How Cyber Threat Intelligence Provides Security and Value to Business
Here’s how enterprises can make the most out of threat intelligence for smarter security.
Cyber threats are one of the biggest concerns for businesses worldwide, causing unprecedented harm and costs to information assets. Steve Durbin, chief executive of the UK-based nonprofit Information Security Forum, explains how organizations can leverage threat intelligence to help contextualize security data and prioritize remediation of major threats.
Most organizations strive hard to stay updated on the latest security trends and attack vectors to help defend themselves proactively against a growing barrage of cyberattacks. But staying on top of cyber threats is easier said than done. With growing IT connectivity and complexity, an expanding threat surface (remote workers, BYOD, shadow IT, Internet of Things, etc.) and a looming shortage of skilled cybersecurity labor, it’s now considerably more challenging and overwhelming for IT and security teams to collect, process and analyze security information and monitor adversarial tactics. This is why organizations need a robust mechanism that helps filter and contextualize vast amounts of security data and prioritize remediation of major threats: this is where cyber threat intelligence comes in.
What Is Cyber Threat Intelligence?
The word “threat” in cyber terms means anything causing harm to information assets. This can range from anything like a vulnerability (such as Solarwinds or Log4j) to an insider threat (such as disgruntled or careless employees) or from organized crime to hacktivists and state-sponsored attackers. “Intelligence” obviously means information that can be derived from multiple sources (internal sources like security systems, firewalls, user and entity behavior analytics and SIEMs, and external sources like open-source intelligence, social media intelligence, and dark-web intelligence). Threat intelligence overall is relevant, timely, contextualized, trustworthy and actionable information about adversarial threats, both present and predicted attacks against your organization.
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What Are the Different Levels of Cyber Threat Intelligence?
Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) can primarily be divided into three levels. At the highest level is strategic threat intelligence, which is a macro view of the threat landscape, a combination of emerging trends and strategic insights that are mostly applicable to senior business leaders who want quarterly or annual threat reports.
The next level down is tactical intelligence, which relates to a short or medium-term future. Tactical intelligence analyzes the TTPs (threats, tactics, procedures), uses real-time information to track and monitor threats and ensures all mechanisms are in place and in line with the current threat landscape. This level is more relevant for IT and security managers, analysts and technical teams looking to create a more proactive barrier upfront. The final or the bottom layer is operational intelligence, which is relevant to SOC and cybersecurity responders, focusing on the specifics of incoming attacks and real-time response necessary to prepare for imminent threats or bolster defenses when necessary.
How Does CTI Provide Value to the Business?
There are a number of ways in which CTI can be immensely valuable to the business. Here are the top six:
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- CTI provides organizations with imminent attack indicators: From a strategic standpoint, CTI can help senior leadership teams look at upcoming developments and provide executive guidance on any course corrections needed so that organizations can allocate appropriate resources and develop resilience. From a tactical standpoint, CTI can highlight imminent threats to operational teams so that they can proactively reduce the risk of disruption.
- CTI helps identify short-term priorities: When it comes to neutralizing threats, time is always a scarce and critical resource. CTI helps tactical and operational teams stay on course and focus their time and effort on building appropriate defenses and recovery protocols rather than wasting resources on false positives and low-priority threats.
- CTI educates the board on strategic outlook: CTI can help leadership teams identify emerging trends and assist them in making long-term business decisions based on potential risks and ROI. CTI will also help bridge gaps between security and business teams, making correlations between security and business goals as well as raising awareness around key security issues and investment priorities.
- CTI supports the reduction of risk: A continuous assessment of the threat landscape allows organizations the time to improve their situational awareness and understanding of cybersecurity risks. As a result, security teams are more knowledgeable and better equipped to defend the organization against high-priority risks.
- CTI increases the efficiency of security operations: CTI provides the latest information on IOCs (indicators of compromise), TTPs, profile on threat actors, etc., ensuring security operations centers and teams are aligned to the evolving threat landscape. In situations of an impending crisis or a breach, operational teams can improve their response times using CTI, which can significantly reduce the damage the threat can cause to the business.
- CTI helps uncover previously unknown threat events: When we talk about CTI clarifying the picture of what that threat landscape might be, the understanding of previously unknown threats can significantly help security teams pass relevant information to business so that teams can then embed that knowledge in future decisions and not repeat the same mistakes again.
A single analyst can conduct threat intelligence in an organization, and in more advanced scenarios, organizations can have a fully staffed, well-structured, matured intelligence unit. Regardless of what stage your organization is in, at some point, you need to consider the levels of outsourcing required because when we speak about these levels of data and information, and most organizations can’t analyze data in an orderly manner. Outsourcing is a great way of allowing organizations to understand how CTI works and validate the proof of concept before taking on additional overhead or building a full-time internal capability. Try focusing on just one type of intelligence (strategic, tactical or operational) and the goals you are looking to achieve. The pragmatic approach to CTI is just to try and crawl before you start to walk and then run.
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