What is Cyber Threat Intelligence? A Beginner’s Guide

Cyber Threat Intelligence refers to the process where data is collected, processed, and assessed to understand a threatening factor’s motives, objectives, and behaviors. The solutions of cyber security allow the companies to make more complex and data-oriented decisions and convert their behavior in combat against the threat creators.

According to Gartner, “Threat Intelligence is evidence-based knowledge about existing or emerging menaces or hazards to assets.”

In today’s era, professionally managed security services are essential to deal with cybercrimes, and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and defenders are constantly in the process of outmaneuvering each other. Various organizations are rapidly identifying the value of threat intelligence. However, there is a fundamental difference between recognizing value and receiving value. Today, most organizations are focusing on their most elemental use cases, like combining threat data with the current network, firewalls, SIEMS, and IPS, without even understanding the advantages of the insights the intelligence can offer. The article briefly overviews the Threat Intelligence Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and the GCC Region.

Why Is Threat Intelligence Important?

Threat Intelligence is of 3 types: tactical, operational, and strategic.

  1. Threat Intelligence helps the security teams to make better and more insightful decisions.
  2. It strengthens the cyber security collaborations by disclosing the adversarial motives and their techniques, tactics, and procedures.
  3. TI assists the security professional in understanding the threatening element’s decision-making processes.
  4. It empowers business verticals such as executive boards, CTOs, CIOs, and CISOs to make wise financial decisions, reduce risks, upgrade, and make rapid decisions.

Whom Does Threat Intelligence Benefit?

Threat Intelligence helps organizations irrespective of shapes and sizes by helping them process threat data, understand the attackers in-depth, respond fast to the actions, and predict the threat actor’s next move with insight. The information enriches the SMBs with protective measures. Organizations with bigger security teams decrease the charges and needed skills by using the external threat intelligence and making the analysis more robust. SIEM admin as a service collects the tools to monitor real-time incidents and detect threats.

Threat Intelligence offers advantages to each position of a security team, such as:

  1. IT Analyst
  2. SOC
  3. CSIRT
  4. Intelligence Analyst
  5. Executive Manager

An Overview of Threat Intelligence Cycle

The primary task in this cycle is to collect information and change it into intelligence. The section will talk about the steps of the lifecycle.

1. Direction

The team plans the methodology and objectives in the direction or planning step. The information needed is:

  • Who are the attackers, and what are the objectives
  • Attack surface

2. Collection

The team starts collecting data to meet the requirements. Based on the objectives, the team searches the open web, dark web, and other Indicators of Compromise to gather the information.

3. Processing

After data collection, it needs to be processed correctly. The phase comprises disclosing files, arranging data, translating from foreign sources, and evaluating the data’s relevance.

4. Analysis

After processing, the team performs a complete analysis to detect and resolve the issues.

5. Distribution

The information gathered must be distributed to the stakeholders, and the team presents the information to the stakeholders in a straightforward manner.

6. Feedback

The final stage of the lifecycle takes the feedback based on request. The team checks whether any changes need to be made, as the client says.

To conclude

As discussed in the article, these are the basics of cyber threat intelligence. Digital Forensics and Incident Response Services are also significant aspects of this sector. Companies and business organizations operating offline and online must perform cyber threat intelligence to detect the threats beforehand and deal with the situation with expertise.

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