Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Meat puppet security sucks... let machines find your flaws

Darktrace: No, no, customers, you've got security all wrong

Commercial organisations have cash to burn on stopping hackers getting into the network, but relatively little to spend on dealing with a breach.

This poses a challenge for Darktrace, a two-year-old organisation founded by former members of the intelligence community and backed by former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch’s investment fund Invoke Capital.

The company has built an Enterprise Immune System that it claims works in the same way as the human body, analysing traffic and detecting “anomalies” or foreign bodies from the inside.

It does not prevent breaches from occurring but identifies those that are ongoing.

The tech company uses unsupervised machine learning: software is deployed on the appliance to analyse every device, user and the network as a whole to "get the concept of self", said chief marketing officer Gary Szukalski.

"Threats are becoming more sophisticated, and heavily funded, so it's not a matter of if but when [a breach will happen]," said Szukalski. "It doesn’t make sense [for end-user organisations] to keep building bigger walls."

This is a message the company, which counts former GCHQ deputy of cyber defence Andrew France and ex-MI5 director general Sir Jonathan Evans as board members, is trying to peddle.

“We are finding there's great budget in customers for perimeter, malware and endpoint defences, but there isn’t always a budget for network defences from inside the network,” Szukalski told us.

The company sells the tech under a monthly subscription - many businesses want to pay for such things as they would any operating expense.

Last autumn, US discount store Kmart admitted some customers’ payment cards had likely been compromised after a breach that had happened a month earlier, but went undetected by existing software and systems.

In another high profile incident, cyber crims made off with 53m email addresses in a staggering breach at Home Depot. They waited until US business hours to infiltrate the network and remained below security radars.

Szukalski told us it has 30 partners worldwide, with 17 in EMEA including CNS and exclusive networks in EMEA, and wants more to spread its gospel to the masses.

To date, 60 commercial customers are at various stages of implementation, from proof of concept to deployment.

However, organisations in the public sector – despite the involvement of France and Evans – are not among the clientele, the company told us. ®

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like