Cyber Threat Intelligence

What Cyber Threat Intelligence is?

In this age of advanced persistent threats, zero day attacks and advanced malware attacks, Threat intelligence is one of the key focus areas in the information security landscape. Threat intelligence represents the insights or intelligence derived from analyzing the contextual or situational threats in an enterprise’s cyber security environment. It helps enterprises in understanding the anticipated threats way before it strikes the threat landscape. Threat Intelligence constitutes organized, analyzed and refined information on the potential threats and indicators of attack methods, based on the Cyber threat landscape analysis. The predictions of impending threats and the possible attack models enable enterprises to prioritize vulnerabilities and rapidly brace themselves up to defend the threats.

Significance of Cyber Threat Intelligence

In the last few years, we have seen drastic changes in the cyber security landscape. The penetration of internet, proliferation of new age digital technologies, interconnected devices and anywhere any time access to information, have made the threat landscape complex. The threat actors are innovating at a faster pace than the defenders and cyber-attacks have become more sophisticated and unpredictable. Sometimes even the state sponsored cyber gangs are turning up targeting vulnerabilities in people, processes or technology in an enterprise. No enterprise/organization is completely immune to these kinds of threats and it is not possible to prevent all attacks or breaches. In a corporate context, cyber-attacks can lead to legal, regulatory and financial damages. Above all, it can adversely impact the brand reputation as well. All these remind us the significance of maintaining a right security posture in an enterprise. Many organizations are considering in- house Threat intelligence strategy as one of the key elements of a strong defense posture in an enterprise. The analysis of the potential as well as the existing threats and deriving some valuable insights will help security teams to anticipate threats quickly and act upon decisively and effectively to confirmed security breaches.

The Cyber Threat Intelligence Cycle

For creating a better threat intelligence, the security team should analyze existing and anticipated security threats, threat actors, exploits, identified malware, vulnerabilities and other compromise indicators in an enterprise landscape. The team should follow a cycle of operations including:

• Data Collection
• Data Processing
• Analysis and deriving intelligence
• Sharing the intelligence
• Action plan and execution

Happiest Minds Play around Cyber Threat Intelligence: Cyber Risk Protection Platform (CRPP)

How Threat Intelligence Sharing can help enterprises deal Cyber Threats

At a time when traditional security methods and measures are becoming less effective in addressing the new age security threats, concepts like threat intelligence and it’s sharing among the enterprises help in raising the awareness and sounding the alarm against cyber security breaches or attacks. This helps in avoiding resurgent attacks and emerging threats of the same nature in different enterprises, to a larger extent. Organizations have also started developing platforms to gather, organize and share threat intelligence information by attributing sources. This shared approach enables security defenders in various enterprises to proactively understand the evolving threat landscape and devise the defense strategy based on the real time information in an effective manner. Cyber threat intelligence is precious and sharing of it makes it more valuable on a global perspective.