How Cyber Threat Intelligence is Beneficial For Business?

Cyber threat intelligence is a powerful tool that allows organizations to filter and contextualize large amounts of security information and prioritize remediation of the most serious threats.

Cyber threats are a major concern for businesses around the world. They can cause unprecedented damage and cost to information assets.

Here are some ways enterprises can get the most out of threat intelligence to improve their security.

Organizations work hard to keep up-to-date on security trends and attack vectors to protect themselves against the increasing number of cyberattacks. It is not easy to stay on top of cyber threats.

An increasing threat surface, including remote workers, BYOD and shadow IT, as well as increased IT connectivity and complexity, makes it difficult to stay on top of cyber threats.

It's becoming more difficult and overwhelming for security and IT teams to gather, process, analyze and interpret security information, and monitor adversarial strategies, due to increasing IT connectivity and complexity.

What is Cyber Threat Intelligence?

Cyber terms refer to anything that could cause harm to information assets. It can be anything from a vulnerability to an internal threat (such as careless or disgruntled employees) to organized crime to hackers and state-sponsored attackers.

Information is information that can be obtained from multiple sources, including internal sources such as security systems, firewalls, and user behavior analytics. SIEMs and external sources such as open-source intelligence and social media intelligence.

Threat intelligence is information that can be used to identify and respond to adversarial threats. This includes both predicted and actual attacks.

What are the Different Levels of Cyber Threat Intelligence?

Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), can be divided into three levels. The highest level of cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is strategic threat Intelligence. This is a macro view of the threat landscape.

It combines emerging trends with strategic insights. This is most useful for senior business leaders who need quarterly or annual threat reports.

Tactical intelligence is the next level. It relates to the near or mid-term future. Tactical intelligence analyses the TTP (threats tactics, procedures), and uses real-time data to track and monitor threats. It also ensures that all mechanisms are up-to-date and appropriate for the current threat landscape.

This level is most relevant to IT and security managers, analysts, and technical teams who want to establish a proactive barrier. Operational intelligence is the last or bottom layer. This is important for SOC and cybersecurity responders.

It focuses on specific threats and the real-time response required to prevent them from becoming more serious.

How Does CTI Provide Value to the Business?

CTI can prove to be a tremendous asset for a business in many ways. These are the six most important:

1. CTI gives organizations imminent attack indicators: From a strategic perspective, CTI can assist senior leadership teams in looking at future developments and providing executive guidance on course corrections so that organizations can allocate the appropriate resources and build resilience. CTI can alert operational teams to imminent threats so they can reduce disruption risk.
2. CTI assists in identifying short-term priorities Time is a precious and crucial resource when it comes to neutralizing threats. CTI assists tactical and operational teams to stay on track and focus their efforts on building the appropriate defenses, and recovery protocols and not wasting time on low-priority threats and false positives.
3. CTI teaches the board about the strategic outlook. CTI helps leadership teams identify emerging trends, and help them make long-term business decisions based on potential risks and ROI. CTI can also bridge the gap between security teams and business teams by helping to identify emerging trends and assist them in making long-term business decisions based on potential risks and ROI.
4. CTI supports risk reduction: Organizations can have a continuous assessment of the threat environment to increase their awareness of and understand cybersecurity risks. Security teams become more informed and better equipped to protect the organization from high-priority threats.
5. CTI improves security operations efficiency: CTI provides the most current information about IOCs (indicators or compromise), TTPs, and profile on threat actors, which ensures security operations centers are in line with the changing threat landscape. CTI can be used by operational teams to improve their response time in situations of crisis or breach. This can help reduce the potential damage that the threat could cause to the company.
6. CTI helps to uncover previously unknown threat events When we talk about CTI, it clarifies the threat landscape. This information can greatly help security teams communicate relevant information to the business in order for them to make better decisions.

Conclusion: Cyber Threat Intelligence

An organization can employ one analyst to conduct threat intelligence. In more complex scenarios, an entire intelligence unit can be staffed and well-structured. No matter what stage of your organization you are at, it is important to determine the level of outsourcing needed.

Organizations can't manage large amounts of data or information and many organizations don't have the ability to analyze it in an organized manner.

Outsourcing can be a great way for organizations to understand CTI and validate the proof-of-concept before they take on additional overhead or build a full-time internal capability. Focus on one type of intelligence (strategic tactical or operational) and the goals that you want to achieve. CTI can be viewed as a pragmatic approach.