An Introduction To Threat Intelligence

Organizations are under siege from cyber criminals, cyber attacks and data breaches have become a common occurrence in the news, with organizations regardless of size, type and industry succumbing to ransomware, phishing attacks, data breaches and all manner of cyber threats. The importance and need for a robust cybersecurity strategy cannot be understated, as criminals get smarter and more creative with their methods of attack, organizations need to match their efforts with an equally strong approach to information security. 

A large factor that informs the creation of a strong defense against cyber threats is understanding the tactics, techniques and procedures of malicious actors, this is where threat intelligence comes into play. So what is threat intelligence? Why is it important? Who does it benefit? This article aims to answer these questions and more. 

What is Cyber Threat Intelligence

The amount organizations have evolved in their methods of operation has increased rapidly, this is mainly due to our new digitized world. Digital technologies have revolutionized so many facets of an organization's operations, making them more effective and efficient, however with these positives, the chance of falling prey to a cyber criminal has also heightened. Threat intelligence enables organizations to fight back against these looming cyber threats, it is the practice of collecting, processing and analyzing data in the hope of understanding a threat actor's motives, targets and attack behaviors. Threat Intelligence helps inform an organization’s cybersecurity strategy.

Why It's Important

Threat Intelligence is important in today’s cybersecurity landscape as it provides organizations with a more proactive approach to defending against threats, versus a reactive approach. Advanced persistent threats or APTs and cybersecurity professionals are constantly trying to outmanoeuvre each other,  data collected during threat intelligence exercises can give defenders an upper hand, enabling them to preempt attacks and tailor an organization’s defenses to combat them.

With how rapidly the cyber landscape is evolving, insight into where the next attack might come from plays a crucial role in improving information security practices. Threat intelligence is actionable — it’s timely, provides context, and is able to be understood by the people in charge of making decisions, making it an important part of an organization’s cybersecurity strategy.

Threat Intelligence needs to be a part of every organization’s cybersecurity strategy. Here are six reasons why organizations should be utilizing threat intelligence: 

Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your security operations team

Threat Intelligence can assist an organization’s security operations team in identifying and prioritizing threats based on risk. Without threat intelligence, security teams may have a hard time deciding which threats pose more risk to their organization and may end up wasting time dealing with threats that have little to no risk of having a negative impact on an organization. By dealing with threats that have a higher risk, the overall response time of security teams can be drastically reduced, hence improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your organization’s security operations. 

Help your organization fight back against cyber attacks

Digital technologies have revolutionized so many facets of an organization's operations making them more effective and efficient, however with these positives, the chance of falling prey to a cyber criminal has also heightened. Threat intelligence enables organizations to fight back against looming cyber threats, it is the practice of collecting, processing and analyzing data in the hope of understanding a threat actor's motives, targets and attack behaviors.

Reduce the chance of facing financial and reputational consequences

By participating in threat intelligence exercises you can ensure that your organization has the best security against cyber attacks. Instead of a reactive approach your organization by collecting threat intelligence can remain one step ahead of attackers. Data breaches can cost organizations a lot more than just money, with huge losses in brand image and reputation. If a data breach were to occur and a customer was to learn about it, he or she will not trust your organization to safeguard their precious data. 

Spend money wisely when it comes to security 

Threat Intelligence helps your organization combine internal intelligence such as patch and vulnerability management with external intelligence on attacker tactics, techniques and procedures. This helps with overall resource allocation and allows for smarter investment decisions, for example; If a threat intelligence team identifies that an attacker is likely to target a specific department in your organization, your company can choose to focus its investments on that department rather than spending resources blindly.

Who benefits from Threat Intelligence?

The short and easy answer is everyone! Hackers don’t discriminate when picking their targets, therefore threat intelligence is an essential part of enhancing cybersecurity regardless of your organization’s size, it’s type or the industry it is a part of. Simply put it adds value across security functions for all organizations, below are a few examples of how certain roles can benefit from threat intelligence:

Types of Threat Intelligence

Threat Intelligence is often broken up into the following three categories:

Tactical Intelligence - Tactical intelligence is aimed at understanding the near future, is technical in nature, and identifies simple indicators of compromise (IOCs). A few examples of IOCs are malicious IP addresses, URLs or domain names. Tactical Intelligence is readable by machines so security products can easily collect it via their feeds. The collection of Tactical Intelligence is the easiest when compared to the other two types of threat intelligence, its collection can almost always be automated. An important factor about Tactical Intelligence is that it is only actionable for a short time frame and can become obsolete in a few hours to a few days, this is because an attacker's tools can change rapidly. 

Operational Intelligence - Refers to the collection of knowledge about cyber attacks, events, or campaigns. It provides incident response teams with help in understanding the nature, intent, and timing of specific attacks. Unlike Tactical Intelligence, machines alone cannot collect Operational Intelligence, human personnel are required to analyse raw data and convert it into a format that is easy to understand and use. 

Strategic Intelligence - shows how events on a global scale, foreign policies, and other long-term movements can potentially impact the cyber security of an organization. Strategic intelligence provides clarity to an organization’s threat landscape, It is intended to inform high-level decisions made by executives and other decision makers at an organization. For this reason the content is generally less technical and is presented through reports or briefings.

In our following blogs, we'll look at understanding the threat intelligence lifecycle, the value of sharing threat intelligence between companies, and more.

Does your company currently have any form of shared threat intelligence in place? If yes, awesome! If not, our expert team can help audit your systems and processes and establish cyber threat intelligence mechanisms to secure your business.