Cybersecurity firm RepKnight today extends the capabilities of its flagship dark web monitoring product BreachAlert with BreachMarkers™, a new feature enabling organisations to detect breach or misuse of their data by cybercriminals, staff and third parties.
BreachAlert is a data breach detection application that continuously monitors the dark web for corporate data being leaked online. The platform works in the same way as a burglar alarm — alerting customers in real time as soon as their data appears on the dark web, or one of the hundreds of dump and paste sites used by cybercriminals to share hacked, leaked or stolen data.
BreachMarkers are synthetic identities — fake people — which organisations can easily add into their databases of customers and employees, acting as a unique digital watermark to identify the data set. Should a cybercriminal manage to steal a database containing a BreachMarker and share it on the dark web or a dump site, the organisation will be able to tell with 100% certainty that the database is its property, and that the company — or one of its supply chain partners — has suffered a data breach. Organisations can also use BreachMarkers to watermark other types of corporate data, including marketing newsletter lists, sensitive documents, tender documents, and more.
Also, by monitoring traffic to each BreachMarker’s email inbox and phone number, BreachAlert’s detection surface extends beyond the dark web. As soon as a BreachMarker inbox receives anything out of the ordinary, such as email from a competitor, unknown third party or a spammer, BreachAlert notifies the organisation. This feature enables organisations to detect data being misused by staff, partners, or former employees — a powerful additional indicator of compromise (IOC).
RepKnight CEO Jeremy Hendy said: “Most businesses today store large databases of clients, prospects, employees and more. That information is increasingly held outside their own networks, whether it’s stored in the cloud or shared with suppliers and other partners.
“It’s up to the business to protect that data under GDPR, but at RepKnight we see thousands of data dumps every day on dark web sites and bin sites containing sensitive corporate information — all available to cybercriminals to launch phishing, fraud or blackmail scams. In most cases, the businesses to whom the data belongs have no idea they have been breached.”
BreachMarkers are available as part of RepKnight’s BreachAlert platform for new and existing customers.
