Nightfall Detection Engine

An introduction to the Nightfall Detection engine.

Nightfall detection engine looks for sensitive data. When sensitive data is detected, a notification or automated remediation action is initiated. The detection engine consists of three components; Detectors, Detection Rules, and Policies.

A Detector is an entity that can detect the presence of sensitive data in publicly exposed entities. You can either use the default detectors provided by Nightfall or create your custom detectors.

A Detection rule is a group of detectors. Once you create your detectors or finalise the Nightfall detectors you wish to use, you can add them to a detection rule. You can customize the degree of weightage for each detector in a detection rule.

Once you finalize the creation of detection rules, you can add them to policies. A Policy consists of multiple detection rules. When a detector in any of the detection rules detects sensitive data, the Policy can trigger auto notifications to be sent to specific users, initiate automated remediation measures, and allow end-users to take remediation actions.

So, a Detector or a Detection rule do not have the ability to trigger alerts or take remediation steps by themselves, you need to add them to a policy.

The following diagram shows how you can leverage the three entities of the Nightfall Detection engine.