Thinkst Canary
Early warning honeypots
Thinkst Canary tokens and hardware honeypots act as tripwires in your network. When an attacker triggers a canary, you are immediately alerted - before the attack escalates.
What is Thinkst Canary?
Thinkst Canary is a honeypot and tripwire solution that acts as an early warning system in your network. Canaries are devices or files that look like real systems - a Windows server, a NAS, a router - but are actually detection sensors. Does an attacker touch a canary? You know immediately.
Zolder is an official Thinkst Canary partner. We use canaries ourselves and know from experience as pentesters how effective they are. During internal pentests we regularly encounter canaries - and that is precisely the point. In a normal network, nobody touches a canary. Only an attacker moving through the network encounters them.
Types of canaries
- Hardware canaries - physical devices in your network emulating services: Windows file share, SSH, HTTP, RDP, MSSQL.
- Canary tokens - virtual tripwires: PDFs, Word files, AWS credentials, DNS records or URLs that generate an alert when used.
- Cloud canaries - fake AWS keys, Azure tokens, Google service accounts in your cloud environment.
Why Thinkst Canary?
Your SIEM generates thousands of alerts per day. Most are false positives. Canaries are fundamentally different:
- No false positives: a canary is only triggered when someone does something that should not happen. No alert fatigue.
- Detection after the breach: canaries detect lateral movement - the phase perimeter security misses.
- Maintenance-free: once placed, no signatures, no updates, no tuning needed.
- Complementary: works alongside your SIEM, EDR and SOC. Fills a specific detection gap.
- Evidence: a canary alert is concrete evidence that someone is moving through your network.
Our approach
As Thinkst partner we guide the entire process. As pentesters, we know exactly where canaries are most effective:
- Assessment - where does an attacker move first? Where are the crown jewels? We know the answers from our pentests.
- Deployment - hardware canaries at strategic locations, canary tokens distributed throughout your environment.
- Configuration - the right services and personas. The canary must look like an interesting, real system.
- Alerting integration - connecting with your monitoring: email, Slack, SIEM, webhook.
- Maintenance - periodic checks and adjustment to changing network situations.
What does Thinkst Canary cost?
Annual licence for hardware canaries and/or tokens. As partner we offer:
- Advice on optimal placement (from a pentester's perspective)
- Full deployment and configuration
- Integration with existing monitoring
- Ongoing support and short lines for questions
Frequently asked questions
How many canaries do I need?
Depends on your network. Rule of thumb: at strategic junctions and near crown jewels. A medium-sized organisation typically starts with 3-5 hardware canaries and dozens of tokens. We advise from a pentester's perspective: where would we go first?
Can an attacker discover that it is a canary?
Thinkst Canaries run real services and respond like real systems. Without prior knowledge, virtually impossible to distinguish from a real device. We try regularly as pentesters - and are surprised.
What is the difference between a canary and a SIEM?
A SIEM collects log data and generates alerts based on rules. A canary is a passive tripwire - alert only when someone interacts with it. Complementary. Canaries fill a specific gap: lateral movement detection with zero false positives.
Ready to test your security?
Get in touch with our team for a no-obligation conversation about your security challenges.