knowledge and tools to wield it effectively. A security platform built on actionable-intelligence and hyper-automation is essential to containing threats and minimizing the blast radius of attacks. In today’s ever-evolving threat landscape, AI isn’t just an advantage—it’s a fundamental necessity."
Since 2013, Darktrace has applied AI to help organizations build a more proactive and resilient defense against sophisticated and evolving threats. Darktrace takes a multi-layered approach to AI that combines multiple machine learning techniques to create the AI engine that powers the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform™. The platform provides comprehensive multi-domain detection across network, cloud, email, applications, identities and operational technology – as well as precise autonomous response to known and novel threats often missed by traditional tools. Applied directly to each organization’s digital environment, Darktrace’s AI continuously ingests data and learns in real-time to form an understanding of the normal behavior of each environment, right down to the granular details of specific users and devices.
Darktrace’s AI is used by nearly 10,000 organizations globally to transform security operations by providing unprecedented visibility, automate investigations to save hundreds of hours of time, and free up security teams to focus on more proactive work.
Additional Resources:
- Download the full 2025 State of AI Cybersecurity report here and check out the Darktrace blog for more insights behind the data.
- Join the webinar on Wednesday, March 5 to learn more about how AI is reshaping the cybersecurity landscape or register to join us in-person at Darktrace LIVE, coming to a city near you beginning March 26.
- Learn more about different types of AI used in cybersecurity today and what makes Darktrace’s approach unique in “The AI Arsenal: Understanding the Tools Shaping Cybersecurity.”
About Darktrace
Darktrace is a global leader in AI for cybersecurity that keeps organizations ahead of the changing threat landscape every day. Founded in 2013, Darktrace provides the essential cybersecurity platform protecting organizations from unknown threats using its proprietary AI that learns from the unique patterns of life for each customer in real-time. The Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform™ delivers a proactive approach to cyber resilience with pre-emptive visibility into security posture, real-time threat detection, and autonomous response – securing the business across cloud, email, identities, operational technology, endpoints, and network. Breakthrough innovations from our R&D teams in Cambridge, UK, and The Hague, Netherlands have resulted in over 200 patent applications filed. Darktrace’s platform and services are supported by over 2,400 employees around the world who protect nearly 10,000 customers across all major industries globally. To learn more, visit http://www.darktrace.com.
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New Report Finds that 78% of Chief Information Security Officers Globally are Seeing a Significant Impact from AI-Powered Cyber Threats – up 5% from last year
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Darktrace named a Challenger in first Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security Platforms · Evaluated on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute Darktrace, a global leader in AI for cybersecurity,today announces that Darktrace / EMAIL™, has been recognized in thefirst ever Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Email Security Platforms (ESP) as a Challenger. Chris Kozup, Chief Marketing Officer, Darktrace, said of therecognition: “We are extremely proud to have been recognized in the first MagicQuadrant for ESP. We believe the factthat wehave seen such wide scale adoption is testament to the unique way in which wedevelop products to keep our customers safe from even the most sophisticated emailcompromises. We believe our placement reaffirms our dedication to deliveringexceptional customer service, and innovations that safeguard against the emailchallenges of today—and tomorrow.” Darktrace customers consistently acknowledge its exceptional customersupport, delivered by an award-winning[1]service team. Darktrace has the highest percentage of 5-star ratings with a 4.8rating on Gartner® Peer Insights™ out of 249 reviews as on[MW1] 19th December. We feel this unwavering commitment to customersatisfaction is evident in strong renewal rates and accelerated growth inDarktrace / EMAIL over the past few years, gaining almost 5,000 customers sinceits launch in 2019. Darktrace / EMAIL, one of the fastest-growing emailsecurity products on the market, is built on Darktrace’s unique Self-LearningAI, a multi-layered AI engine that leverages different types of AI includingNLP and behavioral analysis to detect threats, instead of traditional securitymeasures such as signatures and sandboxing. This approach enables Darktrace todetect and stop threats like business email compromise attacks and noveltechniques, including some 56% of which passed through customers’ other emailsecurity layers. This pioneering approach has enabled Darktrace to introduce industry-leadingcapabilities such as QR code analysis and automated incident investigations, alongsidedifferentiated functionality to help teams add new depth to their emailsecurity, including: Account take over and Lateral mail account compromise protection. Contributing yet another layer to the AI behavioural profile for each user, security teams can now spot early symptoms of account compromise or malicious insiders before a link or attachment payload is sent, and exfiltration occur Microsoft Teams security with advanced messaging analysis: Advancing beyond simple text analysis to behavioral and natural language content analysis that tracks context across both email and instant messaging to identify the approximately 38% of phishing, sophisticated social engineering and novel insider threats other solutions fail to capture · Drastically improveend user reporting with Cyber AI Analyst narratives: Real-time awareness training capabilities reduce falsepositives in phishing investigations by up to 60% by providing context specificanalysis of each received email to each employee as they interact with their mail.· MailboxSecurity Assistant to increase security team operational efficiency: All forms ofsecondary investigations can now automatically perform advanced behavioralbrowser analysis and stop malicious links within webpages, reducing manualeffort of security analysts to detecting phishing links, and allowing them to remediateup to 70% more malicious phishing links than before.· AI based,autonomous data loss prevention: to immediately protect organizations from misdirected emails,insider threats, and data loss—both classified and unclassified – using userbehavior and dynamic content analysis to determine sensitivity, removing administrativeoverhead from manual expressions and labeling.Marco Cavallo, IT Manager at Darktrace / EMAIL customer Arpa Industries comments:“During the POV, Darktrace / EMAIL showed how specific attacks weresurgically blocked. We realized that other tools wouldn’t have detected thesethreats.” Darktrace / EMAIL is part of Darktrace’s ActiveAI Security Platform™,offering network, cloud, endpoint, identity and operational technologyprotection from a single shared architecture, all built on Darktrace’s uniqueAI engine – providing a strong, integrated approach to threat prevention,detection and response across an organization’s entire digital footprint. Darktrace’s global presence supports a diverse and varied customer base,and adapts proactively to customer pain points of all kinds. Darktrace’sadaptability across all market segments, from SMBs to large enterprisessupports both first time email security buyers and mature email securitystacks. It is able to meet varied security needs with lower setuprequirements, includes capability for advanced depth in configuration and,particularly for mature organizations, can augment existing security providerswith additional protections. Download the fullMagic Quadrant for Email Security Platforms here Resources:· Read more onthe Darktrace Blog· Read more abouthow business email compromise attacks are evolving on The Inference Gartner disclaimersGartner, Magic Quadrant for EmailSecurity Platforms, Max Taggett, Nikul Patel, Franz Hinner, Deepak Mishra, 16December 2024 GARTNER is a registered trademarkand service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant and Peer Insights are aregistered trademark, of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. andinternationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual endusers 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 viewsof Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product orservice depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed orimplied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness,including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particularpurpose. Gartner does not endorse any vendor,product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advisetechnology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or otherdesignation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’sresearch organization and should not be construed as statements of fact.Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to thisresearch, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for aparticular purpose. About DarktraceDarktrace is a global leader in AI for cybersecurity that keepsorganizations ahead of the changing threat landscape every day. Founded in2013, Darktrace provides the essential cybersecurity platform protectingorganizations from unknown threats using its proprietary AI that learns fromthe unique patterns of life for each customer in real-time. The DarktraceActiveAI Security Platform™ delivers a proactive approach to cyber resiliencewith pre-emptive visibility into security posture, real-time threat detection,and autonomous response – securing the business across cloud, email,identities, operational technology, endpoints, and network. Breakthroughinnovations from our R&D teams in Cambridge, UK, and The Hague, Netherlandshave resulted in over 200 patent applications filed. Darktrace’s platform andservices are supported by over 2,400 employees around the world who protectnearly 10,000 customers across all major industries globally. To learn more,visit http://www.darktrace.com. ----
[1] Darktrace wins two Globeeawards for excellent customer service [PressRelease] [MW1]shouldthis be 'of'