Five Things to Look for in Dark Web Protection Tools

Protection from dark web threats

The dark web is a layer of the internet that isn’t indexed by standard search engines and is accessed through specialized software like Tor. While it does host legitimate content, its anonymity has made it a hotspot for illicit activities such as data breaches, identity theft, and illegal marketplace transactions. For businesses, this presents significant risks, including exposure of sensitive information and vulnerabilities to cyberattacks.

Dark web protection tools are crucial to mitigating these threats. These tools monitor dark web activity, flagging potential risks, and help organizations to safeguard their assets. 

In this blog we outline five must-have features for the best dark web protection tools: automated data collection, live and historical data, AI-powered language translation, threat mapping and guidance, and dark web traffic monitoring. Understanding these features can make the difference between proactive defense and falling victim to the next major breach.

#1 Automated data collection

Content on the dark web can appear and disappear in a very short space of time, making manual monitoring neither practical nor sufficient to gain insights from.

Automated data collection is a critical feature of effective dark web protection tools, allowing organizations to continuously gather intelligence and maintain a robust understanding of potential threats. This capability ensures no stone is left unturned, providing comprehensive coverage and actionable insights into malicious activity. 

Automated data collection enables:

• Comprehensive coverage: Automated data collection ensures no potential threat goes unnoticed, enabling businesses to identify risks early and minimize blind spots.

• Real-time monitoring: With automated systems in place, threats are flagged as they emerge, rather than relying on delayed, manual discovery.

• Efficiency: By automating data collection, security teams save time and resources, allowing them to focus on high-priority issues rather than sifting through raw data.

#2 Live and historical data

When it comes to monitoring the dark web, the ability to view live activity is essential – but that’s only part of the equation. The most effective dark web monitoring tools don’t just provide insight into what’s happening now, they also offer historical data. Past activity often holds the key to understanding dark web trends, uncovering ongoing threats, and predicting future risks. It also helps security teams with incident response, and getting a clear picture of what happened in the run up to a cyberattack and how the cybercriminal infiltrated the organization.

For example, our dark web protection tools provide access to over 15 years of live and historic data, including content that has been deleted or is no longer publicly accessible. This unique feature provides organizations with a powerful advantage over potential hackers. Combining real-time monitoring with a rich archive of historic intelligence ensures that potential threats are picked up and gives organizations the opportunity to build proactive cybersecurity plans.

#3 AI-powered language translation

The dark web operates on a global scale, with cybercriminals communicating and conducting activities in multiple languages. Threats to your business may not originate from the same country as your organization but from halfway across the world. This is where AI-powered language translation becomes an invaluable component of dark web protection tools, enabling businesses to identify, analyze, and respond to threats regardless of language barriers.

The dark web is dominated by several key languages, with the top 10 most commonly used being:

• English
• Russian
• German
• French
• Spanish
• Bulgarian
• Indonesian
• Turkish
• Italian
• Dutch

It might be surprising that the vast majority of activity we see on the dark web is written in English.

After English, Russian is by far the most popular language on the dark web, accounting for 66 percent of non-English language content. By comparison, this is followed by German (at nine percent) and French (at seven percent). Outside of the top 10 listed above, each language’s share is below one percent.

Without the ability to translate and analyze these languages, businesses risk missing critical intelligence about threats targeting their operations.

How the translation is undertaken also makes a big difference. At Searchlight Cyber, we use a Neural Machine Translation (NMT) system – a type of AI that isn’t simply translating one word at a time, but takes the sentence as a whole and translates into the target language the way a professional human translator would. This vastly increases the accuracy of the translation as the true meaning of the sentence is captured.

#4 Threat mapping and guidance

The dark web is vast, making it challenging to understand where threats are coming from and how they might evolve. Effective dark web monitoring tools provide mapping and guidance to help organizations identify potential risks and mitigate them before they escalate. For example, a framework for understanding and categorizing cyber threats is the MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Matrix.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a globally recognized repository of adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures, organized across a timeline of a typical cyberattack. From reconnaissance to data exfiltration, this framework helps organizations map cyberthreats to specific attacker behaviors. By understanding these patterns, security teams can better anticipate and respond to potential threats before they occur.

When looking for a dark web protection tool, organizations should be looking for tools that integrate frameworks such as MITRE as well as other context and guidance into the solution.

For example, organizations can detect when their IPs, domains, or other digital assets are being mentioned in dark web forums, signaling the reconnaissance phase of an attack. This allows businesses to stay ahead of potential attacks, enabling them to reduce response times and prevent damage before it occurs.

#5 Dark web traffic monitoring

A sudden surge in Tor traffic to a business’ network is a clear warning sign that the organization may soon be under attack. But if an organization doesn’t know about the surge, how can they prevent the attack from happening? 

Organizations should be seeking dark web monitoring tools that automate alerts to detect Tor traffic to and from their network. This approach allows security teams to effectively remediate attacks and proactively identify and defend against malware installation, insider threats, and data theft rather than attempting to minimize their impact. 

Good examples of dark web traffic monitoring tools will automatically show organizations all live and historical traffic records of what’s happening on their network. Security teams can then easily spot malicious activity like large downloads or uploads from your dark web traffic logs, so action can be taken long before attackers get anywhere near the network.

Bonus point – dark web protection tools for MSSPs

For Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), scalability and efficiency are essential to meet the diverse needs of their clients. Dark web protection tools must align with these priorities by offering multi-tenancy, a feature that allows MSSPs to manage multiple clients from a single platform.  Multi-tenancy allows MSSPs to scale their operations, deliver personalized insights, and maintain the high standards of service their clients expect – all while staying ahead of dark web threats.

How to prevent dark web threats with Searchlight Cyber

The dark web poses significant risks for organizations of all sizes, serving as a hub for cybercriminals to trade stolen data, plan attacks, and exploit vulnerabilities. To protect your business advanced dark web protection tools are essential. These tools provide critical capabilities, including automated data collection for comprehensive coverage, access to both live and historical data for unmatched insights, AI language translation to break language barriers posed by the global nature of the dark web, mapping and guidance to navigate threats proactively, and dark web traffic monitoring to identify traffic to Tor from an organization’s network.

Searchlight Cyber equips organizations with the tools they need to stay one step ahead of adversaries. Whether you’re looking to secure your data, monitor your supply chain, or defend against sector-specific threats, Searchlight Cyber offers a comprehensive solution to meet your needs.

If you’d like more information on dark web monitoring and the prevention of dark web threats, ARRANGE A DEMO with one of our experts today.