What is Threat Intelligence?
Those very same technologies that have allowed globalization, which have brought us all closer together and enabled organizations and brands to achieve the current growth and success they enjoy today, have simultaneously brought with them increased risks. These risks come in the form of increased vulnerabilities and exploitable attack vectors for cyber attackers. Threat intelligence is all about gathering data and knowledge to combat and mitigate these threats.
Threat intelligence provides organizations with information and context required to effectively predict and even prevent cyberattacks. Additionally, it helps inform security teams of the best practice for both preventative measures and response measures to ensure if there is a cyberattack the resulting costs are minimal.
In short, threat intelligence is the gathering of evidence-based knowledge to inform action-oriented preventative and reactionary responses to an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
The Importance of Threat Intelligence
Threat actors are increasingly persistent, and their persistence pays off. Even the most dedicated professionals can’t help but struggle to keep abreast of every new cybersecurity development. New exploits are constantly being discovered or developed and strategies such as social engineering are increasing in complexity. Security teams need up to date data and intelligence on evolving threats if they are going to be able to develop effective responses.
Additionally, within the corporate world one of the key buzzwords of the last two decades has been “accessibility”. Accessibility to data means organizations have necessarily become reliant on digital processes and almost everything is stored on the cloud. Unfortunately, while accessibility is essential to developing efficient processes, and effectively using big data, it also increases the number of threat vectors that attackers can exploit. According to the IBM 2020 data breach report the longer a data breach goes undetected the more expensive it ends up being for the organization. Primarily then, threat intelligence gathered using tools like Signal OSINT can help organizations detect data breaches earlier, mitigating the eventual costs both reputational and monetary.
The final reason that threat intelligence plays such a pivotal role in today’s security is the distinct lack of skilled cybersecurity professionals. Threat intelligence is a time-consuming business that requires a skilled deft hand to manage. The best threat intelligence solutions use machine learning to automate data collection, then filter and structure data from disparate sources to present only hyper-relevant information to a skilled security team for final analysis. The security team can then use this data to create effective actionable plans based on evidential knowledge. This approach optimizes the performance of both the cybersecurity professional and the intelligence tools being used.
Threat intelligence is actionable — it’s timely, provides context, and is able to be understood by the people in charge of making decisions.
Use Case Examples for Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence can be used in a diverse range of strategies which makes it an essential tool for security teams in any organization. It’s most immediate value is in helping prevent an attack by gathering intel on threats in real-time, however, it’s also useful for a broad scope of activities such as managing vulnerabilities, informing decision making, and responding to attacks as or after they happen.
Related: The Role of Threat Intelligence and Cybersecurity in Retail
Prevent an attack
From the time that a vulnerability is found to the time an exploit targeting that vulnerability is available for threat actors is shortening. Security professionals need to know about the vulnerability fast so that they can implement a patch and prevent it from being exploited.
Respond to a Data Breach
Data breaches are costly and often go unnoticed. With the right threat intelligence tools you can determine when a data breach happens fast and take suitable actions to mitigate the costs of any following repercussions.
Manage a Vulnerability
The approach of “patch everything, all the time” is impractical and will likely see organizations fall behind - leaving more serious vulnerabilities open for longer. Threat intelligence can help security teams effectively manage vulnerabilities by giving the salient data to allow them to prioritize patches based on actual risk.
Risk Analysis
This leads on nicely from the last point. Threat intelligence can help security teams determine the actual risks associated with potential vulnerabilities or attacks by providing additional contextual information. For example, threat intelligence can help security professionals answer the following questions:
Which threat actors are using this attack, and do they target our industry?
How often has this specific attack been observed recently by enterprises like ours?
Which vulnerabilities does this attack exploit, and are those vulnerabilities present in our enterprise?
What kind of damage, technical and financial, has this attack caused in enterprises like ours?
Fraud Prevention
Fraud can encompass anything from a fraudulent use of your brand, data, or even impersonation of your employees. For example, an individual might impersonate a doctor and sell fake versions of your prescription medication online.
Incident Response
Having the ability to gather and filter through threat intelligence from across the surface, deep, and dark web in real-time allows security teams to effectively and appropriately respond to incidents as they are happening.
How can Signal threat intelligence improve your organization’s security?
Signal allows our customers to analyze emerging global trends, detect threats in real-time, and then form appropriate security strategies to counter these potential threats as or even before they fully reveal themselves.
One of the key issues that security teams and analysts face is the sheer amount of noise that might surround their brand. Invariably much of this noise is irrelevant to their purposes, however, some of it will be bad. This is why Signal assists with advanced filters with boolean logic as well as features such as our emotional analysis tool.