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Engage Attackers. Extract Actionable Threat Intelligence
Acalvio ShadowPlex uses deception to safely engage adversaries and collect high-fidelity telemetry in real time, capturing tools, techniques, and intent. This preemptive threat intelligence fills the gaps left by passive sources, accelerating investigation and strengthening active defense.

The Keys to Next-Gen Threat Intel

Adversary
Engagement Data
  • Engage attackers safely to gather intent, tools, and behaviors in real time
  • Turn interaction into intelligence that informs detection and defense
Attacker Tactics
and Tools
  • Observe real attacker tools, commands, and movement in your environment
  • Map TTPs to MITRE ATT&CK and known adversary profiles
Real-Time Threat Insights
  • Detect and monitor threats in progress through live adversary engagement
  • Deliver early, actionable intelligence to speed investigations
High-Fidelity Telemetry
  • Capture verified telemetry from attacker interaction with deception assets
  • Extract precise signals to accelerate response and reduce noise

At the Forefront of Preemptive Cybersecurity

Gartner named Acalvio an innovator in preemptive cybersecurity. ShadowPlex Threat Intel builds on this foundation, using deception to detect threats early, engage attackers safely, and help teams respond faster with real-time intelligence.

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Adversary Engagement Data
  • Use AI-driven deception to safely engage attackers across internal and external surfaces
  • Capture tools, commands, and movement paths as attackers interact with decoys
  • Reveal real-time behaviors and objectives without risk to production systems
  • Make every signal count with high-fidelity data that drives detection, hunting, and response
Attacker Tactics and Tools
  • Capture live attacker tools, commands, and techniques through direct engagement
  • Observe how adversaries operate within your environment—not in theory
  • Map observed behaviors to MITRE ATT&CK and known threat actor profiles
  • Enrich detection and threat hunting with intelligence grounded in real activity

Acalvio ShadowPlex Threat Intel (TI) Service

ShadowPlex TI is a managed service hosted on Acalvio’s cloud. It deploys external-facing decoys, captures attacker TTPs and credentials, filters noise, and delivers high-fidelity threat intelligence in STIX format for automated response.

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Real-Time Threat Insights
  • Detect threats in progress by observing live attacker behavior
  • Deliver actionable intelligence while the adversary is still active
  • Reduce dwell time and speed up investigation with immediate visibility
  • Equip response teams with verified intel to act faster and with confidence
High-Fidelity Telemetry
  • Collect telemetry directly from attacker interaction with deception assets
  • Eliminate noise with verified, intent-based signals
  • Inform detection, hunting, and response with trustworthy data
  • Move from raw alerts to confident decisions with faster context

Frequently Asked Questions

Deception-Based Preemptive Cybersecurity is a proactive defense strategy that uses deceptive artifacts—such as decoys, honeytokens, and fake credentials—to detect attackers already inside the network. These deception layers operate across endpoints, identity systems, and cloud workloads. Because the decoys have no business value, any interaction is a reliable indicator of malicious activity, enabling early, accurate detection and timely response—before adversaries reach their objectives.

Traditional tools often rely on known signatures or behavior tied to real assets—limiting their effectiveness against unknown threats, insider activity, or credential misuse. Preemptive Cybersecurity adds a new dimension of defense by detecting early-stage attacker activity through interaction with deceptive assets. It provides high-fidelity alerts, improves lateral movement visibility, and reduces dwell time—enabling defenders to act earlier and with greater precision.

Honeytokens are deceptive credentials and data artifacts embedded in legitimate systems, such as OS caches or cloud workloads. Honeytoken accounts are fake user or service accounts. Any interaction with these assets is a high-fidelity indicator of malicious activity—making them essential tools for detecting identity threats like lateral movement and credential misuse.

Deception excels where traditional detection fails: identifying silent lateral movement, credential misuse, and insider threats. Since decoys are not part of normal operations, any interaction is inherently suspicious. This results in high-confidence alerts that are resistant to evasion techniques, helping security teams detect stealthy intrusions and advanced persistent threats (APTs) that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Acalvio integrates seamlessly with leading EDR/XDR platforms, including CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, Palo Alto Cortex XDR, VMware Carbon Black, and leading SIEM/SOAR solutions.

By generating high-fidelity alerts the moment attackers engage with deceptive assets, deception reduces detection delays—dramatically lowering dwell time. These alerts come with rich context, enabling faster and more confident response.

Strategically placed honeytokens reveal evidence of attacker activity during the early stages of the attack lifecycle, stopping adversary breakout and enabling defenders to contain threats before they reach critical assets.

Traditional tools rely on known patterns and signatures, making them ineffective against unknown, low-and-slow, or insider threats. Deception provides a behavior-independent signal—triggered purely by intent.

It uses deception to uncover stealth tactics like lateral movement and privilege escalation across IT, OT, and cloud environments—delivering high-fidelity alerts with minimal noise.

ShadowPlex gathers intel directly from attacker interactions, offering real-time insights into tools, techniques, and infrastructure being used against your organization.

By using native cloud APIs to deploy and monitor honeytokens across cloud-native services and IAM, ShadowPlex delivers agentless, multi-cloud threat detection.

Canary tokens are simple tripwires. Acalvio’s Honeytokens are context-aware, automatically deployed, and tightly integrated for enterprise-scale visibility and response.

They cover blind spots traditional controls miss—like service accounts and machine credentials—triggering alerts the moment they’re touched.

AI-driven automation recommends and deploys deception artifacts across your environment, blending them into existing systems for stealth and effectiveness.

Breakout time measures how fast attackers move laterally after initial access. Slowing or detecting this movement is critical to stopping escalation and limiting damage.

After gaining access, adversaries move laterally using stolen credentials, escalate privileges, and establish persistence to reach high-value assets undetected.

Built for Security Teams. Focused on Preemptive Defense.

Preemptive Cybersecurity
Intel
  • Detect threats at the earliest stages by engaging attackers before they reach real assets.
  • Divert and contain threats with deception, raising early warning before damage occurs.
Targeted Threat
Intelligence
  • Gain specific, contextual intelligence on adversaries targeting your organization.
  • Turn real-time insights into stronger defenses and faster response.
Threat
Hunting
  • Empower threat hunters with verified attacker behavior—not assumptions or noise.
  • Expose stealthy threats missed by traditional detection tools.

The ShadowPlex Portfolio of Products

Acalvio is the leader in Cyber Deception technology, built on over 25 issued patents in Autonomous Deception and advanced AI. The Acalvio Active Defense Platform provides robust Identity Protection, Advanced Threat Defense, and Threat Hunting products. Attackers Don’t Stop at the Edge. Neither Should You.

GigaOm Radar Report Named Acalvio a Leader in Deception Technology.
Schedule a Call with Us Today
Schedule a Call with Us Today
Gartner® names Acalvio a Tech Innovator in Preemptive Cybersecurity.