Dark Web Monitoring With All Its Sides

Events in the Darkside of the cyber world cause organizations to worry. Not only increasing cyber security attacks but also developing attack techniques, Zero-Day vulnerabilities, ransomware groups, and the inability to monitor them regularly are among the factors that make companies nervous. The budget that organizations allocate to cyber security is increasing every year. Unfortunately, increasing the financial volume does not always mean that you are safe; it is very possible for you to need a digital risk protection service that will monitor your organization on the dark web. This article aims to enlighten you about the dark web, what it is to monitor the dark web and how it is beneficial for a company.

What are the Dark Web, Deep Web, and Surface Web?

Understanding what the concepts above are will provide us with a more meaningful perspective.

Surface web: Here are world wide web addresses accessible by everyone. All information can be indexed by a search engine such as Google.

Especially these two concepts are that are often confused: the deep web and the dark web. The deep web is made up of 96% of addresses that can’t be indexed by current search engines. The dark web is mostly where illegal activities and content are found. You need special permissions to access the deep web, and you can only access the dark web using the Tor network.

Dark Web Overview

The dark web can be accessed using the Tor Network. It is among the type of web that threat actors spend most of their time on. The biggest advantage of using the Tor network for hackers is that they can keep themselves private while doing illegal work. In addition to illegal content, some worldwide applications have addresses on the tor browser. You can use these applications as if you were entering the normal surface web.

– Dropbox

– Facebook

– New York Times

– Twitter

The dark web is not just a place where hackers spend time, so there is not only hacking-related illegal content on the dark web. There are also very different contents, such as illegal drug sales, pornographic content, terrorism, hired killers, arms sales, etc. Therefore, to prevent cyber attacks, a company first determines its digital assets and performs the most appropriate and personalized brand monitoring tool against possible cyber threats that may arise against it.

What kind of content is on the dark web side in the cyber world that we are really curious about? There are various data breaches such as malware sales, access sales, data leaks and sales, industry new TTPs, ransomware groups, credit card numbers shares, and zero-day sales.

Accessing the Dark Web is legal, but sharing illegal content makes you a criminal.

How To Prevent Cybersecurity Attacks with Dark Web Coverage ?

Data about your company’s digital assets may be on the dark web, and this data may include important data like employees’ and managers’ e-mail address, passwords, social security numbers, ID numbers, and credit card numbers. An attacker who wants to harm your company could use this information to cause financial losses and damage your reputation.

If your company’s IP address is compromised and ends up on the dark web, ransomware groups could buy it and launch an attack. This would cause major damage to your company, both in terms of material damage and reputation. Many companies have been hurt by their brand reputation following such an attack.

If you monitor the dark web, you can quickly detect and prevent threats to your organization. Sometimes, your organization may be under threat without even knowing it. For example, if there is a zero-day vulnerability sharing of a technology version you use in your company, you would not be aware of it and would not be able to take the necessary precautions.

Strategies you should take to prevent such attacks:

Threat Intelligence
Brand Monitoring
Vulnerability Management
Fraud Protection
Attack Surface Management

Therefore, dark web monitoring; It monitors forums, dark markets, private rooms and places where threat actors are with the help of artificial intelligence, detects the findings without a cyber attack, informs you and helps you to take precautions.

Where and How Should You Start Watching Dark Web?

To create your own dark web monitoring system, you must first assemble a team of experienced individuals. This is a costly and time-consuming process, as there is a lack of technically competent and experienced people in this field. Once you have your team, you must then determine your digital assets and look for threats to these assets among thousands of sources. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the system you create will be useful, as you may get lost among false positive findings.

Brandefense Digital Risk Protection solutions can help you stay safe online. Brand Monitoring scans the dark web, deep web, surface web, and thousands of other resources in real-time and notifies you of any findings that could pose a threat. If you’d like to see how our solutions can protect your organization, we’d be happy to offer you a free proof of concept. You can contact us with any questions or requests for a POC.