What is Threat Intelligence?

Many of us have heard the term “Threat Intelligence” tossed around, but let’s be honest — most of us aren’t quite sure what it actually means or how it impacts the cyber world. So, let’s break it down it simple terms and explore why it’s so essential in today’s cyberspace.

In this context, A Threat is any action that could disrupt or negatively impact a system. Intelligence refers to the information you gather about current and potential adversaries. At its core, threat intelligence is all about gathering and analyzing information on possible or ongoing attacks that could harm an organization’s security.

Imagine a radar system scanning the skies for incoming aircraft, then radar picks up the signals to identify planes. When radar identifies an aircraft, it doesn’t just stop there; it assesses the size, speed, and trajectory to determine whether it poses a threat or not. Similarly, threat intelligence filters through a wealth of information to provide context about potential attacks, including who might be behind them, what their motives are, and how they typically operate.

Threat Intelligence is not just random data; but it’s carefully curated insights and extensive research from various sources that provide context about potential threats, that enables the governments and law enforcements agencies, & also organizations to make informed decisions and strengthen their defenses.

Alright, so now that we’ve covered simple term of threat intelligence with an example too, let’s dive into the difference types of threat intelligence, there are four types of threat intelligence & it comes in various forms, with each serving a unique purpose.

Types of Threat Intelligence

1. Strategic Threat Intelligence:

Let’s start big. This is high-level intelligence aimed at decision-makers, like executives or management teams. It focuses on broader trends and the bigger picture, helping leaders understand the long-term impact of potential threats and make informed decisions about cybersecurity policies and security strategies.

• Strategic intelligence looks at the “why” &“who’s” behind attacks — understanding the motivations of attackers, their goals, and how geopolitical, economic, or technological factors may influence cyber threats.
• This intelligence can be collected from nation’s spy satellites, human intelligence (HUMINT), Signals intelligence (SIGINT), and other sources like social media and web intelligence.

Strategic intelligence generally includes:

1. Details on how adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) evolve over time.
2. The financial impact of cyber activities on organizations and industries
3. Insights into threat actors, motives, and emerging attack trends.
4. Statistical data on major incident like data breaches, malware & virus infections, intellectual property theft.
5. Analysis of geopolitical tensions and how they fuel cyber conflicts and espionage and etc. (The list goes on….)

2. Tactical Threat Intelligence:

Getting into the weeds. Tactical threat intelligence is key component in safeguarding an organization’s valuable resources. It offers critical information on the tactics, techniques, and procedure (TTPs) that attackers use to carry out their campaigns. This type of intelligence is primarily consumed by cybersecurity professionals, including IT service managers, security operations center (SOC) analysts, administrators, and security architect.

• It empowers these professionals by helping them anticipate how adversaries will attempt to breach their systems, revealing any signs of data leakage, and it sheds light on the technical capabilities and intentions of the attackers.
• Tactical intelligence focuses on the “how” of an attack.
• Tactical threat intelligence draws from a variety of sources, including incident reports, malware analysis, human intelligence, threat databases like MITRE ATT&ck framework and InfraGard, darknets, government databases like CISA, third party purchased industry reports & many more.
• By understanding these factors, security teams can develop detection mitigation strategies. This may involve updating security tools, recommending patches and finding the vulnerabilities, & reinforcing defenses well before a threat manifests.

3. Operational Threat Intelligence:

All About real-time action. Operational intelligence delivers insights into ongoing or imminent attacks. It provides real-time, actionable information that helps organizations and government bodies to detect and respond to threats as they happen.

• The focus is on immediate action — this intelligence is often time-sensitive and helps security operations teams identify indicators of compromise (IOCs) to stop or mitigate attack in progress.
• It enables organizations to gain insights into potential threat actors, including their motives, abilities, and opportunities to launch attacks. This intelligence also helps pinpoint vulnerable IT assets and assess the potential damage if an attack is successful.
• In most cases, government entities have the capacity to gather this level of intelligence, which proves invaluable to incident response (IR) and forensic teams.
• It assists them in deploying security measures, for detecting and preventing future threats, enhancing early attack detection capabilities, and minimizing damage to critical assets.
• Again, operational threat intelligence collected from various sources like.. social media, security logs, hacker chat rooms, antivirus logs, threat feeds, records from past attacks, etc.

4. Technical Threat Intelligence:

The fine details. This type of intelligence is the most granular, focusing on technical details like IP addresses, file hashes, URLs and specific indicators of compromise. It is useful for security professionals who are directly involved in monitoring and defending systems.

• Technical intelligence helps identify specific tools and infrastructure that attackers are using, enabling security teams to block malicious IPs or detect malware.
• A specific example of technical threat intelligence is the detection of a phishing campaign targeting a financial institution using TrickBot malware. This intelligence includes IOCs like malicious IP addresses, file hashes of malware attachments, and command-and-control- (C2) server details.
• It also identifies vulnerabilities in outdated software exploited by TrickBot, providing insights into its behavior, from credential theft to data exfiltration. This information enables the institution to block malicious domains, patch systems, and improve email filtering to prevent future attacks.
• The indicators of technical threat intelligence are collected from active campaigns, network monitoring, data provided by the third-parties and many sources.

Now, we saw four types of threat intelligence, let’s dive into our final and perhaps most important question — why does the threat intelligence matters?

Why Threat Intelligence is Important?

Threat Intelligence serves as the backbone of any solid cybersecurity posture. It’s not just about knowing what’s out there, but understanding how these threat evolve and, more importantly, how to say ahead of them.

Threat intelligence empowers organizations to make informed decisions, proactively defend against emerging threats, and allocate resources to the area where they’re needed most. Without it, businesses & organizations, are essentially flying blind, leaving themselves vulnerable to attacks that could cause severe financial and reputational damage.

“According to Security Intelligence insight by Jonathan Reed, 79% of cyber pros make decisions without threat intelligence.”

Attackers often remain hidden within an organization’s or governments systems by creating backdoors that cybersecurity professionals won’t even noticed for months or years, they are undetected and when their tactics and behaviors go unnoticed, they can inflict substantial damage well before the security teams becomes aware of the data breach or their data has been stolen and has sell it to online marketplace.

That’s why threat intelligence is so vital for both companies and governments. It provides the insights needed to detect hidden threats, threats actors, understand attackers methods, and respond proactively.

Whether it’s safeguarding sensitive data, protecting critical infrastructure, or preventing costly breaches, threat intelligence equips organizations, governments, enterprises, with the knowledge to stay one step ahead of evolving cyber risks. Without it, they risk being blindsided by attacks that could have been anticipated and mitigated.

Benefits of threat intelligence facilitates risk analysis, early threat detection, improves the security awareness, prioritize strategies, and keeping financial stability for the organizations, and governments, improves the defense for a nation by protecting against cyber threats, or non-sponsored nation state hackers.

That’s the end of the article, the next article will delve into the lifecycle of threat intelligence, exploring how it operates and evolves. Until then, stay vigilant and safe in your digital endeavors!