Those working in security and threat analysis are at the forefront of the constantly evolving threat landscape. Faced with a relentless barrage of potential threats, and their ability to conduct thorough and efficient investigations is crucial to their success. However, traditional investigation techniques can be unproductive, as they require analysts to jump between various tools, spreadsheets, and communication channels, and manually piece together information. This disjointed approach impairs their ability to analyze and respond to threats, leading to delays and potentially putting their organization at a higher risk.

Introducing Investigations Management

Here at Flashpoint, we believe in empowering security teams with the tools they need to stop adversaries. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce Investigations Management, a new feature within Flashpoint Ignite. Designed in close collaboration with dozens of threat intelligence teams at mission-critical enterprises, this feature optimizes the investigative process, enhances collaboration, and ensures proactive threat mitigation.

Investigations Management organizes your threat intelligence requirements into a streamlined investigative workflow, supporting the transition from identifying and analyzing threats to taking action. Its ability to collate disparate sources of data allows analysts to compile and access critical information quickly. When an investigation is sparked, analysts can immediately start documenting it within the system, creating a dedicated investigation folder that can be continuously updated with new findings. The goal is to make it easier to collect, disseminate, and collaborate on intelligence—ultimately increasing efficiency and accelerating threat mitigation.

Central hub for investigations

Investigations Management provides a single location to house all of your investigation findings. This includes gathering all relevant data on a particular threat across multiple data sources including intelligence reports, threat actor profiles, current news articles, illicit community and marketplace chatter, and much more. This centralized hub is essential for maintaining a comprehensive view of the threat landscape and ensuring that all team members have access to the most current and relevant information.

Facilitating collaboration

Collaboration is a core component of Investigations Management. It facilitates integrated communication among team members, allowing them to share insights, discuss strategies, and make collective decisions. With features such as commenting, note-taking, and live progress monitoring, every analyst is kept informed and can contribute effectively to the investigation. Past investigations can be archived and referenced, allowing teams to learn from previous experiences and apply those insights to future cases. This real-time analysis is crucial for understanding the evolving nature of threats and enables you to anticipate potential moves by adversaries.

Optimizing threat response

Once data is collected and analyzed, the focus shifts to actionable decisions. Investigations Management’s tagging and prioritization features help categorize and rank threats based on their severity and relevance. Automatic notifications and updates enable quick adjustments. Wrap up your investigation with a comprehensive report that neatly ties together information, while all your evidence and metadata can be bundled into a zip file, creating a concise and valuable repository of your meticulous research. Whether mitigating immediate threats, adjusting protocols, or informing stakeholders, Investigations Management streamlines the path from threat identification to actionable decisions.

Taking control of intelligence workflows

Investigations Management helps organizations further optimize their investigations by leveraging:

• Advanced Filtering and Searching: Organize your investigations with powerful filtering and searching capabilities to find the information you need quickly.
  
• Layered Access Control: Tailor permissions for each investigation, ensuring that the right individuals have access to the appropriate information and tools at each stage of an investigation.
  
• Customizable Tags: Custom tags can be tailored to match the unique requirements of your organization, ensuring that all relevant data is quickly accessible, which is crucial during time-sensitive threat analysis.
   
• Asset Linking: Integrate your organizational assets with ongoing investigations. This linkage not only provides context but ensures all investigations are comprehensive and no critical detail is overlooked.
  
• Detailed Audit History: Maintain transparency and accountability with a comprehensive audit history that tracks all activity within an investigation.

Real-world intelligence outcomes

Designed with centralization, collaboration, and efficiency in mind, Investigations Management supports a broad spectrum of intelligence use cases.

Let’s take a look at a few real-world examples:

Track threat actors efficiently in real-time

One of the primary responsibilities of a threat analyst is tracking threat actors and understanding their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Analysts can use Investigations to create custom profiles of threat actors and their motives, compiling critical information from various Flashpoint collections. This might include insights gleaned from:

• Finished Intelligence Reports to unravel the adversaries’ history and TTPs.
• Forums, Chats, and Paste Sites within our Communities dataset, to gather evidence of the group’s current activities, target selection process, and potential future plans. 
• Social Media and discussion sites to reveal public awareness of the group’s actions and potential victims. 
• Technical data including IOCs, malware profiles, CVEs, to identify the group’s infrastructure and preferred methods of intrusion..
• Threat actor profiles to generate an automated digital fingerprint of a threat actor to provide real-time insights into their current activities within online communities.

Investigations Management allows teams to analyze connections between these elements and identify patterns within a threat actor’s operations. Collaboration features enabled team members to review and contribute their own analysis, pooling their expertise and enhancing the investigation. This holistic approach enhances the ability to anticipate and counteract threat actor activities, making threat actor tracking more efficient and effective.

Secure exposed enterprise credentials

When enterprise credentials are exposed, swift action is critical. Investigations Management empowers analysts to consolidate and analyze credential leaks efficiently. In cases involving infostealers logs often contain usernames, passwords, host attributes and cookie data that serves as a detailed starting point. Analysts can then enrich the investigation by adding critical information across Flashpoint’s datasets, such as:

• Enterprise Credentials to check if any of the leaked credentials match compromised accounts within the organization, and identify affected domains and malware families. 
• Account Shops to verify if the stolen credentials are being peddled on illicit marketplaces. 
• Technical intelligence including malware profiles and IOCs related to specific malware stealers to identify the group’s infrastructure and attack vectors.

Collaboration tools expedite immediate actions such as password resets and session invalidations, while detailed reports and linked threat actor profiles offer insights into the cybercriminals behind the attacks. This comprehensive and organized approach, facilitated by Investigations Management, allows analysts to swiftly identify and secure compromised enterprise credentials, mitigating risks and potentially tracking the threat actors involved in the infostealer campaign.

Prevent potential check fraud

Investigations Management can be used to collect data on fraudulent checks found across different channels, such as social media and dark web forums. By building a comprehensive investigation, analysts can identify patterns and trends in fraudulent activities with concrete evidence. Analysts can leverage: 

• Flashpoint’s Image search capabilities to extract and analyze logos, names, and images on suspected fraudulent checks found online.
• Dynamic threat actor insights generate digital fingerprints into ‌threat actor’s current activities within online communities.
• Community discussions to uncover conversations about stolen checks or counterfeit check operations.
• Finished Intelligence specifically focused on financial crimes to understand current check fraud trends and the tactics employed by fraudsters.

The platform’s tagging and linking assets features allow for the categorization of different fraud schemes and the tracking of related assets. Collaboration features ensure that team members can share findings and coordinate responses effectively. This centralized approach helps organizations stay ahead of check fraud schemes by quickly identifying and addressing fraudulent activities, thus protecting financial assets and reducing losses.

Streamline your intelligence workflow using Flashpoint

The ever-evolving threat landscape demands a security team that can work efficiently and collaboratively. Investigations Management in Flashpoint Ignite equips your team with the tools they need to transform their investigations from scattered efforts to streamlined success.

By centralizing intelligence, fostering seamless collaboration, and providing real-time visibility into progress, Investigations Management empowers you to:

• Identify and manage critical threats and risks with a comprehensive understanding of the landscape.
• Make informed decisions based on potential impact, likelihood, and relevance to your organization.
• Accurately respond to threats with efficient investigation workflows and effective resource allocation.

Ready to learn more? Don’t let fragmented information hinder your team’s ability to protect your organization. Schedule a demo and see for yourself how Investigations Management helps your team ‌achieve superior intelligence outcomes.