As a cyber threat intelligence (CTI) analyst, do you ever feel like you’re trying to drink from a firehose? In-depth research papers, breaking news articles, cryptic social media chatter, and dozens of raw, unvetted threat feeds. The key to overcoming this challenge lies in understanding the two fundamental forms of data we deal with every day: structured and unstructured threat intelligence.

This guide will demystify these concepts and provide clarity in the chaos. We’ll explore the narrative power of unstructured intelligence, the automated speed of structured threat intelligence, and why you need both to build a complete and effective defense.

We’ll even provide a simple cheat sheet to help them distinguish between the two and demonstrate how they work together to transform a developing story into a precise, machine-readable alert that your security tools can act on instantly. Let’s dive in!

Before we start exploring data formats, it’s helpful to understand the different types of threat intelligence.