Threat actors are constantly evolving and advancing
their attacks. Organizations seek to gain context on these attacks by
leveraging threat intelligence, which is actionable information about
adversaries and their Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs). A threat intelligence platform (TIP) is a solution that
automates the machine labor of threat intelligence, reduces time to detection,
and enables analysts to investigate and respond to cyber threats.
Automating Threat Data
for Faster InsightsThe number and sophistication of cyber security
attacks increases every day. Organizations need to know exactly what threats
they face so they can address them proactively and determine how to respond to
incidents more effectively. Analysts will look for evidence of an attack by
examining alerts from various security solutions, typically a Security
Information and Event Management (SIEM) system. However, because SIEMs were
built to process and store all of an organization’s data, many alerts that are
generated are not real threats. These false positives are not actually
malicious and usually take up a lot of time to investigate.With an already limited staff, this can be crippling
to the effectiveness of a security team. Threat intelligence helps analysts to
verify and filter through these alerts by correlating curated threat
intelligence with internal threat markers.Threat intelligence itself can present a number of
challenges. Indicators of compromise (IOC) can number in the millions and the process of
identifying those that are relevant is labor intensive. Threat intelligence
platforms are designed to automatically manage threat intelligence for faster insights
into cyber threats.How Threat
Management Fits Into the Security LifecycleEstablishing a strong security posture is an
iterative process. However, it can be overwhelming to try to improve everything
that goes into the security lifecycle, such as planning, monitoring, detection,
analysis, response, remediation, and feedback. Threat intelligence supports each
of these phases by providing context to help guide those actions so they are
faster and more targeted.Security teams have to plan for every possibility.
They assess what threats their organization is most likely to face based on
what product or service they produce, their geolocation, their political affiliations,
and more. Threat intelligence enables these teams to prove or disprove their
theories with verified information. Analysts gain more visibility into what
threats are relevant to them and how those threat actors operate. Beyond
analysis of this information, threat intelligence platforms enable analysts to
select and utilize what tools will be most effective for prevention and
mitigation.There are a few different ways to detect and monitor
for malicious behavior, but using threat intelligence is one of the most
advantageous. Pulling in external, verified context on threat actors and their
TTPs eliminates the need for security analysts to do the previous research to
determine what is and isn’t malicious.Organizations can quickly identify whether or not
those malicious indicators are present by correlating threat intelligence with data
from their existing security systems. Anything identified as suspicious can be
automatically sent to integration points for monitoring. This makes it more
likely to block something before it enters the network.ConclusionCybercriminals today are working overtime to target organizations
for exploitation. Your organization benefits from understanding your
vulnerabilities, staying ahead of threats and remediating events quickly. But
while your organization may have gathered large amounts of data from internal
security systems and external threat feeds, manually pouring through all this
data leads to vast numbers of false positives and false negatives.
Investigating all these incidents can quickly overwhelm your security team,
which is likely already stretched thin due to the cybersecurity talent
shortage.A threat intelligence platform automates the process of bringing together and analyzing internal and external threat information in a way that provides actionable threat intelligence, speeding and simplifying your entire security lifecycle. Whether you’re identifying relevant indicators of compromise and preparing to address them, monitoring, detecting and analyzing threats, responding to events, or looking to improve your security operations, a threat intelligence platform provides the data and context needed to prevent and address threats more rapidly and effectively.
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