Elena Canorea
Communications Lead
Understanding cyber security threat intelligence is crucial to identifying and mitigating potential threats to networks and digital assets.
We look at best practices for implementing threat intelligence, the types, their lifecycle, and tips on how to use threat intelligence proactively.
Threat intelligence (TI) is essential in today’s era because it enables businesses to gain insight into the motivations and methods of current and potential cyber threats, including industry-specific threats.
Threat Intelligence refers to the process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about potential cyber security threats to facilitate informed decision-making and define protection strategies.
Companies that take this proactive approach can stay ahead of malicious actors by identifying potential vulnerabilities, understanding attack patterns, and predicting future threats.
Cybersecurity teams benefit from mitigating risks more effectively, improving the overall security posture of the network, reporting on emerging malware strains, indicators of compromise, specific techniques and procedures, and so on.
The benefits that companies can gain by implementing Threat Intelligence range from improved threat detection capabilities or better response times, to better risk management.
As mentioned above, one of the key features is its proactive nature, which helps to continuously monitor and analyze potential threats from a variety of sources.
It is also a way to strengthen the overall security posture, making it more resilient to sophisticated cyber threats that can circumvent traditional security measures. In fact, it allows them to make informed decisions to prioritize security efforts and allocate resources effectively.
To use cyber threat intelligence effectively, we must identify what intelligence to collect, analyze, and consume. According to the SANS Technology Institute, when defining high-level threat intelligence requirements, we must identify:
In addition to identifying IT requirements, data quality must also be considered, as security teams cannot take action on large amounts of threat data. They need actionable, accurate, timely, and relevant threat intelligence against the latest threats.
The importance of threat intelligence in cyber security lies in its ability to proactively identify and mitigate security risks, safeguard critical assets, and ensure operational continuity.
By adopting this approach, organizations can stay ahead of emerging threats, enabling them to strengthen their defenses and respond quickly to incidents that may arise. Its integration into security operations gives a holistic view of potential vulnerabilities and threat actors targeting the network.
This approach reduces the likelihood of cyber-attacks being successful and minimizes the impact of breaches, resulting in reduced financial losses and brand damage.
To achieve this, its lifecycle is divided into several key stages:
One of the great challenges of the moment is making sense of all the threat intelligence that organizations are subscribing to from a variety of sources: commercial, open source, government, industry trade groups, and security vendors.
Some of the best practices for meeting these new challenges are as follows.
Not all threat intelligence is the same and can vary from company to company. Therefore, the value comes down to relevance and accessibility, which requires selecting a customized enrichment source and aggregating data filtered by a variety of factors, such as geography, industry, infrastructure, risk profile, and so on.
Starting with internal data, events, and telemetry, complementing it with external data to contextualize information from internal systems, allows understanding relevance and focusing on what is of high priority for each organization.
While it may be fine to give access to threat data to a broad audience, it is a better idea to have a team responsible for acquiring and analyzing threat intelligence and only deliver information that is actionable.
Not all stakeholders need all levels of intelligence, so think about how the same report will affect and be used by various teams in the organization (strategy, operations, tactics).
Threat data comes in various formats and needs to be standardized. The volume of information across the threat intelligence landscape is high and with different names.
Normalization is the process that compensates for this and allows information to be aggregated and organized quickly. An intelligent threat platform automatically ingests and normalizes data, structuring it in a uniform way so that it can be contextualized and prioritized, helping to focus on the most important threats.
Data analysis is challenging but crucial for any company. A good threat intelligence platform extracts context and helps use the information in different ways for different use cases, as well as supporting different outcomes.
It is also important that the platform has a good understanding of which adversaries might be targeting high-value data, the tactics, techniques, and procedures to focus on, and what actions to take.
Analysis allows prioritization so that appropriate actions can be determined. With an open platform that supports two-way integration with the security infrastructure, elements of your threat intelligence program become actionable.
Intelligence can be shared in the right way with the right teams to achieve the desired outcomes at strategic, operational, and tactical levels to maximize value.
Using Threat Intelligence helps to build a stronger security posture, enabling organizations to adapt to evolving cyber threats and regulatory requirements.
Facing a daily barrage of threats at different data points may seem impossible, but having a specialist cybersecurity partner will be the best solution to strengthen defenses, accelerate detection, and launch stronger responses. At Plain Concepts we propose a Zero Trust security model, the strategy that will help you meet the challenges of today’s landscape.
Moving to a Zero Trust security model doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. We recommend using phased approaches, closing the most exploitable vulnerabilities first, covering identity, endpoints, applications, network, infrastructure and data
.
We have already helped hundreds of organizations evolve their Zero Trust deployments to meet the transitions to remote and hybrid working in parallel with the increasing sophistication of cyber-attacks and new challenges posed by the latest technologies. Want to be next? We’ll help you!
Elena Canorea
Communications Lead
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__cfduid | 1 year | The cookie is used by cdn services like CloudFare to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information. |
__cfduid | 29 days 23 hours 59 minutes | The cookie is used by cdn services like CloudFare to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information. |
__cfduid | 1 year | The cookie is used by cdn services like CloudFare to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information. |
__cfduid | 29 days 23 hours 59 minutes | The cookie is used by cdn services like CloudFare to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not correspond to any user ID in the web application and does not store any personally identifiable information. |
_ga | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. |
_ga | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. |
_ga | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. |
_ga | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors. |
_gat_UA-326213-2 | 1 year | No description |
_gat_UA-326213-2 | 1 year | No description |
_gat_UA-326213-2 | 1 year | No description |
_gat_UA-326213-2 | 1 year | No description |
_gid | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. |
_gid | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. |
_gid | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. |
_gid | 1 year | This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form. |
attributionCookie | session | No description |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Analytics" category . |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 1 year | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 1 year | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary | 1 year | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Non Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to store the user consent for cookies in the category "Performance". |
cppro-ft | 1 year | No description |
cppro-ft | 7 years 1 months 12 days 23 hours 59 minutes | No description |
cppro-ft | 7 years 1 months 12 days 23 hours 59 minutes | No description |
cppro-ft | 1 year | No description |
cppro-ft-style | 1 year | No description |
cppro-ft-style | 1 year | No description |
cppro-ft-style | session | No description |
cppro-ft-style | session | No description |
cppro-ft-style-temp | 23 hours 59 minutes | No description |
cppro-ft-style-temp | 23 hours 59 minutes | No description |
cppro-ft-style-temp | 23 hours 59 minutes | No description |
cppro-ft-style-temp | 1 year | No description |
i18n | 10 years | No description available. |
IE-jwt | 62 years 6 months 9 days 9 hours | No description |
IE-LANG_CODE | 62 years 6 months 9 days 9 hours | No description |
IE-set_country | 62 years 6 months 9 days 9 hours | No description |
JSESSIONID | session | The JSESSIONID cookie is used by New Relic to store a session identifier so that New Relic can monitor session counts for an application. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 1 year | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 1 year | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
wmc | 9 years 11 months 30 days 11 hours 59 minutes | No description |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
__cf_bm | 30 minutes | This cookie, set by Cloudflare, is used to support Cloudflare Bot Management. |
sp_landing | 1 day | The sp_landing is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. |
sp_t | 1 year | The sp_t cookie is set by Spotify to implement audio content from Spotify on the website and also registers information on user interaction related to the audio content. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | 1 year | No description |
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | 1 year | No description |
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | 1 year | No description |
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | 1 year | No description |
_hjFirstSeen | 29 minutes | No description |
_hjFirstSeen | 29 minutes | No description |
_hjFirstSeen | 29 minutes | No description |
_hjFirstSeen | 1 year | No description |
_hjid | 11 months 29 days 23 hours 59 minutes | This cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
_hjid | 11 months 29 days 23 hours 59 minutes | This cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
_hjid | 1 year | This cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
_hjid | 1 year | This cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID. |
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample | 1 year | No description |
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample | 1 year | No description |
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample | 1 year | No description |
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample | 1 year | No description |
_hjSession_1776154 | session | No description |
_hjSessionUser_1776154 | session | No description |
_hjTLDTest | 1 year | No description |
_hjTLDTest | 1 year | No description |
_hjTLDTest | session | No description |
_hjTLDTest | session | No description |
_lfa_test_cookie_stored | past | No description |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
loglevel | never | No description available. |
prism_90878714 | 1 month | No description |
redirectFacebook | 2 minutes | No description |
YSC | session | YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video. |
yt.innertube::nextId | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
yt.innertube::requests | never | This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |