Deception and stealth. These are the “modus operandi “ of clever cyber thieves. They typically sneak in discreetly through phishing and social engineering schemes and stay hidden in your network, alluding any attempt to discover a breach until it is too late.
With the growing sophistication and scale of malicious attacks, cyber threat intelligence is a critical security component needed to give organizations a deeper understanding of what’s happening inside and outside their network. It also provides better visibility into lurking security threats that bring the most risk to their infrastructure, such as zero-day and advanced persistent threats.
What is threat intelligence?
Cyber threat intelligence is collecting and analyzing information about indicators of past, current and future cyber threats. It includes in-depth information and context about specific threats, such as who is attacking, their capabilities and motivation, and the indicators of compromise (IOCs). With this insight, organizations can make informed decisions about how to defend against the most damaging attacks.
To address the limitations of IT staffing, organizations are teaming with trusted managed security providers (MSPs) to augment their security posture using real-time threat intelligence services. MSPs will collect information to identify:
- Types of threat actors that put corporate security at risk.
- The intent and capability of these threat actors to cause damage.
- Motivations of threat actors to breach security and cause potential damage.
- Vulnerabilities in accessing critical data and security that could increase the chance of unauthorized entry and compromise.
- Tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) likely to be utilized by threat actors.
Types of threat intelligence
Four categories of threat intelligence are essential in building a comprehensive threat assessment.
- Strategic – The big picture of past, current and future trends in the threat landscape. This analysis summarizes potential cyberattacks and the possible consequences for non-technical audiences and stakeholders, as well as decision-makers. Strategic intelligence helps decision-makers understand the risks posed to their organizations by cyber threats.
- Operational – Actionable specifics about the nature and purpose of attacks and attackers. Threat intelligence provides details on how an organization might be attacked based on the latest methods being used and the best ways to defend against or mitigate the attacks. This reveals the who, what and how behind every attack.
- Tactical – Details of techniques, tools and tactics used by attackers. This information focuses on signs that indicate an attack is starting, including reconnaissance, weaponization and delivery, such as spear phishing, baiting, social engineering and SQL injection.
- Technical – Technical indicators about malware attacks and campaigns (threat intelligence feeds). Information collected from a variety of sources, such as chat rooms, social media, antivirus logs and past events, is used to anticipate the nature and timing of future attacks (malware hashes, C2 IP addresses, etc.).
Know what’s happening in your network environment
Managed Security with Magna5 safeguards critical infrastructures from cyber threats and data breaches with multiple layers of defense. We proactively monitor all devices, servers, routers and firewalls, switches as well as end-user devices. Full network visibility with actionable threat intelligence data allows threat detection across all endpoints, on and off network. Our fully trained and certified experts monitor your networks and endpoints for security risks around the clock to protect sensitive data and comply with industry and government regulations.
