What is Dark Web Monitoring: Is It Worth It in 2024?

The dark web, often referred to as the underbelly of the internet, hosts a thriving cybercrime economy. This portion of the internet, which is not indexed by conventional search engines, acts as a platform where almost all forms of illegal activities are carried out. It ranges from selling stolen data and credit card information to even corporate secrets. Businesses are hugely at risk as cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities by leaking confidential information through the dark web.

Here are some statistics that reflect the threats of the Dark Web:

• In 2024, the average cost of a data breach reached an all-time high of $4.88 million, underpinning the financial impact of cyber threats that most dark web activities spawn.
• Almost 88% of cybersecurity breaches happen due to human error, which can further lead to data being available on the dark web for sale. Companies should work on training and awareness for risk mitigation, even when monitoring is in place.
• It takes almost 194 days to identify a breach, and the meantime for identifying and containing a breach is 292 days. This extended exposure makes the need for dark web monitoring and other proactive monitoring solutions an absolute necessity.
• The likelihood of a cybercrime entity being detected and prosecuted in the U.S. is estimated at only 0.05%, which indicates how big the problem of law enforcement trying to combat dark web criminal activities is.

In this article, we take a closer look at what dark web monitoring entails and whether investing in dark web monitoring services will be worth consideration in 2024. We will review how dark web monitoring tools work, what features to look for, and why businesses need to make monitoring part of their cybersecurity strategy. You’ll also learn how SentinelOne plays an important role in strengthening your organization’s defenses against dark web threats.

What is Dark Web Monitoring?

Dark web monitoring is the practice of tracking and scanning the dark web for sensitive or stolen data in cybersecurity. This provides an organization with the ability to identify when users’ confidential information, such as passwords, account details, or personal records, has been compromised. The dark web monitoring tools scan hidden forums, marketplaces, and encrypted chat rooms to stay ahead of rising threats to organizations.

Dark web monitoring means constant tracking of sources for any hint related to data leakage, and once some credential is found compromised, it gets flagged off immediately. This proactive approach helps businesses act in a very timely manner to minimize the damage caused by the access or exploitation of data. Over time, the dark web monitoring solution has turned from an option to a necessity for organizations that deal with large volumes of sensitive data.

Need for Dark Web Monitoring

The need for dark web monitoring for businesses has never been this high. The dark web has almost turned into a marketplace of cybercrime, and businesses are required to stay vigilant about any threat coming from this hidden approach of the internet. The following are some reasons why dark web monitoring is vital for a company:

1. Rising Cybercrime and Dark Web Activities: The growth of cybercrime has turned the dark web into a significant platform where stolen data, malware, and hacking tools are being traded by criminals. Organizations should be concerned about threats emanating from this dark side of the internet since their sensitive information is in jeopardy of being exposed. Unless proactive monitoring is done, organizations may overlook the critical warning signs that may lead to expensive breaches.
2. Protection of Sensitive Data: Customer credentials, intellectual property, and financial information have become regularly bought and sold items on dark web forums. Such critical information, if leaked, may lead to irreparable damage to reputation and potential losses in business. Dark web monitoring thus helps a company to trace the sale of sensitive information and thereby take immediate remedial action to protect its assets and customer trust.
3. Minimizing Reputation and Financial Consequences: A data breach might have a critical impact on the reputation of a company and result in serious financial implications inclusive of regulatory fines and loss of business. Dark web monitoring helps with the early identification of compromised data, providing businesses the facility to take measures that reduce this risk before things get out of hand. Being proactive in this manner would prevent the long-term damage that may be caused by a successful cyberattack.
4. Regulatory Compliance and Legal Obligations: With the increased stringency of regulations regarding data privacy, such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and PCI DSS, every business should take certain measures to let customers be confident in the security of their data. Dark web monitoring plays an important role in the moves of organizations toward compliance. This means providing real-time insight into any possible data leaks. This not only reduces the risk of regulatory fines but also secures the business from evolving laws related to data protection.
5. Proactive Threat Detection and Response: Dark web monitoring tools proactively detect and respond to threats, thereby giving businesses an advantage through early detection. This allows the organization to investigate the impending breach in detail and to act accordingly, such as immediately changing passwords, informing the affected parties, and strengthening system defenses. This proactive strategy decreases the chances of operational disruption impacting business due to a cyberattack.

Features of Dark Web Monitoring

Several dark web monitoring tools have various in-built critical features to help in keeping your data safe. Each feature has an important role in finding potential risks and providing early warnings that might help avoid cyber-attacks. Here are some of the dark web monitoring features:

1. Alerts in Real-Time: Probably one of the most valued features of dark web monitoring is the real-time alerts. This means that businesses are guaranteed that once compromised data has been identified, organizations will receive an alert right away to take necessary action to safeguard sensitive information. In this way, a huge financial loss may be averted without damage to the business reputation by responding to the threat in the initial stage.
2. Comprehensive Dark Web Coverage: Dark web monitoring tools effectively scan a wide number of sources, including marketplaces, forums, and hidden chat rooms. In this manner, no place is left unchecked on the dark web by such tools. This feature gives peace of mind to businesses, as their sensitive information is being monitored across all platforms of dark web services.
3. AI-Powered Detection: AI-powered dark web monitoring services make detection even more rapid and more effective, facilitated by how AI algorithms easily recognize suspicious patterns. This way, organizations are warned about an impending threat well before it gets out of hand. Notably, the identification of exposed data happens at a considerably faster pace in real time to mitigate those risks.
4. Customizable monitoring features: The dark web monitoring features can be customized for each business in order to suit specific needs. From the monitoring of employee credentials to intellectual property and further into payment information, customizable options exist that cater to targeted and relevant protection. This flexibility makes dark web monitoring tools highly adaptable to various industries.
5. Elaborate Risk Assessment Reports: Dark web monitoring services often provide elaborative reports that assess the level of risk posed by any detected threats. These reports are key in understanding the full scope of a potential breach and, importantly, help in planning an appropriate response. Businesses can rest assured that resources will be channeled where they are most needed so that high-risk issues can be dealt with earlier.
6. 24/7 Continuous Monitoring: Cyber threats can attack any minute, so dark web monitoring services keep your business guarded 24×7. This sort of continuous monitoring ensures safety for companies in hours outside the routine business times. These 24/7 services are of prime importance since they avoid shutdowns as much as possible and keep the system functioning.

Why Use Dark Web Monitoring?

Dark web monitoring comes with several advantages for businesses, especially nowadays when the growth in cybercrime is continuing. For companies, investment in these tools is sometimes the line differentiating between early detection and costly consequences. Here are some of the factors supporting why organizations should use dark web monitoring:

1. Protect Sensitive Data: Monitoring the dark web helps to protect sensitive data, including customer information, financial records, and intellectual property. With proactive dark web scanning, businesses can quickly identify if their data is at risk of a breach and take action required for its mitigation. Such protection is invaluable, preventing cybercriminals from further compromising that data.
2. Early Threat Detection: Arguably, the most crucial reasons for putting in place dark web monitoring services are related to the early detection of threats. In other words, the quicker a business is able to identify that its data has been compromised, the quicker it can begin with the response and containment of a breach. Early detection contains the damage and can limit an attack’s scope.
3. Maintain Customer Trust: Data breaches can severely damage a company’s reputation. Through dark web monitoring, businesses can take immediate action the moment a breach is identified, thus retaining the trust of their customers. Again, by showing how secure they are regarding cybersecurity, companies reassure customers of the safety of their data.
4. Ensure Regulatory Compliance: Many industries, like healthcare or finance, rely heavily on strict data protection policies such as GDPR or CCPA. Any breach of sensitive data may result in large fines and heavy penalties. Dark web monitoring will help businesses maintain their due compliance by ensuring they are informed about potential breaches and can act upon them in time.
5. Limit Financial Loss: A single successful cyberattack could lead to extreme financial loss based on recovery costs, legal fees, and loss of revenue. Dark web monitoring tools help prevent such attacks by identifying risks early, thereby allowing businesses to mitigate financial damage before it escalates.
6. Operational Continuity: When an organization is under attack, it leads to data breaches and makes business operations come to a complete halt. This is when Dark web monitoring services work to identify threats as soon as possible in order to prevent any further downtime and, hence, to allow operational continuity.

How Does Dark Web Monitoring Work?

Dark web monitoring is a multistep process that helps organizations protect their data and stay one step ahead of cybercriminals. Each step involved in the process has a reasonable importance in finding and responding to dark web threats. So, let’s discuss those steps in detail:

1. Data Crawling: Crawlers of dark web monitoring tools work in an automated manner to scan dark web forums, marketplaces, and chat rooms for sensitive information. They look out for particular data like login credentials, personal data, or financial records. The comprehensive search process will ensure that nothing is left behind. Early breach detection allows businesses to protect themselves by detecting potential breaches.
2. Data Matching: Following collection by crawlers, such data is matched against organizational assets. In this regard, for instance, dark web monitoring tools match detected data against employee credentials, customer records, or proprietary information. With this, businesses can establish if information belonging to the organization was compromised and, hence, respond in an appropriate manner.
3. Threat Intelligence Gathering: Dark web monitoring works by collecting intelligence from sources within the dark web to understand the behaviors and tactics of cybercrimes. In this regard, if organizations monitor the way in which cyber threats are evolving, they are aware of the emerging risks to better prepare against any future attack. Such proactive steps strengthen the overall cybersecurity defenses.
4. Real-time Notifications: In case compromised data is identified, the business is subjected to real-time notifications so it can take immediate action. This feature allows an organization to take immediate action, minimizing the damage a breach potentially will cause. Fast notifications can prevent further risks and minimize the damage to exposed data.
5. Continuous Surveillance: Dark web monitoring tools run constant searches against the dark web for threats. Therefore, this would keep the businesses protected at all times. This is one of the important things that prevent data exposure from remaining undetected for a reasonably longer period of time. In the process of doing that, constant checks are performed that enhance the overall security posture and reduce the number of vulnerabilities.

Common Threats Found on the Dark Web

The dark web is a marketplace for illegal activities, where cybercriminals sell stolen data, malevolent software programs, and hacking tools. Threats from these things pose serious risks to businesses and people. Understanding such common threats helps in solidifying cybersecurity measures.

1. Stolen credentials: Stolen credentials remain one of the biggest threats on the dark web, where stolen credentials, including usernames and passwords, are sold. These are used to carry out unauthorized access to corporate networks and then utilized in data breaches and financial fraud.
2. Credit Card Information: Financial data, including credit card numbers, are traded very actively in the dark web. Further, this information is used by hackers to conduct fraudulent transactions that amount to huge losses for the company or the person concerned.
3. Corporate espionage: On the dark web, sensitive corporate data can be compromised that may include trade secrets or even your intellectual property. This could pose a serious risk to businesses, as competitors or malicious actors have the opportunity to use this data to their advantage.
4. Phishing Kits: The dark web is a marketplace that sells phishing kits used to instigate various email as well as website-based attacks against employees or the organization itself. Most of the time, phishing attacks lead to data breaches and could be very elusive without active monitoring.
5. Ransomware/Malware: Dark web marketplaces frequently sell malware and ransomware, which attackers use to compromise company systems. Such an attack results in huge disruption and financial loss, further impacting the corporate reputation of most businesses.

Types of Risks Uncovered by Dark Web Monitoring

Dark web monitoring helps organizations become aware of risks that they otherwise would have never known. The practice of dark web monitoring can help uncover several types of risks that businesses may not be aware of until it’s too late. Here are some of the risks uncovered by dark web monitoring:

1. Identity Theft: Cybercriminals usually steal personal information and sell it on the dark web. This might lead to identity theft, which may have effects both on individuals and companies for a very long period of time. It also opens a wide door to fraudulent activities and many legal complications that come after that.
2. Ransomware Attacks: There have been cases where credentials have surfaced online on the dark net, which have often resulted in ransomware attacks. Using this data, hackers gain unauthorized access to systems and lock critical files until a ransom is paid for decryption.
3. Fraudulent Transactions: Scammers can conduct fraudulent transactions by utilizing stolen financial information, such as credit card numbers or bank account numbers. This can generate serious losses for a business, which may be very difficult for SMBs with limited budgets to deal with.
4. Reputational Damage: The reputation of the business concerned will definitely take a hit if sensitive company data has made its way out to the dark web. Customers would not continue to trust businesses that cannot protect their data, which would plummet revenue and, most importantly, affect the brand image in the long run.
5. Regulatory Fines: Failure to protect sensitive information will result in regulatory fines, especially for those industries in which the protection of data has respective laws like GDPR and CCPA. Dark web monitoring aids a business in showing early risks that keep it compliant with regulations.
6. Disrupted Operations: A cyber-attack through the dark web may pose a critical disruption to business operations. Most of the time, such disrupted operations take a lot of time to recover. As a result, monitoring such risks ensures that businesses continue to run with limited interference posed by cyber-related threats.

Benefits of Implementing Dark Web Monitoring

The benefits that come with incorporating dark web monitoring into a business cybersecurity strategy range from early detection of data leaks to enabling the company to act swiftly on any potential threats and, subsequently, reduce the effects of breaches. Here are some key benefits of implementing dark web monitoring:

1. Early Threat Detection: Dark web monitoring tools enable organizations to proactively detect threats that their security teams can quickly act upon before they become full-fledged attacks. This potentiality saves them both time and money.
2. Real-time Alerts: With real-time alerts, incident responses by businesses become faster once a potential threat is noticed. This enables quicker responses in reducing damage from data breaches or other cyber threats, thereby minimizing operational downtime.
3. Cost Efficiency: Dark web monitoring can save organizations from the high cost of a data breach through early identification and prevention of cyber threats, which also include legal fees, regulatory fines, and recovery costs.
4. Improved Compliance: As we learned in previous sections, a number of industries have various regulations that require businesses to protect data from the dark web. Monitoring ensures that an organization complies with regulatory requirements through the identification of compromised data in real-time.
5. Improved Data Security: The dark web monitoring service provides an additional layer of security to sensitive data against the activities of cybercriminals. Businesses can be rest assured knowing that their information is continuously monitored for signs of compromise.
6. Increased Customer Trust: Customers have more trust in businesses that apply dark web monitoring. These services impose data security and protection, which in turn build customer trust, a critical element for businesses that need to thrive in the digital era.

Real-World Examples of Dark Web Threats

Several real data breaches showed the importance of dark web monitoring in maintaining corporate security. Compromised customer details, stolen financial data, and employee credentials usually get traded on these dark web forums. The following are some real-time examples that show how important dark web monitoring is for the cybersecurity strategy.

1. Silk Road (An online marketplace for drugs): The Silk Road was one of the most infamous dark web marketplaces, through which one could buy everything from illegal drugs to forged documents, including even hitmen services. Created by Ross Ulbricht, the website launched in 2011 and operated until the FBI took it offline in October 2013. This website gained popularity for exposing the vast extent to which the dark web-enabled methods for criminal transactions and the inability of law enforcement agencies to interfere with such websites.
2. Ashley Madison Data Breach: In 2015, Ashley Madison suffered a giant data breach at the hands of a group named The Impact Team. They released sensitive information about the users publicly, putting millions of people in danger of blackmailing and public humiliation. This has been one of the most serious threats to privacy that data contained on platforms connected to the web have faced.
3. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS): Ransomware-as-a-Service markets are starting to appear now. More and more often, places on the dark web allow one to purchase ransomware tools or rent hackers to commit the attack. Incidents like WannaCry and NotPetya have inflicted millions of dollars in financial damages on organizations around the world, showing that taking cybersecurity seriously is urgent for businesses.
4. Markets for Stolen Data: Stolen personal information traded in these dark web marketplaces includes credit card details and login credentials, which warn of identity theft and financial fraud. For instance, the Equifax breach in 2017 left sensitive data vulnerable to hacks, exposing approximately 150 million American users. This acts as a perfect example of how indirectly such stolen information may be used for malicious gains.
5. Cyberespionage and Hacking tools: Nation-state-level attackers use the dark web frequently to gather hacking tools and stolen data for cyber espionage. Groups such as APT29, also known as Cozy Bear, and APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, have been reported to share resources on dark web forums in executing covert operations. This explains how the dark web marketplace can generate advanced threats that pose a serious challenge to national security.

How SentinelOne Helps with Dark Web Monitoring?

SentinelOne can indirectly help with dark web monitoring in the following ways:

• It can integrate with third-party intelligence solutions that specialize in monitoring dark web activities
• SentinelOne’s Offensive Security Engine™ helps you stay one step ahead of attackers along with its Verified Exploit Paths™
• Patent Storylines with Purple™ AI helps analysts conduct deep cyber forensics
• SentinelOne can find Indicators of Compromises (IoCs) and identify data breaches early before they actually happen. Users can pinpoint the root causes of vulnerabilities and immediately remediate them with its automated 1-click remediation.
• SentinelOne endpoint security solutions help fight against malware, ransomware, fileless attacks, and other vulnerabilities that hackers may exploit. They prevent lateral movement and deny entry into endpoints that attackers seek to exfiltrate data from.
• SentinelOne’s advanced behavioral and static AI engines can monitor for signs of anomalous behaviors across enterprises. It can prevent the exposure of sensitive data, ensure compliance, and put additional safeguards in place. You can also get help with user identity and cloud infrastructure management.

To learn more about how SentinelOne’s offerings can help with dark web monitoring, book a free live demo.

Conclusion

In conclusion, dark web monitoring has now become a crucial practice for businesses in the present times to protect sensitive information. The growth in cybercrime and usage of confidential data in running illegal activities through the dark web is forcing businesses to implement dark web monitoring services. These tools offer proactive threat detection, real-time alerts, and comprehensive coverage of dark web platforms, ensuring your data remains intact.

Every organization must strengthen its cybersecurity posture, and investment in dark web monitoring has become a must for the protection of sensitive information and to ensure the continuity of business operations. Most businesses are left with a series of questions when they are asked how they can protect against dark web threats. To help them answer these difficult questions, solutions such as SentinelOne’s Singularity™ Cloud Security are available. By leveraging these solutions, businesses can utilize dark web monitoring tools and stay secure from the relevant threats that might pose risks to business continuity. Contact us now or explore our solutions to understand how we can help protect your organization from dark web threats.

FAQs

1. Is dark web monitoring legitimate?

Yes, dark web monitoring is a genuine and valid service that aids in tracking cases of exposure or trading of sensitive information regarding either an organization or an individual on the dark web. For this purpose, dark web monitoring tools are available from various cybersecurity providers such as SentinelOne, while ensuring timely detection and response against such risks.

2. Who should consider using dark web monitoring?

The use of dark web monitoring for threat detection and data breach prevention must be considered by every business, financial institution, healthcare provider, and individual that deals with customer or personal data. In short, any organization dealing with sensitive customer information or proprietary information should make use of dark web monitoring services.

3. What does it mean if your information is on the dark web?

If your information is on the dark web, it means that it has likely been compromised, stolen, or leaked by cybercriminals. This poses a significant risk to your identity, finances, and reputation, and immediate steps should be taken to mitigate further damage. Failure to act quickly can lead to identity theft, fraud, or even targeted attacks that exploit the compromised data.

4. What actions to take if your data is found on the dark web?

Suppose your data has surfaced on the dark web. In that case, you should immediately change compromised passwords, notify parties that may have been affected, enable multi-factor authentication, and consult with cybersecurity professionals. Depending on the severity of your breach, you may contact the legal authorities as well to seek legal aid.