Community Housing Limited

Protecting the brand and its clients

Community Housing Limited holds sensitive client data, works closely with state government to manage portfolios, and receives federal and state funding to provide well-governed, well-managed housing.  

As a non-profit, Community Housing Limited has lower funding than commercial entities, and must comply with strict privacy legislation, creating additional challenges when it comes to funding its cyber security infrastructure and keeping up with the evolving threat landscape.

“The biggest challenge for us is around the overall data security piece,” said Jamie Woodland, the Head of Technology at Community Housing Limited. “We look at the recent privacy amendment bill that was passed – the changes to the penalties were quite significant. We have to stay on top of those changes, and if we don’t, it could have a significant negative impact on our organization.”

The evolving threat landscape

Community Housing Limited noticed that new threats are emerging, finding several incidents of brand impersonation. In the cases they observed, attackers were targeting users of major software and banking institutions by using smishing tactics that directed people to a spoofed website that replicated legitimate login pages, attempting to harvest credentials.

The organization wanted to prioritize the integrity of its brand and protect their clients who could fall victim to these sophisticated attacks. To protect against brand impersonation, the organization was in search of a solution on the market that not only provides visibility of its attack surface to identify non-legitimate representations of their brand, but also integrates with their existing software and applications.

Trialing Darktrace in a POV, Woodland expressed that Darktrace’s account team was influential in their decision to select Darktrace as their security solution. He states, “I was blessed that the people I worked with in Darktrace showed a lot of care. When there were issues, the team just stepped through that with my technical team, and we got the right result in terms of getting the platform in place, getting the information running through.”

Seamless integration

With the changing threat landscape and rise in nuanced attacks, Community Housing Limited’s IT team decided to add Darktrace to its security stack. Community Housing Limited implemented Darktrace across its Cloud, Apps, Email, and Endpoint because they saw the value in having an end-to-end security solution that provides comprehensive protection across its digital estate in a centralized UI.

Darktrace provides comprehensive visibility across SaaS, email, and cloud environments for Community Housing Limited using Self-Learning AI. Self-Learning AI learns the granular details of a company, building a dynamic understanding of the devices, connections, and user behaviors that make up an organization’s normal pattern of life. When the AI identifies unusual activity that indicates a cyber-attack, it takes autonomous action, neutralizing the threat without disrupting the flow of business.  

In addition to autonomous detection and response, Community Housing Limited found in Darktrace a solution that integrates with their existing software and applications, allowing seamless workflows for their staff.

Woodland states, “We have a strong Microsoft presence and Darktrace just integrates with our existing security platforms and profiles seamlessly; it makes a huge difference.” After implementation, Darktrace picked up alerts within seconds, giving the team valuable insight and a full picture of their network.

Defending against brand impersonation

To protect its brand identity from impersonation, Community Housing Limited chose Darktrace PREVENT/Attack Surface Management™ (ASM) because it uses AI to identify Community Housing Limited’s assets, searching beyond known servers, networks, and IP, often surfacing 30-50% more assets than an organization realizes it has. With this visibility and understanding, Darktrace monitors Community Housing Limited’s attack surfaces so that it will know as soon as an attacker creates unauthorized infrastructure to spoof the legitimate brand. These continuous insights help Community Housing Limited be proactive about potential blind spots and detect risks around the clock.

PREVENT/ASM can even help security teams collect relevant evidence to support Notice and Takedown procedures should brand abuse occur. This helps Community Housing Limited maintain the trust it has built with its brand and reputation.

PREVENT/ASM also seamlessly integrates with Darktrace DETECT™ + Darktrace RESPOND™ to continuously analyze the most disruptive attacks on the organization and feed that information into security systems to support continuous learning, hardening the overall security posture. For example, if PREVENT finds a spoofed webpage, it will set the detection and response systems to look out for accompanying malicious domains in the email environment.

Fighting against phishing malware

In December 2022, the Caffeine phishing-as-a-service platform targeted Community Housing Limited. Malware had been downloaded on someone’s machine and a command-and-control mechanism reached out to this Caffeine service. Darktrace DETECT/Endpoint™ identified the ransomware within seconds.

Darktrace noticed the change in behavior and notified Woodland’s team, which then stopped the incident within 19 minutes, preventing any exposure. If Darktrace RESPOND/Endpoint™ was set to respond autonomously, the incident would have been shut down within seconds, greatly reducing the chances of data exposure or risk to the organization.

Improved workflows

Community Housing Limited’s IT team leverages the Darktrace mobile app heavily, allowing them to respond to incidents even when they’re away from their laptops. Woodland said that “being able to respond to incidents through the app is really great for the team. My team can now release emails and attachments that get picked up by Darktrace on the fly. They are not spending hours on the platform wading through alerts. There are work processes set up that make it very quick and effective.”

Reducing costs

With Darktrace, Community Housing Limited was able to reduce the cost of its cyber insurance. Woodland said, “The implementation of the Darktrace platform really contributed to lowering our insurance premiums which, given the continuous rising of insurance premiums, is a really big win. Our insurer recognized the maturity of our security posture which contributed to them providing us a really good deal.