When you hear the term "dark web," you immediately think of anonymity and, perhaps, illegal stuff. However, many people don't realize that it's a valuable source of cyber threat intelligence for corporations. But because the dark web has heightened privacy, accessing and getting content requires time and talent. This could be difficult and costly to attract and retain in-house.
However, there is one way to easily accomplish this—through a dark web monitoring tool. Coupled with endpoint protection, you can dive deeper into this part of the internet without worrying about malicious attacks. With that, check out how you can practice cybersecurity through our top 5 best dark web monitoring tools.
What Is Dark Web Monitoring?
When you monitor the dark web, you look for and monitor information about your company on the dark web. These are accomplished using dark web monitoring services, which function similarly to a regular search engine. But what they do is different as they seek and uncover leaked or stolen information such as passwords, credentials, intellectual property, and other classified documents shared and sold by criminal actors engaging on the dark web.
How Is the Dark Web Monitored?
Dark web monitoring involves scanning the dark web and gathering raw intelligence. Millions of websites are scanned for particular or general information. When this information is found, users may generate a specific warning that alerts team members and anybody else in the business who may be affected by the threat.
These solutions allow hackers less time to access and misuse your personal information by continually monitoring the dark web at all times and limiting exposed assets or identities, avoiding additional information breach since you handled them fast. As a business owner, you can use this to see if your privacy is under attack or to figure out before information can be compromised, as well as who can attack you and what techniques they may employ.
What Tool Is Used on the Dark Web?
Hackers and criminals do not confine themselves to the Dark Web. So there's no doubt that the dark web poses more threats to your business than the conventional internet. As a solution, we have identified cyber threat intelligence platforms that may be used as dark web monitoring tools in conjunction with endpoint protection products for enhanced cybersecurity risk management.
#1 Resecurity
Resecurity is a cybersecurity firm that provides a unified platform (Platform-as-a-Service) for endpoint protection security, risk management, and cyber threat intelligence and dark web monitoring. Its services and platforms are known for offering best-of-breed data-driven intelligence solutions, emphasizing early-warning identification of data breaches and full protection against cybersecurity risks. The platform delivers enriched Big Data with over 720 million indexed Dark Web records, and an extensive library of threat actors with associated IOCs and other related digital artifacts useful for in-depth investigations.
It was founded in 2016 and has since been acknowledged as one of the world's most progressive cybersecurity startups, with the sole purpose of helping corporations battle cyber attacks of any sophistication. Among dark web monitoring and endpoint protection vendors in the list, Resecurity was able to bag recent awards such as the Top 10 fastest-growing private cybersecurity startups in Los Angeles, California. Its credibility gets boosted with an official membership from Infragard, AFCEA, NDIA, SIA, FS-ISAC, the American Chamber of Commerce in Saudi Arabia (AmChamKSA), and Mexico (AmChamMX).
Endpoint Protection Services
The endpoint protection technology from Resecurity offers powerful threat detection and monitoring to help you optimize and safeguard your cybersecurity environment. It is an intelligence-driven endpoint security technology capable of detecting sophisticated threats and preventing significant data breaches. Their technology is completely scalable and can be used in any network environment. It can identify threat information in real-time for all mobile, online, and cloud attack surfaces.
Features
- Early detection & warnings
- Intuitive controls
- Incident analysis
- Centralized interface
- Automatic analysis
- Cryptographically secure
Its endpoint security can defend you from advanced persistent threats, targeted network intrusions, malicious code, ransomware, insider threats, zero-day exploit activity, memory-focused assaults, and more. With these features, it aims to broaden and strengthen the security perimeter to cover all important assets of modern companies.
Digital Risk Monitoring
This digital risk monitoring solution provides actionable risk intelligence regarding significant changes to your security posture. It automates your digital risk management and alerts you to any significant change in your cybersecurity caused by the Dark Web, data breaches, leaked credentials, network intrusions, and other malicious activities.
Features
- Unparalleled risk management
- Global visibility
- Actionable intelligence that makes a difference
- Identify external threats from over 20,000 public and closed sources
Refine and augment data points to identify weak points and vulnerabilities in your digital assets. As new data is uncovered, changes and updates are delivered via notifications via reports or e-mail. Besides that, it also proactively enables strategic security operations.
Cyber Threat Intelligence
Resecurity's cyber threat intelligence platform speeds up analysis, prevention, and investigative workflows. Analysts, investigators, SOC/DFIR teams, risk management, and C-level security executives benefit from lightning-fast search and data science. Resecurity has been awarded Gold in "The Best Threat Intelligence" and "Threat Hunting Solution'' categories (North America) by Cybersecurity Excellence Awards, and recognized as the fastest growing Los Angeles-based cybersecurity company by Inc. Magazine.
It operates by recognizing sensitive data and private documents that have been exposed. It constantly updates its collection of underground groups and markets and performs lightning-fast searches that reach the deepest areas of the Internet like the dark web. It can also provide comprehensive intelligence reports across the globe.
Benefits
- The most extensive Dark Web intelligence provider, among others
- Offers a unique mix of actionable Big Data + HUMINT
- Provides expandable global coverage and CTI analysts on all continents
- Has proven certified solutions recognized on Amazon AWS and MSFT Azure
- In compliance with LGPD, GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, and other security and privacy regulations
- Works close with international law enforcement
- It has been protecting major Fortune 500 in all industries, including banks, oil & gas, telco, technology, and more
Overall, Resecurity is a next-generation cybersecurity technology meant to detect and prevent future threats. Using cutting-edge technology and analytics, it provides optimum protection against digital attacks aimed at you and your online identity.
Join the worldwide business leaders using Resecurity to make your cyberspace a safe workplace! Use their free trial or get in touch with their support staff to get started.
#2 CrowdStrike Falcon X Recon
CrowdStrike Falcon X Recon is a dark web monitoring tool that searches the Dark Web for references to your company's assets. These include your company's brand, corporate identity, email addresses, and references of senior leaders and workers.
It is a cloud-based service that provides access to a pool of research data and analytical tools, making it one of the top dark web monitoring tools. The technology constantly checks the Dark, Open, and Deep Web for data so you know what information about your company is out there before criminals can buy it. You may also build extraction runs using the console's search tools.
The information provided by Falcon X Recon provides a secondary check on PII security. Important consumer information should be kept secure. If PII is taken from your company, it will most likely wind up for sale on the Dark Web. Your data loss protection system should have detected this leak's existence. But no need to worry if you don't have data protection in place because the Falcon X Recon can do the work for you.
Key Features and Benefits
- Detects leaked information from affiliated companies
- Provides notice of impending attacks, giving you time to prepare
- A data pool with analysis search capabilities and industry-wide and universal threat notifications
#3 DigitalStakeout
Through their Scout function, DigitalStakeout provides another dark web monitoring tool. Workflows and machine learning are both the main players in this system. These functionalities can detect abnormal network behavior. It then uses its Dark Web Scanner and cyber threat repository to determine the malicious actor involved in the suspicious behavior by referencing the external source or endpoint of that web traffic.
It also serves as a data loss prevention system, an insider threat defender, and an endpoint protection system. When a Dark Web risk is detected, the Scout function notifies the monitoring dashboard. But the network administrator is responsible for manually shutting down traffic or implementing threat mitigation software. The main takeaway is that no repair processes are included in this product.
At the same time, this security program also safeguards customers' brands and reputations by monitoring all websites for potentially negative material about those organizations. The Scout dashboard then displays the appropriate source and text of the identified material.
Key Features and Benefits
- Identify different forms of attacks on networks
- Can track each attack sources
- Protects and defends company branding
- Intellectual property protection but can only suggest remediation actions
#4 Echosec Beacon
Echosec Beacon is a dark web monitoring tool that can locate compromised passwords, revealed personal information, and hijacked financial data on the Internet. It functions similarly to a search engine. Simply input a name, email address, SSS number, or other information. The system will scan Dark Web marketplaces, social media sites, and forms for instances of that information being sold or openly displayed on free lists.
The application will also search for websites with the named individual or info about them, allowing a fraudster to target or mimic that person in a malicious attack. That way, it can detect data breaches and track down rogue information stores that keep data on both corporations and people. However, unlike the first two, you must still establish a strategy to respond to exposed data breaches.
Key Features and Benefits
- Easy to use and acts like a regular search engine
- Scours every corner of the dark web
- Lets you access sensitive data from the Deep and Dark Web
- Generates analysis reports on cyber threat trends you usually identify
- Lets you discover mentioned client-specific data in dark web hacker forums
- Can identify even undiscovered data theft practices
#5 Digital Shadows
Let's move on to other applications of dark web monitoring. There are tools available to identify leaks revealed on the dark web. Digital Shadows is especially concerned with safeguarding the brand, confidential info, and reputation of the businesses that use its services, instead of emphasizing account security.
For example, its SearchLight tool searches for business procedural papers, site designs, and internal memoranda that have made their way onto other websites renowned for unlawfully trafficking corporate data.
Other than reputation, branding, and confidential trade secrets, it can also protect other assets like image copyright and digital properties. By actively searching the web for usernames, passwords, and other signs of compromised sensitive information, you'll know exactly what measures to take. Most importantly, it uses visuals to highlight crucial insights from the data you collected.
Although the program does not seek every user's account data, it does examine the dark web and illegal sites in it for the leak of sensitive credentials, such as network administrator or DBA account usernames and passwords. However, that is all it offers because its services do not contain threat prevention software.
Key Features and Benefits
- Looks for trading secrets and other confidential information on the dark web
- Protects digital properties, reputation, and more
- Highlights what you collected so you can analyze better
Monitoring dark web forums can reveal significant information about current attack patterns and the attitude of cyber criminals working on the dark web as cyberspace evolves and becomes more vulnerable to harmful cyberattacks. But now, you can extensively and proactively monitor forums and collect analytics and threat intelligence from them using our top 5 dark web monitoring tools.
