Darktrace’s acquisition of Mira Security reflects a growing urgency among cybersecurity providers to better understand threats hidden within encrypted network traffic. As protocols like TLS 1.3 become more common, traditional inspection methods are losing visibility. Mira’s approach inspects encrypted flows without exposing sensitive data, making it especially relevant in privacy-sensitive or compliance-heavy environments.
By embedding Mira’s capabilities into its Cyber AI Loop, Darktrace is strengthening its ability to detect and contain threats across the full lifecycle from early reconnaissance through to exfiltration. The acquisition aims to improve the platform’s performance in hybrid and zero trust architectures, where distributed systems and encrypted connections are now the norm.
Mira’s selective, vendor-neutral technology has already proven effective in defense, education, and telecom deployments. As organizations adopt encryption by default, Darktrace sees an opportunity to offer more complete visibility without reverting to legacy decryption tactics that introduce risk.
Who is Mira Security?
Mira Security is a U.S.-based cybersecurity company focused on encrypted traffic inspection. As end-to-end encryption becomes the default for securing data in motion, traditional monitoring tools struggle to maintain visibility. Mira addresses this challenge by analyzing encrypted traffic behavior without performing full decryption.
A key strength lies in its support for TLS 1.3, a protocol that enhances security but limits the metadata available for traditional inspection. Mira helps organizations detect threats within these encrypted sessions, all while preserving compliance with privacy and regulatory requirements.
The company’s vendor-neutral architecture is already in use across critical sectors such as defense, education, and telecommunications. These deployments show their value in environments where operational risk, privacy, and compliance must all be balanced.
Strategic Value of the Acquisition
Darktrace’s acquisition of Mira enhances its ability to inspect encrypted traffic while maintaining regulatory compliance and user privacy. This visibility allows its self-learning AI to make more informed decisions about threats hiding within encrypted protocols, which are increasingly prevalent across enterprise environments.
The timing reflects changes in enterprise security priorities. As companies embrace zero trust principles and shift workloads to cloud-based and hybrid environments, encrypted traffic now dominates internal and external communications. Mira’s technology enables risk assessments without decryption, making it easier for security teams to identify threats without introducing additional legal or technical risk.
This acquisition also supports growing compliance demands. For example, U.S. federal agencies are now required to implement continuous monitoring as part of zero trust frameworks. Mira’s integration helps Darktrace meet these expectations while expanding its value proposition across sectors with similar regulatory pressure.
Still, not everyone sees the move as a major shift. “Mira is a small data flow solution for encrypted traffic, something larger SASE and SSE players already offer,” said Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst at IT-Harvest. “This looks more like an incremental revenue play than a strategic pivot for Darktrace.”
Broader Industry Implications
Encrypted malware and stealthy lateral movement are creating new challenges for enterprise defenders. Encryption is essential for protecting data in motion, but it also limits visibility and allows attackers to operate without detection. TLS 1.3 has made this more difficult by removing the metadata many tools rely on.
“Darktrace’s acquisition of Mira Security is a strong strategic move that reflects the urgency around encrypted traffic visibility,” said Hank Thomas, CEO of Strategic Cyber Ventures. “This positions Darktrace to better serve critical infrastructure and government. It’s also a sign that real-time network visibility is far from solved.”
As a result, organizations are rethinking how they manage encrypted traffic. Many are moving away from full decryption strategies due to privacy, legal, and resource concerns. Instead, they are adopting selective inspection tools that can evaluate encrypted flows without exposing sensitive data.
With Mira added to its capabilities, Darktrace gains a stronger position in the market for encrypted traffic intelligence. Its approach aligns with the trend toward embedded AI and continuous threat analysis across the attack chain. As encrypted channels become more common, defenders will increasingly need systems that interpret behavior rather than relying solely on decryption.
Looking Ahead
Mira’s integration into Darktrace’s Cyber AI Loop is expected to support new detection and response features for encrypted threats. The company plans to embed these capabilities across the platform’s lifecycle functions – detection, prevention, response, and recovery – enabling faster identification of encrypted attacks without sacrificing privacy.
Future development is likely to focus on deeper insights into TLS 1.3 traffic, as well as on building inspection techniques that adapt to new attacker behaviors. Mira’s vendor-neutral architecture also creates opportunities for Darktrace to support more infrastructure types, including public cloud, private networks, and hybrid deployments.
“TLS 1.3 broke traditional decryption tactics, leaving many network tools blind,” said Eric Hanselman, Chief Analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Mira’s selective decryption offers a way around that, without risking sensitive data exposure. TLS 1.3 makes the attacker-in-the-middle tactics previously used by many network decryption tools much more difficult. It’s been a big win for connection security, but a problem for network monitoring.”
In a climate where encryption both protects and obscures, the ability to monitor traffic behavior without compromising compliance is becoming essential. This acquisition gives Darktrace a path forward to deliver on that need across both commercial and government environments.
