watchTowr, a provider of Preemptive Exposure Management solutions, has announced the launch of Active Defense, a new capability designed to provide automated, intelligence-driven protection against emerging cyber threats.
Active Defense aims to bridge the gap between vulnerability discovery and actual protection. This capability delivers automated, intelligence-driven protection the moment a validated exposure is identified, offering security teams near-instant coverage, particularly when traditional patches or vendor guidance are not yet available. This addresses the increasing pressure on security teams to respond rapidly, as attackers can exploit emerging vulnerabilities within hours or minutes of their discovery.
The new capability is fueled by watchTowr Labs, the company’s in-house Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) team, which is known for uncovering zero-days, novel attacker techniques, and internet-wide exposures. The watchTowr Platform integrates this research not only to rapidly identify exposed systems but also to provide concrete mitigation capabilities before attacks materialize. Building on existing features like its AI-driven Rapid Reaction capability, Active Defense utilizes industry-leading threat insight to generate deployable defensive measures, including the ability to validate protection success within minutes of mitigation application. This approach provides modern, dynamic, and continuous protection, significantly accelerating response times and reducing exposure from zero-day and unpatched vulnerabilities.
Benjamin Harris, founder and CEO of watchTowr, stated, “Our Rapid Reaction capabilities let us pinpoint client exposure to emerging threats faster than anyone else. Active Defense takes this a step further, delivering immediate, automated protection that stops threats before they impact our customers. We believe we’re the first in the Preemptive Exposure Management space to deliver this level of end-to-end protection, and not just focusing on identification of exposures.”
In addition to Active Defense, watchTowr has introduced several enhancements to its Proactive Threat Intelligence capability, which provides proprietary insights into real-time attacker behavior. These include Adversary Intelligence, which pairs threat-actor insights with an organization’s unique attack surface for contextualized decision-making; Compromised Endpoints, extending automated credential stuffing to enable investigation of credential sources and proactive prevention of identity-based threats; and Attacker Eye powered by STAB, a global honeypot sensor network that offers full-stack visibility into attacker behavior, post-exploitation actions, and early detection intelligence. The watchTowr Instinct, an AI-driven vulnerability intelligence engine, has also been enhanced to forecast vulnerabilities most likely to face in-the-wild exploitation.
These updates enable organizations to minimize exposure windows, enhance resilience, and mitigate threats at the speed of attackers. All new and enhanced capabilities are immediately available to watchTowr customers. watchTowr, trusted by Fortune 500 companies and critical infrastructure providers, specializes in Preemptive Exposure Management by combining proactive threat intelligence, real attacker telemetry, and automated red teaming to continuously identify and validate real exposure.
