Darktrace vs Claroty vs Dragos

Delving into products

I’m examining cybersecurity offerings for ICS from Claroty, Dragos, and Darktrace, noting how Darktrace’s AI anomaly detection contrasts with Claroty and Dragos’s ICS-focused solutions. They share some overlap.

Clarifying roles

I’m positioning the three solutions as partially competitive yet complementary, suggesting potential integrations or synergy. Each maintains a unique approach, leveraging AI, risk management, and ICS threat intelligence.

Thought about Darktrace and similar products for 5 seconds

Darktrace, Claroty, and Dragos are all cybersecurity vendors that focus—at least in part—on detecting and responding to threats in industrial/OT (operational technology) environments. However, they come at the problem from slightly different angles and have different emphases in their offerings:

1. Darktrace

• Core Focus:

  • Darktrace is well-known for its AI-driven, network-level anomaly detection across IT environments.
  • It also has a specific OT/ICS product line (Darktrace Industrial) that applies the same machine learning/anomaly detection capabilities to industrial networks.

• Key Differentiators:

  • AI-based approach that analyzes network traffic in real time, looking for deviations from a “self-learned” baseline.
  • Broad coverage across IT, cloud, email, and ICS/OT (though ICS is not Darktrace’s historical core—it's an extension).
  • Known for its “Enterprise Immune System” marketing concept, which positions the technology as similar to a human immune system, reacting to unknown threats by spotting anomalies.

• Strengths:

  • Automatic, self-learning threat detection that doesn’t rely heavily on signatures or known threat indicators.
  • Single platform spanning multiple environments (IT, OT, cloud), which can be attractive to organizations seeking unified visibility.

• Limitations or Considerations:

  • Some organizations want deeper, ICS-specific threat intelligence and context beyond anomaly detection—this is where specialized OT/ICS vendors might be preferred or paired with Darktrace.

2. Claroty

• Core Focus:

  • Claroty is an industrial cybersecurity company focusing on safe and secure OT/ICS environments.
  • It has grown from asset discovery and network monitoring toward broader OT security offerings (including remote access solutions, risk management, and vulnerability management).

• Key Differentiators:

  • Deep visibility into ICS networks, including the ability to identify and categorize industrial assets and protocols.
  • Purpose-built for OT/ICS environments, with strong integration capabilities for existing industrial control systems.
  • Offers OT-centric remote access and risk management features in addition to threat detection.

• Strengths:

  • Specialized in ICS/OT protocols—supports a wide range of these protocols out of the box.
  • Often integrates well with major industrial automation vendors.
  • Good for organizations that prioritize ICS-focused threat detection, asset discovery, and vulnerability management in operational environments.

• Limitations or Considerations:

  • Primary focus is on OT/ICS. If an organization needs AI-driven detection across a broader IT environment (cloud, endpoints, email, etc.), Claroty might need to be supplemented with other solutions.

3. Dragos

• Core Focus:

  • Dragos is almost exclusively focused on ICS cybersecurity, including threat detection, incident response, and deep ICS-specific threat intelligence.

• Key Differentiators:

  • Known for its ICS-specific threat intelligence and deep expertise on ICS threats, TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures), and attacker groups.
  • Offers a platform that provides threat detection, asset visibility, and playbooks for incident response specifically tailored to ICS environments.

• Strengths:

  • Very strong ICS threat intelligence. They maintain a dedicated team that investigates and tracks OT-specific cyber threats globally.
  • Dragos often goes deeper on ICS-specific attack vectors than more general cybersecurity tools.

• Limitations or Considerations:

  • Focuses primarily on OT/ICS; minimal coverage of broader enterprise IT security.
  • Might require integration with an IT-focused security solution to offer end-to-end coverage across corporate and industrial networks.

4. How They Compare

1. Breadth vs. Depth:

   • Darktrace offers broader coverage across IT, cloud, and OT, with an AI approach to anomaly detection.
   • Claroty and Dragos are heavily specialized in OT/ICS. They typically provide deeper visibility into industrial protocols and specialized threat intelligence for those environments.

2. Methodology:

   • Darktrace: Anomaly-based, “immune system” approach, using machine learning to detect unusual behaviors.
   • Claroty and Dragos: Combine asset discovery, OT-aware monitoring, and ICS-specific threat intelligence, often with signature-based detections for known ICS threats plus behavior/anomaly detection.

3. Threat Intelligence & Incident Response:

   • Dragos is widely recognized for ICS threat intelligence and post-compromise services.
   • Claroty has its own research wing (Team82) providing ICS vulnerability research and threat intelligence.
   • Darktrace has “cyber AI analysts” but is less known for ICS-oriented threat intelligence and research compared to the others.

5. Competitive or Complementary?

• Are They Competitors?

  • In the ICS space, Darktrace Industrial, Claroty, and Dragos all tackle OT threat detection and security monitoring, so they often compete for the same OT visibility and detection budget.
  • Larger organizations sometimes evaluate two or three of these solutions side by side.

• Can They Be Complementary?

  • In some cases, yes. Particularly when an organization wants a “best of both worlds” approach:
    • Darktrace might be deployed across the entire network for anomaly detection (IT + OT).
    • Claroty or Dragos might be layered on specifically in critical OT environments that demand deeper asset discovery, ICS-protocol-level analysis, and specialized threat intel.
  • However, practically speaking, many organizations pick one solution for OT detection. Because all three can monitor and alert on ICS networks, overlap may be significant and often leads to an either/or decision.

6. Summary

• Similarities:

  • All provide network monitoring, threat detection, and security in an OT context.
  • Each aims to improve visibility and reduce risk in industrial environments.

• Differences:

  • Darktrace: Broad-based AI tool for IT & OT, known for anomaly detection.
  • Claroty: ICS/OT specialist with strong asset discovery and protocol support, plus remote access and risk management features.
  • Dragos: ICS/OT specialist known for deep threat intelligence, incident response, and threat hunting in industrial settings.

• Complementary vs. Competitive:

  • There is significant overlap in OT threat detection; hence, they often compete.
  • Some large enterprises use Darktrace for enterprise-wide anomaly detection and also implement Claroty or Dragos for deeper ICS insight.
  • The decision usually hinges on whether you need generalized enterprise security coverage (including OT) vs. a specialized ICS/OT-focused platform (or both, but that can be more costly and require integration work).

Ultimately, if your primary need is dedicated ICS/OT visibility, vulnerability management, and specialized threat intelligence, you might gravitate toward Claroty or Dragos. If your organization values a single AI-driven platform spanning IT/OT with less ICS-specific detail, Darktrace might take priority. If resources permit and operational security is paramount, pairing a broad anomaly solution like Darktrace with a specialized ICS security solution can be considered—though in practice, many organizations will choose one solution for OT depending on technical requirements, budget, and security objectives.