Dark Web Monitoring: Everything You Need To Know (FAQs)
What Is The Dark Web?
The internet has multiple layers. The layer that the majority of us access through internet browsers and connected applications is known as the “surface web” or the “visible web”. This layer is indexed by search engines. Surprisingly, it accounts for only 5% of the entire web.
The next layer is the deep web, which isn’t indexed by search engines. This makes content on the deep web much more difficult to find and access, as you need to know a page’s exact URL to find it. Content on the deep web typically includes password-protected content, storage areas, and gated content.
The final layer is the dark web, which requires the use of specialist router technology to access. These routers anonymize access, protecting the identities of people that visit the dark web. Activists and political actors may use the dark web to protect them from persecution, while criminals use it to trade weapons, drugs, and information.
What Is Dark Web Monitoring?
A crucial part of information security involves identifying whether any of your organization’s data is being shared or sold. If it is, you can find the source of the issue and remediate it.
For example, if you discover that your users’ passwords are being sold on the dark web, you can reset all passwords, preventing a breach.
Dark web monitoring tools allow you to do this by:
- Scanning the dark web for mentions of your company, your company’s sensitive data and intellectual property, and fraudulent use of your company’s name
- Monitoring criminal forums to discover mentions of any loopholes or vulnerabilities within your security
- Identifying the development of new and emerging attack methods that may impact your organization
Dark web monitoring tools do all this without you having to send your IT or security staff into the dark web themselves. This prevents them from putting themselves at risk or having to be exposed to illicit and dangerous content.
How Do Dark Web Monitoring Tools Work?
Dark web monitoring tools deliver a multi-stage cycle to identify and remediate data risk. This cycle includes:
- Scanning: The tool continuously scans the dark web to identify mentions of your company and its data.
- Identifying: The tool identifies what the data is, how wide the scope of the breach is, and what type of data has been compromised.
- Alerting: The tool sends alerts to your IT admins that explain what it’s discovered and how they should remediate the issue.
- Reporting: The tool compiles comprehensive reports that highlight any vulnerabilities that should be addressed.
- Repeat: As this is an ongoing process, the tool will continue to scan the dark web for more data or indicators, even after a specific vulnerability has been addressed.
The Best Dark Web Monitoring Solutions: Shortlist FAQs
Why should you trust this Shortlist?
This article was written by Alex Zawalnyski, the Copy Manager at Expert Insights, who works along software experts to research, write, fact-check, and edit articles relating to B2B cyber security and technology solutions. This article has been technically reviewed by our technical researcher, Laura Iannini, who has experience with a range of cybersecurity platforms and conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.
Research for this guide included:
- Conducting first-hand technical reviews and testing of several dozen leading dark web monitoring providers
- Interviewing executives in the dark web monitoring space, as well as the wider Data Loss Prevention (DLP) industry, for first-hand insight into the challenges and strengths of different solutions
- Researching and demoing solutions in the dark web monitoring space and wider DLP security categories over several years
- Speaking to several organizations of all sizes about their dark web monitoring challenges and the features that are most useful to them
- Reading third-party and customer reviews from multiple outlets, including paid industry reports
This guide is updated at least every 3 months to review the vendors included and ensure that the features listed are up to date.
Who is this Shortlist for?
We recommend that all organizations consider implementing a solution that will help them identify and remediate data loss. This list has therefore been written with a broad audience in mind.
How was the Shortlist picked?
When considering dark web monitoring solutions, we evaluated providers based on the following criterion:
Features: Based on conversations with vendors, end customers, and our own testing, we selected the following key features:
- Threat hunting: Dark web monitoring tools should proactively hunt for threats and risks that affect your network.
- Wide visibility: Dark web monitoring platforms must provide broad visibility to give users the best chance of identifying their data and references to their company on forums, chatrooms, marketplaces, and messaging apps.
- Continuous monitoring: The platform should monitor the dark web 24/7 to identify its customer’s information as soon as possible. With attacks happening across the globe all the time, threat hunting cannot be limited to office hours.
- Analysis: The solution should have crawlers, scrapers, and scanners to identify risk and analyze content in real time. This may provide an understanding of how a breach occurred or how one is likely to occur in the future.
- Alerting: Dark web monitoring solutions should have an efficient way of alerting admins to any relevant updates. The alerts should convey as much information as possible, whilst enabling admins to react quickly.
- Reports: Dark web monitoring solutions should be able to calculate a risk score that enables users to monitor the security of specific assets and implement more stringent security measures where relevant.
- Facilitated response: While not all dark web monitoring solutions have the capability to remediate threats from within the platform, at a minimum they should integrate with their customer’s wider security stack to facilitate and coordinate this response. Some solutions may be able to remove harmful content, but this is not the case for all products.
Market perception: We reviewed each vendor included on the Shortlist to ensure they are reliable, trusted providers in the market. We reviewed their documentation, third-party analyst reports, and—where possible—we have interviewed executives directly.
Customer usage: We use market share as a metric when comparing vendors and aim to represent both high market share vendors and challenger brands with innovative capabilities. We have spoken to end customers and reviewed customer case studies, testimonials, and end user reviews.
Product heritage: Finally, we have looked at where a product has come from in the market, including when companies were founded, their leadership team, their mission statements, and their successes. We have also considered product updates and how regularly new features are added. We have ensured all vendors are credible leaders with a solution we would be happy to use ourselves.
Based on our experience in the DLP and broader cybersecurity market, we have also considered several other factors, such as the benefit of consolidating multiple features into a single platform, the quality of the admin interface, the customer support on offer, and other use cases.
This list is designed to be a selection of the best dark web monitoring providers. Many leading solutions have not been included in this list, with no criticism intended.