A Beginner’s Guide to Cyber Threat Intelligence

The cybersecurity space develops methods to uncover vital information about potential threats and threat actors. One of the methods experts in the field use is cyber threat intelligence.

In short, cyber threat intelligence is all the data about known threat actors and threats. The data is processed and analyzed to better understand the dangers of potential threats and the actors behind them.

An important aspect of threat intelligence is understanding the threat actor’s motives, targets, and attack patterns. These are crucial aspects that security teams and experts hope to uncover and limit the damage of potential threats.

In addition, threat intelligence enables cyber security teams to make better decisions regarding their cybersecurity measures and shift the approach from proactive to active. This beginner’s guide to threat intelligence will tell you everything about the new form of advanced threats. So, let’s start.

What Makes Threat Intelligence Vital for Cybersecurity?

The cybersecurity world is taking active measures to prevent advanced threats from achieving their goals. But advanced threat protection isn’t enough, especially when threat actors are getting bigger and bolder with their approach.

The two constantly try to outmaneuver one another, and operational intelligence is vital to stop advanced threats. Simply put, it’s much easier to know how to stop cyber threats if we know their next move. That’s what threat intelligence hopes to achieve — to uncover a threat actor’s next move.

Moreover, threat actors tend to focus on specific industries. Leaders of these industries can use threat intelligence to protect their businesses from ransomware, spyware, phishing, and similar malware.

While basic intelligence isn’t difficult to obtain, advanced threat intelligence is the ultimate solution to integrate and protect systems and networks. The threat intelligence lifecycle begins with setting intelligence roles and operational scope and ends with a finished intelligence report on a potential threat actor along with their methods of attack, motives, and target industries. More on that later.

Below are several reasons that make cyber threat intelligence one of the most vital security tools:

• Uncovers new threats. The information collected on potential threats through thorough analysis has the potential to prepare your security team for new and emerging threat actors.
• Uncovers a threat actor’s motives. No threat actor will target you at random. Cyber security teams say that threat actors target specific industries for specific reasons. Threat intelligence can uncover a threat actor’s motives, tactics, and techniques in hopes of stopping threats.
• Uncover new ways to deal with threats. When we know the attack surface, we have better ways to deal with the threat itself. Throughout the threat intelligence lifecycle, one of the stages solely focuses on developing new detection capabilities and ways to deal with emerging attacks.

With that out the way, let’s look at the threat intelligence lifecycle.

Threat Intelligence Lifecycle — Key Objectives

The threat intelligence lifecycle has five stages. Let’s look at the key objective of each one.

• Phase One — Planning

Threat intelligence works from the ground up. Therefore, the first stage involves planning. Planning in threat intelligence involves several tasks. Arguably, the most important task is laying out the goals for your threat intelligence. In addition, most of the tasks in this phase involve setting objectives for other phases.

To better understand the first phase, remember that you’re supposed to assess which parts of your business are at risk of being targeted. Is it your employees, assets, or applications?

• Phase Two — Collection

In the next phase of threat intelligence, the collection phase, experts look to collect data points on known and lesser-known threat actors. Experts will usually cast a wide net on a specific part of the internet in hopes of acquiring more information. A common ground for acquiring information on threat actors is the Dark Web.

In addition, threat intelligence will also acquire malware samples in hopes of reverse-engineering the malware. That way, your tactical intelligence and incident response teams will have a better understanding of how to deal with specific malware.

• Phase Three — Analysis

The analysis phase is mostly human-oriented and involves plenty of mundane tasks. These tasks are low-risk by nature. Common tasks in this phase include analyzing structural data of malware, data modeling, etc.

• Phase Four — Production

The production phase looks to take all the compiled data and make it visually presentable. By that, we mean turning the data into graphical charts, dashboards, and other means of presenting complex information visually presentable. You get full creative freedom in the way you wish to present the raw data. You can present the most meaningful and essential data or do a full production report.

A core pillar of phase four is recommending the appropriate course of action for each data point. You might have information regarding malware that bypasses network security, scans bad IP addresses, or targets domain names.

• Phase Five — Decision

The final stage or phase of the cyber threat intelligence lifecycle is to consider everything and make a decision. This phase begins with sending the intelligence reports to the appropriate security teams and ends with a full evaluation. Next, the appropriate teams and stakeholders will come to a decision on which areas of cybersecurity to strengthen and which strategies to implement to protect systems and networks.

Conclusion

That concludes our beginner’s guide on cyber threat intelligence. As you can see, cyber threat intelligence is an essential process of cybersecurity that looks to uncover the unknown. Considering threat actors work in the shadows, threat intelligence will shed light and aid your cybersecurity efforts.