2026 WINNER · CYBERSECURITY STARS AWARDS
Corelight · Open NDR Platform
Best Network Detection and Response Platform
Overview
Corelight transforms network and cloud activity into evidence that security teams use to proactively hunt for threats, accelerate response to incidents, gain complete network visibility, and create powerful analytics. Corelight's customers include Global 2000 companies, major government agencies, and large research universities. Based in San Francisco, Corelight is an open-core security company founded by the creators of Zeek®, the widely used open-source network security technology.
Key Capabilities
Corelight is reshaping Network Detection and Response (NDR) with Agentic Triage, a category-first capability that brings autonomous, evidence-driven investigation to the SOC.
Agentic Triage transforms how security teams handle alerts. Instead of manually reviewing hundreds of fragmented signals, Agentic Triage automatically investigates the highest-risk entities, applies expert-authored playbooks, and delivers a single, evidence-backed verdict with transparent reasoning. This reduces triage time by up to 10x and allows analysts to handle a significant increase in cases with greater consistency and confidence.
Supporting this breakthrough are Corelight's foundational capabilities:
- High-fidelity network evidence: Corelight captures rich, protocol-level telemetry, built on Zeek® – an open-source network analysis framework and security monitoring tool – that provides a reliable "ground truth" for validating alerts and understanding attacker behavior.
- Advanced ML for encrypted traffic: The platform detects threats hidden in encrypted traffic by analyzing behavioral patterns, exposing command-and-control activity, tunneling, and lateral movement without requiring decryption.
- Behavioral detection of advanced threats: Corelight identifies multi-stage and post-exploitation techniques, including credential dumping, brute force attacks, and anomalous VPN or tunneling activity.
- Integrated response workflows: Native integrations with platforms like Microsoft Entra and CrowdStrike enable analysts to take immediate, one-click containment actions directly from investigations.
Combined, these capabilities enable Corelight to move SOC teams from alert overload to fast, automated, and evidence-driven response.
How we are different
Corelight is uniquely delivering AI that security teams can trust, by combining autonomous investigation with complete transparency and the industry's most reliable network evidence.
- Agentic AI that actually investigates, not just summarizes: Corelight goes beyond alert aggregation or copilots. Its AI autonomously executes investigations using expert playbooks and delivers definitive, evidence-backed conclusions.
- Radical transparency ("show your work" AI): Every decision includes the full chain of evidence, queries, and logic used—making results explainable, auditable, and defensible in real-world incident response and compliance scenarios.
- Evidence-first AI grounded in network truth: Corelight pairs AI reasoning with high-fidelity network telemetry, ensuring conclusions are based on verifiable data, instead of opaque models and guesswork.
- Visibility where others are blind: Its ability to detect threats in encrypted traffic without decryption gives defenders critical insight into modern attack techniques that evade traditional tools.
- Open-core heritage and credibility: Founded by the creators of Zeek®, Corelight brings unmatched expertise in network security and a trusted foundation adopted by enterprises, governments, and research institutions worldwide.
In a world where attackers are leveraging AI to move quicker, Corelight stands out by delivering autonomous, transparent, and evidence-driven defense – turning AI into a force multiplier that SOC teams can rely on.
Gallery
