As a federally insured financial institution that has Personal Identifying Information (PII) about thousands of members, Direct Federal Credit Union has a strong need to ensure its cybersecurity efforts are best-in-class. The credit union partnered with Darktrace to bolster its security stack and protect its email system and cloud-based apps. 

“No financial institution, regardless of size, is immune to any type of cyber-attack,” said Jim Webber, the Vice President of Information Technology at Direct Federal Credit Union. “One of the biggest areas of potential exposure, like many companies, is employees who use their email as part of their daily work. While Direct spends hours each month providing education to our employees, all it takes is one click on an suspicious email to cause damage.” 

Yet, Direct Federal wanted more than just reactive cybersecurity. To strengthen its cyber risk management, it deployed Darktrace / Attack Surface management. This cross-platform product within the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform continuously reduces risk and hardens defenses, proactively preventing cyber-attacks.  

Darktrace / Attack Surface Management identifies a company’s complete external attack surface and can uncover shadow IT, legacy assets, misconfigurations, hostile phishing websites, and other vulnerabilities. 

“The biggest thing / Attack Surface Management has done is made me aware of assets I previously thought business units had retired,” Webber said. “It was also a piece of our security ecosystem that we were looking to reinforce, so it was very intriguing to me. It has made my life a lot easier, as I have a very agile IT team. Knowing that Darktrace has got our back and is constantly looking at our internal and external threats and preventing and remediating those has been reassuring.”  

/ Attack Surface Management discovered that several third-party business partners with access to some of Direct Federal’s assets were not as secure as the company would have liked. This evidence allowed Direct Federal to work with its partners to remove the vulnerabilities.  

“Knowing that / Attack Surface Management is continuously looking for assets and constantly doing vulnerability testing provides me further confidence, assurance, and peace of mind in our cybersecurity program. We are committed to investing in products that offer our members and institution a best-in-class security program. I am proud to partner with Darktrace, a leader in the industry,” Webber said.

In addition to / Attack Surface Management, Direct Federal strengthens its cybersecurity with Darktrace's detection and response capabilities. 

Real-Time Detection uses Self-Learning AI to learn the granular details of a company, building a dynamic understanding of the devices, connections, and user behaviors that make up the normal “pattern of life.” When it identifies unusual activity that indicates a cyber-threat, Autonomous Response takes surgical action to neutralize the threat without disrupting the flow of business.  

The team has benefitted from the fact that / Attack Surface Management feeds its AI outputs into Real-Time Detection and Autonomous Response to defend critical vulnerabilities and fortify digital systems, creating a platform-wide defense that constantly hardens the security system against attacks. 

“I like the fact that the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform can autonomously work in the background for us so that I don’t have to manage it 24 hours a day,” Webber said. “It’s like having someone on my team doing that for me but knowing that I’ve got the bright minds at Darktrace looking out for us and acting on our behalf for any suspicious activity. The whole suite of products has given us 100% visibility across our whole ecosystem, which is fantastic. A lot of times we need to use many products to do that, and with the Darktrace products, I have that all in one.” 

Direct Federal’s security team especially appreciates how Darktrace / IDENTITY protects its cloud-based apps. Real-Time Detection provides the team with visibility into activity in Microsoft 365 and informs Autonomous Response's actions, which the team found simpler to customize than the built-in security tools. / Attack Surface Management scans for vulnerabilities in the cloud, constantly strengthening Darktrace's protection.

“If you’re not using Darktrace, you should be,” Webber said.