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Why I didn't pick Darktrace
January 12, 2018

Why I didn't pick Darktrace

Matt Frederickson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Darktrace

Brought it in to act as an intelligence gatherer for network traffic - specifically to look for anomalies and help identify potential threats and suspicious activity. I installed it at the network core, so it was able to view all traffic (well, mostly all traffic - we had a few issues with some of the VLANs and my switches are configured for fault tolerance, which it also had an issue with) moving from inside to outside.
  • It did an ok job of analyzing and collecting data. It used a span (mirrored) port and then using its own algorithm developed flow records.
  • It did an ok job of segmenting traffic into networks - not always correctly, but ok.
  • It tried to identify devices by type - once again, it did ok, but not that great.
  • Really had a poor time of identifying devices and what the device's purpose was - a simple nmap scan did a better job. The problem is they expect you to fine-tune the results - which is exactly what you would expect - but day one it found over 2,000 servers (and I only have 112).
  • Really had a hard time separating network traffic into locations - I use distinct subnets for my buildings, but there was no good way to create a logical map of my traffic internally. Did not garner a sense of trust that it was seeing everything.
  • Sat through a few "analyst" reports - which showed me possible threats in my environment. I am already using a few open source tools, and they actually found more than the analyst reports. Also, there was no way to get the reports on your own - you had to work through their analysts to get the information.
  • None - we chose not to move forward. The price of the product did not warrant the investment.
We did NOT select Darktrace. OSSIM/AlienVault is a more mature product and it provided better intelligence and reporting. The end user interface is much easier to use - and you can tell built form engineers who have had to do the work. My suggestion for anyone considering Darktrace, is to get the price upfront; do a 30/60 onsite trail; and do the same thing, at the same time, with AlienVault. AlientVault will win every time. I say that because that's exactly what I did.
In my opinion, based on what I saw, the product is not ready for prime time yet. The GUI interface was slick but very difficult to use. There was no reporting capability. There was no availability to integrate other products or share data easily. The people were very nice and easy to work with - but in my opinion, no one who worked on developing the product has spent any time on a day-to-day basis in the trenches. While I get the brain trust behind the product (and it is very, very impressive), there is still a disconnect between the developers and the end-users. For the cost of the product (quite expensive), the end user base is not going to be satisfied with the product, especially since I can get the same, and better, information from other products.