Xage, Darktrace partner to boost zero trust protection for commercial critical infrastructure environments

March 05, 2024

Cybersecurity AI company Darktrace and Xage Security announced Monday a new partnership to help businesses prevent cyberattacks and insider threats in critical environments. This collaboration brings together Xage Security’s leading zero trust protection with Darktrace’s AI-powered anomaly-based threat detection. The integration between Darktrace/OT and Xage Fabric makes it easy to identify and respond to breaches in progress at any stage in operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) environments.

Critical infrastructure has become an increasingly desirable target for threat actors, with ransomware attacks affecting 870 critical infrastructure organizations in 2022 according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As these attacks can have devastating effects, including leaving entire regions without crucial resources like water or electricity, the need to secure OT environments is more urgent than ever.

The ability for critical infrastructure providers to detect and respond to a cyber-attack with speed and precision is essential because the services these organizations provide directly impact the day-to-day lives of citizens.

Darktrace/OT uses Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI to learn every detail of an organization’s bespoke OT systems, delivering increased visibility and detecting subtle deviations to stop threats at their earliest stages. The Xage Fabric Platform delivers zero trust access and asset protection across an organization’s entire environment.

The integration combines the AI-powered insights available from Darktrace/OT with Xage Fabric’s ability to enforce zero trust policy and access control across any device. Together, these capabilities make it easier for organizations to spot anomalous behavior and attack tactics in any step of the attack chain and respond instantly and precisely – without impacting business operations.

When adding Darktrace/OT, organizations using the Xage Fabric can gain a layer of protection with better informed anomaly-based detection. Darktrace/OT customers integrating Xage Fabric can benefit from Xage’s zero trust access control across the enterprise, including deep inside the OT environment, which can enforce granular, instant access restriction to targeted devices allowing rapid lockdown of everything from workstations to individual operational devices such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

“Darktrace provides invaluable AI analysis of what is happening inside the enterprise, enabling early detection of suspicious user behavior,” according to Roman Arutyunov, co-founder and SVP of product at Xage Security. “Pairing this level of anomaly detection with Xage Fabric’s deep identity-enabled visibility and control over all interactions as well as ability to enforce and revoke access to mission-critical apps, workloads, devices, and data puts control back in the hands of the enterprise.”

“The importance of zero trust security continues to grow as IT and OT systems become even more interconnected and OT security teams face an evolving set of threats from both inside and outside their organizations,” said Denise Walter, Chief Revenue Officer, Darktrace. “By bringing together Xage Fabric’s ability to apply and enforce policies in any environment with Darktrace’s AI-powered detection and response capabilities, we can help organizations protect some of the world’s most complex and distributed critical infrastructure environments and enhance security of vital resources.”