What is Threat Intelligence? Mechanisms & Implications
Threat intelligence involves gathering, processing, analysing, and sharing data about hackers, hacking techniques, and other security threats. Use those insights to build a fast, accurate, data-driven plan to protect critical assets.
What is threat intelligence?
The average company faces a complex set of security challenges. You must know about issues happening right now. You must also know what's coming next. Threat intelligence solutions (typically packaged in software form) may help.
With a threat intelligence solution, you can:
- Understand your typical intruder. What does your attacker want? Where does this person come from?
- Parse common threats. What kinds of tools and techniques will your attackers use?
- Identify gaps. Is your current system equipped to handle the next set of threats? What should you keep? What should you change?
Most security teams gather data and make decisions based on their observations. Threat intelligence is different.
Think of threat intelligence solutions as a deep dive into your security landscape. The final product won't contain trivial or self-evident conclusions. Instead, you'll have a data-driven understanding of what's working, what's not, and what is coming next.
A successful cyberattack costs victims $200,000. With a threat intelligence program, you may save money on fees and payouts. Other benefits include:
- Fraud prevention. Understanding your threat landscape can mean spotting an issue before you're a victim.
- Threat detection. Some of the most significant security risks originate inside your company's walls. You may never find them without an intelligence program.
- Knowledge sharing. Well-distributed threat intelligence reports help everyone learn about security risks.
- Fast decision-making. A robust report, backed by data, leads to decisive action.
Anyone can benefit from a robust threat intelligence program, including both large and small companies. If you've ever faced a security risk in the past (and you probably have), the data you glean could be critical.
How Does Threat Intelligence Work?
As we mentioned, most cyber threat intelligence solutions are delivered in software format. Every program is unique and works differently. But most involve a few offline steps, and they all tend to follow a few basic steps.
Threat intelligence steps include:
- Planning/requirements. The team agrees on both goals and methods. They may focus on attacker profiles, attack surfaces, or current defences. The tighter the criteria, the better.
- Collection. Threat intelligence software gathers data points closely related to stated requirements. The system may pull from event logs, incident response reports, relevant forums, social media posts, and subject matter experts.
- Processing. The software prepares threat intelligence feeds for analysis. The program may use spreadsheets, charts, or other formats to make data easier to parse.
- Analysis. The team refers to goals outlined in the planning stages and examines how data answers questions posed ther