Compromised Email Address Dark Web Alert

What is a dark web alert?

To protect your enterprise from dark web attacks, comprehensive credential monitoring software can scan the darknet for key data, and, if your account credentials are found, can trigger alerts to notify you of the problem with relevant information about the breach. Once you receive an alert, you can act fast to better protect your business accounts.

Dark web alerts can provide visibility into relevant activity that may otherwise go unnoticed. The dark web is a region of the deep web that refers to the parts of the internet you can’t reach with your browser. Whether in the dark web or deep web, stolen credentials are bought and sold there because cyberattackers can often evade identification and prosecution. By the time you suspect a cyberattack due to compromised credentials, your email addresses, passwords, and login information may already be spread far and wide across the deep web.

How to receive alerts about a compromised email address

An account holder often has no idea whether their email address has been compromised. Hackers can leverage email address information or access in multiple ways without the user realizing the threat. Alerts about a compromised email address can help ensure suspicious activity and breaches don’t go overlooked. One way to receive alerts about potential compromised emails is by using a darknet email alert software.

A deep web email alert solution can leverage both automatic scanning and a real-time database of breaches to quickly notify you of relevant darknet activity. The dark web is a difficult place to navigate without professional assistance, and few businesses have the time to stay on top of breaches. Since sophisticated hackers can post stolen information in encrypted formats, it can be difficult to discover compromised email addresses on the dark web without special scanning mechanisms used by cybersecurity professionals. Credential monitoring security software is designed to flag your information quickly and can send a real-time darknet email alert, so you can see what data has been compromised—and how to fix it.

Why are darknet compromised email address alerts important?

Today’s main cybersecurity threats aren’t limited to trojan horses and malware attacks. Cyberattackers can use other sophisticated strategies to gain access to and glean credentials for privileged access to data. Privileged access threats are especially threatening because they can be so difficult to detect—many months may go by before you notice there’s an unwanted guest inside your system. While a firewall may protect you from external threats like viruses, it’s often no match for an attacker who has acquired your passwords, email addresses, and other credentials.

Dark web alerts are designed to notify you in real time as soon as your data is discovered on the darknet. With email addresses being publicly available, a deep web email address alert may not necessarily be cause for immediate panic. However, it could mean your email address is possibly being used for malicious purposes.

There are many ways a cyberattacker can use just your email address to harm your organization. An email address compromised on the deep web can quickly lead to spam emails, some of which may include trackers and other types of malware, which cyberattackers can use to access your login credentials. Hackers can also use email addresses and attempt to crack passwords to gain login access. Additionally, attackers can use your email address as a destination for phishing emails, luring other employees into sending more information. And if the breach included email password information, the threat to business security could be even more extensive.

How do darknet alerts work?

Darknet alerts can allow you to act against identity theft involving stolen credentials and prevent privileged access attacks as efficiently as possible. Once your dark web monitoring system sends an alert, you can quickly update email address credentials to prevent future access by attackers. But email addresses aren’t the only items your deep web scanner can identify—some dark web monitoring solutions may also identify passwords, usernames, and even employees’ private email addresses.

Alerts are created using high-level scanning software to discover your organization’s data on the darknet using a combination of automated ID techniques and actual security experts who actively work to find and flag stolen data. Darknet scanning can also help locate stolen information that can’t be reached by traditional web browsers.

Whether next steps are to lock out users from potentially compromised systems, update user credentials, or further investigate the breach exposure, dark web alerts can be crucial in minimizing the damage of an account takeover attack.

How do dark web alerts work in SolarWinds Identity Monitor?

When you’re responsible for your organization’s cybersecurity, having a firewall or anti-malware technology may not be enough to prevent account takeover. With SolarWinds Identity Monitor, you can choose which credentials are most important and instruct the scanning technology to monitor for your information on the deep web.

In addition to receiving real-time email alerts for compromised credentials found on the dark web, Identity Monitor includes other unique tools to help maximize your ability to prevent a malicious account takeover, including:

• Secure identification of domain ownership. Only you can remove certain credentials from your watchlist or add new ones to your alert system.
• Private monitoring of results. Only you can view and edit the history of your cybersecurity data.
• Comprehensive IP address activity monitoring (for select subscription tiers of Identity Monitor).
• Specific alerts for employees who may have compromised email addresses, even if your corporate address isn’t compromised.
• Historical insight into past data leaks, so you can design your best strategy to prevent them in the future.

With evolving strategies from cyberattackers, dark web alerts can benefit from being consistently updated with new exposed credential information. SolarWinds Identity Monitor is built to send real-time alerts for darknet data leaks using comprehensive deep web scanning technology that uses intelligence specialists and applied research to continuously collect and flag compromised usernames and passwords associated with a monitored domain or a monitored personal email address from public and non-public sources across the deep web.

Related Features and Tools

• SolarWinds Security Event Manager
• SolarWinds Patch Manager
• SolarWinds Access Rights Monitor

• Password Leak Check
• Business Email Compromise Attack (BEC) Protection
• Data Loss Prevention
• Privileged Account Monitoring