What is Threat Intelligence?

Cyberattacks have become an unfortunate reality in a world where digital technologies are constantly changing the way we live and do business. According to Gartner’s threat intelligence definition, TI is used to describe the evidence-based knowledge needed to prevent or mitigate those attacks. This knowledge includes context, indicators of compromise, and action-oriented advice. By understanding who is attacking you, what their motivation and capabilities are, and what indicators of compromise in your systems to look for, threat intelligence helps you make more informed decisions about your security.

Why is Threat Intelligence Important?

Threat intelligence is crucial because it helps organizations understand the threats targeting them. By understanding these threats, organizations can better protect themselves from attack.

• TI provides information on the latest tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by threat actors and insights into the motives and goals of these actors.
• It can also help organizations identify vulnerabilities that threat actors could exploit in their systems.

Threat intelligence is gathered from various sources, including dark webs, information-sharing communities, open-source data repositories, and commercial databases. This data is then analyzed and filtered to produce threat intel feeds, and management reports that contain information that automated security control solutions can use. As a result, threat intelligence enables organizations to be proactive in configuring their security controls to detect and prevent advanced attacks and zero-day threats.

Threat Intelligence Feeds

Are threat intelligence feeds the same as threat intelligence? Threat feeds are merely one type of threat intelligence. The term threat feed is used to describe data generated by threat monitoring systems and analysts, which can take the form of signatures or indicators that identify known threats — for example, an IP address recognized as malicious or a piece of malware code. These collaborative threat feed services collect and distribute threat information in real time so organizations can get ahead of cybercriminals.

In contrast with more general types of threat intelligence, such as vendor risk ratings and security assessments, threat feeds often require additional interpretation to be useful on their own.

What are Indicators of Compromise?

An indicator of compromise (IOC) is any detectable characteristic of an attack, such as malicious code, a hacker’s IP address, or the presence of a particular file on your computer. Threat intelligence aims to identify these IOCs before they cause damage.

Threat intelligence can be used to monitor and protect against both targeted attacks and opportunistic malware infections. For example, if you know that a certain type of malware is targeting your industry specifically, you can set up alerts to notify you when it appears on your systems. This is just one way threat intelligence can help you stay ahead of attackers.

Threat Intelligence Integrations

You can integrate IoC Feeds with your security technologies. By incorporating threat intelligence into your security operations, you can:

• Automatically block malicious traffic at the firewall
• Stop attacks before they reach your network or endpoints
• Quarantine infected systems and mitigate damage
• Identify compromised user credentials and prevent them from being used to access sensitive data

Brandefense has built a platform that automates this process by contextualizing each indicator from multiple sources. Threat intelligence is critical for protecting your digital assets, and with the right tools and integrations, it can be an invaluable part of your security strategy. For more information on our threat intelligence solution and how it can protect you, contact us today.

Brandefense Threat Intelligence Feeds

Brandefense censors gather data from many data sources like the dark web, honeypot networks, and open-source threat intel feeds. Brandefense threat intel feeds offer customers the ability to access all this data in a normalized and contextualized way. In addition, Brandefense applies an AI layer and advanced analytical techniques to identify the most likely and most dangerous threats.

Brandefense Threat Intelligence Solution offers:

• Taking early action based on the insights of real-time cases.
• Collecting actionable cyber intelligence feed to meet security professionals’ needs
• AI-powered intelligence to eliminate junk.