Threat deception platforms are designed to safeguard organizations by identifying and derailing potential cyberattacks before they can cause serious damage. By integrating decoys, traps, and other deception technologies within the network, these solutions create a highly convincing and deceptive environment for cyber attackers to engage with. As they interact with these deceptive elements, attackers unknowingly reveal their techniques, and their activities trigger alerts to the security teams, enabling faster detection and response.
In addition to detecting known attack vectors, deception platforms are highly effective at uncovering novel threats and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), which often evade traditional security measures. The insights gained from analyzing the attackers’ behavior can then be used to strengthen organizational security postures and minimize the risk of successful cyberattacks.
As the cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve, a variety of threat deception platforms have entered the market, each with unique features, capabilities, and functional techniques. This guide will provide an overview of the top threat deception platforms, examining their strengths and core features based on our own technical assessments and customer feedback.
Acalvio is a leading cyber deception technology provider that helps enterprises actively protect against advanced security threats. Their product, ShadowPlex Advanced Threat Defense (ATD), offers early threat detection with precision and speed using deception technology and AI.
The platform is built using 25 patented technologies and can be deployed autonomously across on-premises, OT, and cloud workloads. ShadowPlex ATD casts a wide net with its various deception strategies, including decoys, breadcrumbs, baits, and lures. These deceptive elements help stop threats before they cause harm and enable the auto-triaging of detection events using advanced analytics. The high-fidelity incidents identified by the system can be forwarded to SIEM, SOAR, or IR platforms. ShadowPlex is mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK Framework and provides real-time automated endpoint quarantine and high-interaction decoys for advanced threat protection.
The platform integrates seamlessly with numerous solutions such as SOAR, SIEM, EDR, AD, network management, email servers, and software management solutions. These integrations allow ShadowPlex to leverage network discovery, gather forensic data from endpoints, deploy breadcrumbs and baits, and execute automated responses for a comprehensive security strategy.
Cynet is a cyber-security company specializing in offering enterprises a comprehensive solution to identify security loopholes, threat intelligence, and manage endpoint security. Cynet Deception provides a wide range of tools to create and deploy various types of decoys, such as files, passwords, and network connections, to expose and mitigate threats during different stages of an attack’s lifecycle.
By offering off-the-shelf and custom decoys, Cynet Deception aids in detecting attacks at the credential theft stage through the use of decoy passwords. When attackers attempt to log in with these false credentials, an alert is triggered. The platform is also designed to detect lateral movement within a compromised network, using decoy connections to identify and monitor unauthorized activities in internal network shares and RDP connections. Additionally, Cynet Deception focuses on detecting attacks during the data exfiltration stage by planting decoy data files and links across endpoints and servers. These files resemble sensitive information that attackers may target, such as intellectual property, personal data, and business plans. If a decoy file is accessed at the attacker’s premises, an alert is sent to Cynet alongside the malicious IP address where the file resides.
Through the use of multi-layered deception techniques, Cynet enables organizations to better safeguard their digital environments by identifying and thwarting cyber threats.
FortiDeceptor is a cybersecurity solution developed by Fortinet, focused on providing early detection and isolation of sophisticated human and automated attacks. As part of the Fortinet SecOps Platform, it detects and responds to in-network attacks such as stolen credential usage, lateral movement, man-in-the-middle, and ransomware.
FortiDeceptor helps shift defense strategies from reactive to proactive, with an intrusion-based detection system layered with contextual intelligence. It generates high-fidelity alerts based on real-time engagement and provides attack activity analysis and attack isolation to decrease the burden on SOC teams dealing with false-positive alerts. Additionally, FortiDeceptor correlates incident and campaign activities, collects IOCs and TTPs and enables automated, dynamic protection across OT/IoT/IT environments by allowing on-demand creation of deception decoys based on newly discovered vulnerabilities or suspicious activity. FortiDeceptor integrates with Fortinet Security Fabric and third-party security controls, including SIEM, SOAR, EDR, and sandbox for visibility and accelerated response.
The platform captures and analyzes attack activities in real time, providing detailed forensics, and can quarantine infected endpoints away from the production network. It is designed for easy deployment and maintenance, and can operate in both online and air-gapped (offline) modes, with a ruggedized version available for enhanced protection.
Rapid7’s InsightIDR is a security solution that specializes in incident detection and response, authentication monitoring, and endpoint visibility. This Extended Detection and Response (XDR) system is designed to identify unauthorized access from both internal and external threats, highlighting suspicious activities to streamline the detection process.
InsightIDR is a cloud-native, cloud-scalable solution that unifies and transforms multiple telemetry sources for improved security coverage. InsightIDR utilizes advanced deception technology, informed by attacker behavior research, to create honeypots, honey users, credentials, and files. These traps help detect attackers earlier during network recon and lateral movement, protecting critical data from being stolen. This strategy is complemented by User Behavior Analytics (UBA) and endpoint detection, ensuring intruders are detected throughout the entire attack chain.
Additionally, InsightIDR offers real-time endpoint detection and honey credential injection to deceive attackers and expose their activities. If these fake credentials are used elsewhere on the network, the system automatically alerts users. InsightIDR’s integration of advanced deception technology, UBA, and endpoint detection provides comprehensive security support for organizations.
Morphisec is a leading provider of prevention-first software designed to protect businesses from ransomware and advanced cyberattacks across endpoints, servers, and cloud environments. The company’s core offering, the Morphisec Breach Prevention Platform, allows IT and security teams of all sizes to safeguard critical systems from sophisticated threats without needing prior knowledge of them.
This comprehensive solution streamlines cybersecurity processes and helps businesses avoid becoming targets of cybercrime. The platform includes various components tailored to different aspects of cybersecurity. The Endpoint Breach Prevention feature focuses on virtual and physical workstations, providing an alternative to traditional antivirus software. Meanwhile, the Server & Cloud Workload Breach Prevention component offers protection against in-memory exploits, simplifying the process of keeping critical systems secure. In addition to these core features, Morphisec also offers Vulnerability Management services, which identify vulnerabilities within technology infrastructures and enable IT teams to resolve them efficiently.
For situations when a security breach does occur, Morphisec’s Incident Response service is available to help businesses recover and return to normal operations quickly. Overall, Morphisec presents a comprehensive and efficient approach to securing businesses from advanced cyberthreats across different environments.
SentinelOne is an American cybersecurity company that offers the Singularity Hologram technology. This technology utilizes dynamic deception techniques and a matrix of distributed network decoy systems to transform the entire network into a trap designed to deceive in-network attackers and their automated tools.
The decoys provided by Singularity Hologram are strategically placed to engage adversaries and insiders, thereby helping to facilitate investigations and gathering adversary intelligence. This technology is intended to support the identification of active compromises within a network and plays a critical role in identifying adversaries as they move laterally and interact with decoy assets and lures. Singularity Hologram not only enables organizations to visualize and strengthen their defenses, but also complements and integrates with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) strategies. Furthermore, it can be combined with Singularity Identity for holistic endpoint and Active Directory protections, creating a more comprehensive cybersecurity solution.
Finally, Singularity Hologram’s wide-ranging deception and decoy techniques are designed to entice adversaries performing reconnaissance by mimicking production operating systems, applications, data, industrial control systems, IoT devices, and cloud functions. This approach helps organizations reduce the time required to detect, analyze, and stop attackers while gaining valuable insights into their Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs).
Smokescreen is a deception-based active defense security company that focuses on threat detection. Acquired by Zscaler, the company operates in 18+ geographies, managing over 1 million endpoints. Smokescreen’s IllusionBLACK solution is designed for simplicity, allowing users to launch deception campaigns with ready-made decoys and benefit from quick implementation time, often only taking minutes to set up.
One of the key advantages of IllusionBLACK is its low rate of false positives. Any interaction with a decoy is considered a high-confidence indication of a breach, ensuring that only genuine threats trigger alerts. This streamlined system helps security teams maintain focused responses to actual cyberattacks. Smokescreen also offers automated forensics and root-cause analysis, reducing the time and effort required for investigations. The user-friendly nature of the platform allows teams to accomplish more, while utilizing fewer resources. Additionally, IllusionBLACK integrates with SIEMs, firewalls, EDRs, proxies, threat intelligence feeds, and SOAR tools, allowing for seamless threat containment and event forwarding.
This combination of features enables organizations to efficiently manage and respond to security threats without extensive manual effort.
Zscaler Deception is an integrated threat detection platform that forms a part of the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange. This platform utilizes deception-based techniques, such as decoys and honeypots, to identify advanced, in-network threats that have evaded existing security measures. Its primary function is to extend zero trust capabilities through active defense, alerting security teams only when confirmed threats and breaches are detected.
By employing endpoint lures, decoy applications, servers, and users, Zscaler Deception can effectively detect threats and attacker activity without burdening the security team with operational overhead. Additionally, the platform diverts attackers away from sensitive resources and provides an early warning system for stealthy pre-breach reconnaissance activities. Decoy passwords, cookies, sessions, bookmarks, and applications also help identify compromised users and limit an attacker’s ability to move laterally in the environment.
Zscaler Deception seamlessly integrates with the Zscaler platform and third-party security tools like SIEM, SOAR, and other SOC solutions, enabling automated, rapid response against active attackers. Overall, Zscaler Deception enhances an organization’s security posture, providing a comprehensive and effective approach to threat detection and prevention.
A threat deception platform is designed to enhance an organization’s security posture by actively misleading threat actors trying to enter the network. These solutions detect attackers, anticipate their attacks, and then use deceptive techniques to lure them further and confuse them. This, in turn, makes it more difficult for them to identify and exploit real vulnerable points and assets.
By convincing malicious actors that they have successfully breached the network and can carry out their attacks uninterrupted, threat deception platforms can gather valuable intelligence regarding how attackers work. This allows them to improve their preventative security controls in real time by detecting, analyzing, and defending against zero-day and advanced attacks.
Threat deception takes a proactive approach to cybersecurity, one that compliments traditional security measures such as antivirus solutions, intrusion detection systems, and firewalls. Deception technology is relatively new, but is gaining popularity quickly as a means of preventing cyber attackers from both carrying out their attacks, and from learning of genuine vulnerabilities or weak points than might help them do so in the future.
Threat deception platforms work by creating decoys and traps that emulate natural systems. This deceptive approach works because of the way most attackers operate, which is typically by penetrating secured environments and then looking for ways to build persistence, which often means dropping a backdoor. As well as the backdoor, attacker will generally attempt to move laterally within the organization, utilizing any guessed or stolen credentials to access restricted areas, collect data and systems of value, and deploy additional malware and exfiltration data.
Traditional anomaly detection and intrusion prevention systems aim to spot attacks in progress on their networks and systems, but the issue with these tools is that they rely on signatures to identify attacks. These can experience a high level of false positives. Threat deception platforms, however, tend to have a higher threshold for triggering events, and these events are typically threat actors conducting attacks in real-time.
When considering employing one of these platforms it is useful to consider the following:
Deception technologies tend to be for endpoints, servers, network equipment, and traditional IT devices, but can also work with IoT devices like point-of-sale systems, medical devices, etc.
Threat deception platforms offer users a ‘low friction’ method of detecting potential threats and can complement other detection technologies. These best threat deception technologies should offer users the following features:
Mirren McDade is a senior writer and journalist at Expert Insights, spending each day researching, writing, editing and publishing content, covering a variety of topics and solutions, and interviewing industry experts. She is an experienced copywriter with a background in a range of industries, including cloud business technologies, cloud security, information security and cyber security, and has conducted interviews with several industry experts. Mirren holds a First Class Honors degree in English from Edinburgh Napier University.
Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.