Cybercriminals constantly target businesses and try to infiltrate them to extract sensitive information or infect their systems with malware to disrupt their operations. Most companies know this and deploy many security measures to counter these threats. Unfortunately, cybercriminals frequently devise new methods to bypass security and commit their malicious acts.
These new methods can catch a company off guard, so they should implement proactive security measures that are effective against the threats they are yet to face. A company’s cybersecurity team needs threat intelligence to enact the right proactive measures.
Threat intelligence is information that teaches cybersecurity professionals about the threats their company faces and the actions they can take to detect and prevent them. This intelligence is created by cybersecurity analysts who gather raw threat information from various sources and analyze them to find threats and patterns that help the analyst understand the threat.
These sources include threat intelligence feeds, online forums, blogs, social media posts, academic papers, news stories, and reports from government data protection agencies and reputable non-governmental organizations. Depending on the intelligence source, the resulting information could be specific to the company in question or useful to other companies.
How Threat Intelligence is Used
Cybersecurity professionals use threat intelligence for the following:
Vulnerability management
It is challenging and time-consuming to scan every digital asset in an organization to find and patch vulnerabilities. However, this is the approach many companies take even though it can be counterproductive and sometimes unrealistic. Instead, cybersecurity professionals can combine the information from threat intelligence reports with the results of their internal vulnerability scans to determine the vulnerabilities to prioritize.
Incident response
Threat intelligence helps cybersecurity professionals prepare for the possibility of a specific cyberattack so they can adequately respond to a related security incident. Without it, an attack may occur and the personnel in charge of incident response will be scrambling to understand the problem. This will give the perpetrators enough time to carry out their malicious acts and delay disaster recovery efforts.
Risk assessment
Companies have to regularly conduct risk assessments so they know how potential cyber attacks can affect their IT infrastructure. Threat intelligence is crucial to these assessments because it gives cybersecurity professionals detailed information on how threats can affect their company. Otherwise, they will rely on assumptions, which are often not foolproof.
Attack prevention
While knowing how to respond to cyber attacks is worthwhile, it is better to prevent them. Threat intelligence teaches cybersecurity professionals about the threats their companies face and the motives of the malicious actors perpetuating them. They can use this knowledge to tighten their security measures and teach their employees to detect and report threats.
Endnote
Cyber threats can be massively disruptive to a business, so cybersecurity professionals have to take all the necessary measures to ensure they are protected. Threat intelligence is crucial to that effort because it helps them proactively prepare for cyberattacks. These professionals use this intelligence to produce reports they can present to their company’s management team to strengthen their security.
