Threat Intelligence Management Secrets
Even with a good security defense architecture, this will not prevent a knowledgeable and determined cybercriminal from attacking your organization. To solidify your defenses, you need to be well informed of the threats that are on the horizon.
One of the most critical assets for any organization is its data; it is of vital importance that you invest in setting up a Threat Intelligence solution for your organization. A steady supply of threat information may be helpful but is not enough to improve your defenses. You must analyze the threats and relate it to your organization, as well as the processes that you want to protect.
Is threat intelligence essential?
Threat intelligence is essential in terms of money and time that your organization can save when adequately managed. It is also necessary in the sense that it allows your organization to identify and prevent cyber attacks. It also helps in discovering breaches and anomalies in the system and infrastructure.
More time to react to threats
When a threat enters an environment, it usually has one to two weeks lead time before it exploits new vulnerabilities within the system. This means a security team only has days at most to eliminate a threat before it opens up new boundaries for it to attack. Studies show that organizations that are using threat intelligence identify threats 10 times faster than those who don’t.
Increase in staff productivity
Security breaches result in unplanned last-minute updating and downtimes. Handling threats even before they become critical is essential in increasing your staff productivity as well as your overhead cost. When you have a proper threat intelligence management, these will be eliminated.
Elimination of unnecessary expenses and fines from a security breach
Data breaches can be expensive when not solved immediately. With the credit card information, birthdays, and essential personal information that you have stored, one breach can result in mountains of fines and payments. Threat intelligence management will allow you to lessen this risk and make sure you save money in the long run.
Understanding how threat intelligence is produced
We usually derive our threat intelligence from raw sources as threat data feeds. However, these feeds are often similar information, and sorting them to suit our organization is time-consuming for analysts. What is critical is that we should know which data feeds to draw from and gauge it’s usefulness to our system. Another sign of a good threat intelligence solution is the ability to automate the sorting process, which will allow the analyst to research a specific area quickly. A diverse source of data is also essential in producing a good threat intelligence landscape. Data should not be limited to public threat data feeds but also from social media, technical sources, and even dark web forums.
Managing your threat intelligence production
The key to threat intelligence is not how much data you have, but what you do with that data that is critical. Managing the data that you have is the real gauge if you’re threat intelligence solution is robust enough to withstand impending cyber attacks. Think of a perfect security defense as a destination. The raw data you have gathered will sketch out the map, but the threat intelligence will give it context, it will show you the way to your destination using the map.
Sharing your threat intelligence production
While having those undifferentiated, unsorted data organized for an analyst to easily work on is a good start, it will prove to be a useless threat intelligence if it is not “actionable”. Here are the key elements that an actionable threat intelligence should have:
Timely - Time is of the essence especially when an impending attack is about to happen. The threat intelligence should tip you in advance before the attack happens so that your security defenses would be prepared to combat the cyber attack.
Contextual - The threat intelligence should be custom made for the system you use. It should be personalized. No use worrying about threats that won't affect your organization.
Coherent - The most critical element for a threat intelligence to be actionable. It should be easily understandable by the person authorized to take action. If the threat warning about the organization’s breach of security defenses lands in the wrong person, he might not understand the urgency and will not act swiftly to resolve the issue.
Applying your threat intelligence production
The threat intelligence services that you have set-up should be more focused on the people who will be using the intelligence reports generated by the system. This is where actionability is most needed. Here are some examples of people who will benefit from the application of the threat intelligence:
Analysts - Adding the threat intelligence solution to their existing security software would allow them to easily investigate incidents and help avoid false positives.
Public Relations Officer - They will be able to anticipate their moves in cases of brand-damaging hacks or leaks of sensitive information. The addition of various sources of data threats can be easily detected by setting up an alert every time the organization is mentioned.
Higher Management - By incorporating the threat management solution to the existing security protocols of the organization, the higher management can decide which department should be given a bigger budget in terms of ROI.
Threat intelligence management is a diverse process with a goal to achieve an accurate and comprehensive understanding of potential cyber-security breaches. It has countless various applications that are in reality even more than what one organization can use effectively.
The key to this is to decide which applications you need. Start by understanding how your organization works to come up with a list of applications you need. Eliminate what you don't need and focus on what is left.