A Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is a solution that collects, analyzes, and distributes threat intelligence data. TIPs can help organizations to identify and mitigate cyber threats by providing them with insights into known and emerging threats.
There are Strategic, Tactical, and Operational types of threat intelligence. The Strategic type of intelligence provides high-level information about the threat landscape, such as the goals and capabilities of threat actors. The Tactical type of intelligence provides more specific information about threats, such as the techniques and tools that threat actors use. The Operational type of intelligence provides real-time information about threats, such as indicators of compromise (IOCs).
It is evidence-based and rooted in data, and includes context - like who the attacker is, their motivations and capabilities, and where your system vulnerabilities lie. This information is often discovered after a cyberattack has already occurred.
Threat intelligence is developed through what is known as the intelligence cycle.
Threat intelligence is generally delivered via a threat intelligence feed. This can take the form of a report or collection of reports focusing on the activities of specific threat actors and identifying the processes and tools they use. It can also be a list of domain addresses of IP addresses where suspicious activity has been detected. Lists are typically more popular because they are easier to automate into existing processes. An IDS or a firewall, for example, can be tuned to react to traffic going to or from any IP address on the threat intel list. These detailed lists or reports can help to identify trends, which can help to improve your overall security posture.
In addition to knowing who may be attacking what, threat intelligence also includes indicators, implications, and mechanisms to help you make informed decisions regarding your security. Threat intelligence needs to be actionable — that means it should be timely, provide context, and be able to be understood by the people who make decisions.
Recorded Future is a powerful and effective cyber threat intelligence (CTI) platform that aims to empower administrators to protect their organizations from threats, both known and unknown. The machine learning engine that Recorded Future utilizes can process the same amount of data that 9,000 analysts working five days a week, eight hours a day for an entire year can process. It simplifies threat detection and remediation so that organizations can focus on other tasks.
Check Point Security Management is an advanced security management platform for enterprises. The platform integrates all aspects of security. A single platform manages the entire infrastructure, from data centers to private/public cloud deployments.
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence is a comprehensive security solution that provides organizations with real-time insights into the latest cyber threats. Leveraging advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, it offers proactive threat detection and response, enabling businesses to stay one step ahead of attackers. With Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, organizations gain access to a vast array of threat intelligence data, including indicators of compromise (IOCs), security incidents, and emerging threats. This data is collected from a wide range of sources, such as Microsoft's global sensor network, industry partners, and security researchers, ensuring comprehensive coverage and accuracy. The solution's advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms analyze this threat intelligence data in real-time, identifying patterns, trends, and anomalies that may indicate a potential security breach. By continuously monitoring the network and endpoints, Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence can quickly detect and respond to threats, minimizing the impact of attacks and reducing the time to remediation.
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is a comprehensive solution designed to help organizations effectively manage and analyze threat intelligence data. With its advanced capabilities, TIP enables users to collect, enrich, and analyze threat data from various sources, providing valuable insights and actionable intelligence.
One of the key features of TIP is its ability to aggregate threat data from multiple sources, including open-source feeds, commercial feeds, and internal sources. This allows organizations to have a holistic view of the threat landscape and identify potential risks and vulnerabilities. TIP also supports the integration of third-party tools and feeds, further enhancing its capabilities.
TIP provides powerful enrichment capabilities, allowing users to enrich threat data with additional context and information. This includes the ability to automatically correlate threat data with indicators of compromise (IOCs), threat actors, and other relevant information. The enrichment process helps organizations gain a deeper understanding of threats and enables them to make more informed decisions.
With its advanced analytics capabilities, TIP enables users to analyze threat data and identify patterns, trends, and anomalies. This includes the ability to perform advanced queries, create custom dashboards and reports, and visualize data in a meaningful way. These analytics capabilities help organizations identify emerging threats, prioritize response efforts, and proactively mitigate risks.
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform also provides collaboration features, allowing users to share threat intelligence with internal teams, partners, and the broader security community. This includes the ability to create and manage secure communities, share indicators and reports, and collaborate on investigations. By fostering collaboration, TIP helps organizations leverage collective intelligence and improve their overall security posture.
Anomali ThreatStream is a Threat Intelligence Management Platform that automates the collection and processing of raw data and transforms it into actionable threat intelligence for security teams.
AutoFocus contextual threat intelligence service accelerates analysis, correlation and prevention workflows. Unique, targeted attacks are automatically prioritized with full context, allowing security teams to respond to critical attacks faster, without additional IT security resources.
Group-IB Threat Intelligence is an extremely potent threat intelligence platform that is trusted by everyone from law enforcement organizations like Interpol to the threat analysts that rely on it. It helps users gain a deep understanding of the threat landscape that they face. Organizations that choose to use Threat Intelligence gain insights into how threat actors think so that they can counter them as effectively as possible.
ReversingLabs is the trusted authority in software and file security. We provide the modern cybersecurity platform to verify and deliver safe binaries. Trusted by the Fortune 500 and leading cybersecurity vendors, the ReversingLabs Titanium Platform® powers the software supply chain and file security insights, tracking over 35 billion files daily with the ability to deconstruct full software binaries in seconds to minutes. Only ReversingLabs provides that final exam to determine whether a single file or full software binary presents a risk to your organization and your customers.
VirusTotal is a comprehensive online service that analyzes files and URLs to detect malware and other malicious content. It provides a centralized platform for users to scan suspicious files and URLs using multiple antivirus engines and various other tools. With its vast database of antivirus signatures and behavioral analysis capabilities, VirusTotal offers a powerful solution for identifying and mitigating potential threats.
One of the key features of VirusTotal is its ability to scan files and URLs using more than 70 antivirus engines simultaneously. This multi-engine approach enhances the detection rate and reduces the chances of false positives. Users can simply upload a file or enter a URL to initiate the scanning process, and within seconds, they receive a detailed report highlighting any potential threats detected by the antivirus engines.
In addition to antivirus scanning, VirusTotal also provides other analysis tools such as file and URL reputation checks, file behavior analysis, and static analysis. These tools help users gain deeper insights into the nature of the file or URL being analyzed, allowing them to make informed decisions about its safety.
VirusTotal's extensive database of antivirus signatures and its continuous updates ensure that users have access to the latest threat intelligence. This enables the service to detect even the most recent and sophisticated malware strains. Furthermore, VirusTotal allows users to contribute to its database by submitting suspicious files, thereby enhancing the overall security ecosystem.
The user-friendly interface of VirusTotal makes it accessible to both technical and non-technical users. The scan results are presented in a clear and concise manner, making it easy for users to interpret and take appropriate actions. Additionally, VirusTotal offers an API that allows developers to integrate its scanning capabilities into their own applications or workflows.
Keep ahead of the latest threats and protect your critical data with ongoing threat prevention and analysis.
Sixgill’s fully automated threat intelligence solutions help organizations fight cyber crime, detect phishing, data leaks, fraud and vulnerabilities as well as amplify incident response in real-time.
ThreatQ is a Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) designed to enable threat operations and management. ThreatQ is the only solution with an integrated Threat Library, Adaptive Workbench and Open Exchange that help you to act upon the most relevant threats facing your organization and to get more out of your existing security infrastructure.
Using a centralized combination of network and endpoint analysis, behavioral analysis, data science techniques and threat intelligence, NetWitness XDR helps analysts detect and resolve known and unknown attacks while automating and orchestrating the incident response lifecycle. With these capabilities on one platform, security teams can collapse disparate tools and data into a powerful, blazingly fast user interface.
IntSights is the only all-in-one external threat intelligence and protection platform, purpose-built to neutralize threats outside the wire. With the IntSights solution suite, cybersecurity teams worldwide are equipped with the tools they need to detect, assess, and mitigate threats externally from the source, well-before before they reach the perimeter.
Cisco Threat Grid crowd-sources malware from a closed community and analyzes all samples using proprietary, highly secure techniques that include static and dynamic (sandboxing) analysis. It correlates the results with hundreds of millions of other analyzed malware artifacts to provide a global view of malware attacks, campaigns, and their distribution. Security teams can quickly correlate a single samples of observed activity and characteristics against millions of other samples to fully understand its behaviors in a historical and global context. This ability helps analysts effectively defend against both targeted attacks and the broader threats from advanced malware. Threat Grid’s detailed reports, including the identification of important behavioral indicators and the assignment of threat scores, let you quickly prioritize and recover from advanced attacks.
Flashpoint Intelligence Platform grants access to our expansive archive of Finished Intelligence reports, Deep & Dark Web data, and Risk Intelligence Observables in a single, finished intelligence experience.
Lookout is a well-established and powerful secure web gateway (SWG) solution that protects more than 200 million users from threats that can result from the penetration of unsecured web traffic into their networks. Lookout is designed to enable organizations to work remotely while maintaining a tight blanket of security over their confidential business data. It provides administrators with security that extends from their endpoints to the cloud service that they are using to run their organization’s network.
GitGuardian Public Monitoring allows real-time GitHub scanning and alerting to uncover sensitive company information hiding in online repositories. It monitors both organization repositories and developers' personal repositories. The solution gives visibility to developers and security teams on this very critical blindspot that are the organization developers' personal repositories on GitHub (80% of leaked corporate secrets on public GitHub come from developers’ personal repositories).
GitGuardian Public Monitoring is particularly interesting for companies with large development teams (above 200 developers) and modern development practices.
GitGuardian Public Monitoring cover 350+ API providers, database connection strings, private keys, certificates, usernames and passwords and intellectual property. It uses sophisticated pattern matching techniques to detect credentials that cannot be strictly defined with a distinctive pattern (like unprefixed credentials). The algorithm has a high precision (91% “true positive” feedback following our alerts, as reported by our users.)
The alerting is done in real-time (a few seconds after the secret was publicly exposed) which allows fast remediation involving in a collaborative way developers, security teams and operations.
GitGuardian Public Monitoring also allows red teams and pentesters to proactively look for sensitive information by performing complex queries on 12 billion documents and metadata from more than 3 years of GitHub history.
GitGuardian Public Monitoring scans public GitHub activity in real-time, helping organizations detect sensitive information leaks in source code repositories. Our solution gives Threat Intelligence and Security teams full visibility over their organization’s public GitHub Attack Surface, by monitoring both organization-owned repositories and developers' personal repositories.
With 80% of secrets and credentials leaks on public GitHub finding their source in developers' personal repositories, GitGuardian for Public Monitoring helps organizations address a critical security blind spot.
With real-time incident notification, Threat Intelligence and Security teams are guaranteed to reach the incident scene before everyone else and take action to mitigate the threat of breaches and intrusions.
THREAT INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence and Technology that enables proactive security teams with industry leading Adversary, Malware and Vulnerability Intelligence
Cognyte (formerly a Verint company) is a global leader in security analytics software that empowers governments and enterprises with Actionable Intelligence for a safer world.
Group-IB is a Singapore-based provider of solutions aimed at the detection and prevention of cyberattacks and online fraud. The company also specializes in high-profile cyber investigations and IP protection services. Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence & Attribution system has been named one of the best in class by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, while its Threat Hunting Framework has been recognized as one of the leaders in Network Detection and Response.
Group-IB’s technological leadership is built on the company’s 18 years of hands-on experience in cybercrime investigations around the world and 65 000 hours of cybersecurity incident response accumulated in one of the biggest forensic laboratory and a round-the-clock center providing a rapid response to cyber incidents — CERT-GIB.
Group-IB is a partner of INTERPOL, Europol, and has been recommended by the OSCE as a cybersecurity solutions provider.
Defend Better Together
TruSTAR is an Intelligence Management Platform that helps you operationalize data across tools and teams, helping you prioritize investigations and accelerate incident response.
PLATFORM OVERVIEW
Proofpoint ET Intelligence is the industry’s most timely and accurate source of threat intelligence. Combining actionable up-to-the-minute IP and Domain reputation feeds with a database of globally observed threats and malware analysis, ET Intelligence gives the security professional the intelligence to proactively stop malicious attacks and provide the context needed to investigate them.
Iris is a proprietary threat intelligence and investigation platform that combines enterprise-grade domain and DNS-based intelligence with an intuitive web interface, helping security teams quickly and efficiently investigate potential cybercrime and cyberespionage.
Integrate threat intelligence into endpoint protection, expose threats outside the perimeter
and gain access to industry-leading, adversary-focused research.
Counteracting modern cyberthreats requires a 360-degree view of the tactics and tools used by threat actors. Generating this intelligence and identifying the most effective countermeasures requires constant dedication and high levels of expertise. With petabytes of rich threat data to mine, advanced machine-learning technologies and a unique pool of world experts, we at Kaspersky Lab work to support you with the latest threat intelligence from all around the world, helping you maintain immunity to even previously unseen cyber-attacks.
EclecticIQ Platform is a Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) that empowers threat analysts to perform faster, better, and deeper investigations while disseminating intelligence at machine-speed.
For companies that want to manage their security posture against the evolving threat landscape: Cymulate SaaS-based Extended Security Posture Management (XSPM) deploys within an hour, enabling security professionals to continuously challenge, validate and optimize their cyber-security posture end-to-end across the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
Centripetal CleanINTERNET is a cost-effective, industry and vertically agnostic solution that provides mass scale shielding of all known cyber threats to prevent network infiltration and data exfiltration that leverages 3500 cyber threat feeds from over 70 sources and an elite and experienced team of cyber threat analysts that acts as, or an extension of your internal cyber security team.
We scour the web, the dark web and the deep Internet to empower SOC teams all over the world with advanced cyber threat intel.
Farsight’s Security Information Exchange (SIE) is a highly scalable data-sharing platform in which data is collected, aggregated, processed, and rebroadcast in real-time. SIE data enables security professionals to accurately identify, map, and protect their networks from cybercrime activity by providing global visibility on a turnkey basis. It provides immediate access to worldwide real-time data without the need to develop or deploy your own data collection infrastructure.
KELA provides intelligence by using an automated technology, which monitors a curated set of Darknet sources, providing fully targeted, actionable intelligence. All threats are analyzed and qualified by KELA's analysts, ensuring all intelligence is 100% actionable.
Breachsense is a data breach monitoring platform that enables security teams to reset stolen passwords before criminals exploit them.
Cyware Threat Intelligence eXchange
A smart, client-server threat intelligence platform (TIP) for ingestion, enrichment, analysis, and bi-directional sharing of threat data within your trusted network.
Cofense Intelligence ThreatHQ provides real-world actionable threat intelligence for improved phishing defense and strategic planning. You can now easily track emerging trends in phishing, research active threats, and supplement your highest-priority investigations. Our improved intelligence interface empowers you to move beyond indicators of compromise and pursue an informed strategic defense against today’s phishing attacks.
Stop the damage of a data breach before it’s all over the news. VigilanteATI delivers actionable, targeted threat intelligence with context and analysis to alert you to potential attacks before they become a risk to your organization. We scour the dark web for chatter from bad actors, analyze threat data, and offer insights into how you can keep your business assets safe from past, present, and future cyber threats. VigilanteATI is way more than a dark web news feed; it gives you the who, what, where, when, why, and how so you can create the best defense plan for your business.
Global threat intelligence
“Secureworks doesn’t just alert us to incidents; they always
prioritize them and suggest a solution based on their global
scope and experience,” says Cone. “We simply can’t hire
someone with the threat intelligence Secureworks managed
services gives us.”
LookingGlass Managed Threat Intelligence combines broad structured threat data feeds and incidents of compromise (IOCs) with multi-source collection across the surface, social, Deep and Dark Web. Our managed service utilizes advanced content scoring and round-the-clock human vetting to deliver timely, relevant, and actionable intelligence across the entire spectrum of risks indicated online.
Digital Risk Protection
Curated threat intelligence and complete mitigation in one solution, protecting critical digital assets and data from external threats across surface, dark, and deep web sources. Email Intelligence & Response A comprehensive solution that provides intelligence, mitigation, simulations and training for threats that bypass email security controls and reach user inboxes.
Social links PRO is a professional bundle combining more than 1000 methods for Social Media, DarkNet, Blockchain, Internet Leakages, offshore, and more resources. It easily allows one to discover the complete online presence, identify the person behind digital credentials, and map group structure and members affiliation easily and conveniently.
Anomali Lens is a powerful Natural Language Processing engine extension that helps operationalize threat intelligence by automatically scanning web-based content to identify relevant threats and streamline the lifecycle of researching and reporting on them.
For security teams who need to quickly research threat actors, malware families, and attack techniques to confirm breaches and impact, Anomali Lens helps automate and streamline researching and reporting cyber threats to understand the threat type and severity to quickly prioritize response efforts other manual based solutions.
Silobreaker enables organisations to reduce risk by providing insights no other solution can match, at unprecedented speed.
Make intelligence-led decisions faster, with a one-console view of cyber threats, physical, and geopolitical risks. Silobreaker delivers insights no other solution can match, at unprecedented speed.
ThreatModeler software is as close to one-click threat modeling as there is in the market. Automatically convert your diagrams into threat models. Automatically see all threats based on your threat model. Automatically update your threat model based on new threats. If you’re serious about threat modeling, the ThreatModeler platform is your only real choice.
VIPRE ThreatIQ gives you the real-time intelligence you need to strengthen your cyber-defense and stop attackers cold. Today's cyber attackers don't mess around. They're sophisticated, and they know how to target your business: drive-by websites, phishing emails, ransomware, or even all-out network exploits.
Radware’s Threat Intelligence Subscriptions complement application and network security with constant updates of possible risks and vulnerabilities. By crowdsourcing, correlating and validating real-life attack data from multiple sources, Radware’s Threat Intelligence Subscriptions provides real-time intelligence for preemptive protection and enables multi-layered protection against known and unknown vectors and actors as well as ongoing and emergency filters.
WedgeIQ is a common virtualized threat intelligence engine supporting both Wedge Cloud Network Defense (WedgeCND) and Wedge Absolute Real-time Protection (WedgeARP) Series solutions.
VulnCheck helps organizations outpace adversaries with vulnerability intelligence that predicts avenues of attack with speed and accuracy.
Explore VulnCheck, a next-generation Cyber Threat Intelligence platform, which provides exploit and vulnerability intelligence directly into the tools, processes, programs, and systems that need it to outpace adversaries.
Cyberthint is an unified cyber threat intelligence platform that allows you to take precautions against cyber threats that may affect your company and employees in cyberspace.
Be aware of cyber threats targeting your organization in advance with Cyberthint’s advanced cyber threat intelligence technology!
Tessian Architect is a powerful policy engine for real-time email data loss prevention. It features a combination of the classic elements of DLP policies, as well as intelligent AI-based classifiers that provide custom protection against sensitive data loss.
Tines helps the world's most security-conscious companies automate their repetitive workflows. With a laser-focus on automation, Tines is powerful, flexible, and robust enough to run all of the security team’s critical workflows.
Total confidence for administrators and unrestrained creativity and secure Internet browsing for all users, on-site or remote – Heimdal Threat Prevention scans your users’ traffic in real time, blocking infected domains and preventing communication to cybercriminal infrastructures. With minimal system footprint.
NSFOCUS Threat Intelligence Subscription Service provides you with actionable intelligence that minimizes your risk and improves your overall security posture.
Utilising human research and custom search technology we uncover more risks when compared to automated tools. Create a custom threat intelligence feed, that reduces noise, allowing you to react faster to relevant emerging threats. Build a dynamic map of your public attack surface for complete visibility of your potential threat landscape.
Get one single source of truth, and eliminate uncertainty and false positives. With CLAW, all your data from your existing cybersecurity tools is accessible in one interactive lens, giving you ultimate visibility and control of your network and assets.
Everything-as-a-service encourages end users to continuously connect third-party apps into the fabric of the enterprise, resulting in thousands of shadow connections threatening to expose your organization to malicious access, data breaches, and compliance violations.
Astrix allows you to extend access management to non-human identities, ensuring your core systems are securely connected to third-party cloud services.
We believe in AI-augmented human decisions. Our platform employs the best of both worlds, Artificial Intelligence and human expertise, to help enlighten your cyber investment decisions.
Instead of starting with a massive pool of data and then mining it for usable threat intelligence, we first build a system for transforming human expertise into models that can evaluate complex security problems. We then apply diverse data to the model. With further analytics we can automatically score the highest-priority threat signals and rapidly deliver them to the right people at the right time. We have also built a tightly integrated ‘ecosystem’ of web and mobile apps to enable our users to manage their critical assets and incident responses.
The cybersecurity industry faces a multitude of challenges - from increasingly devious and persistent threat actors to false alarms and extraneous information to a shortage of experts on the subject. A cyber threat intelligence solution can help with all of these issues, using machine learning to automate the collection and processing of data, integrate with existing solutions, gather data from various sources, and then provide you with context on IoCs (indicators of compromise) and the TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) of threat actors.
Large enterprises are particularly vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks because of their size and the fact that it might take time for the IT team to discover that one of their departments has been compromised.
Well-implemented threat intelligence can help your organization to:
Threat intelligence platforms comprise various features that will help your security team to quickly understand what threats your organization is facing, to make better decisions, and to act upon them faster. Threat Intelligence Platforms can be deployed as an on-premise or SaaS solution and should be able to perform the following key functions:
There are three kinds of threat intelligence:
Analysts who have expertise outside of technical cybersecurity skills - such as an understanding of business and sociopolitical concepts - are required for producing strategic threat intelligence. They must conduct large amounts of research, some of which is difficult to perform manually. Threat intelligence solutions that automate data collection and processing are helpful in this process.
2. Tactical threat intelligence outlines the TTPs of threat actors in order to help you understand specifically how your organization might be attacked and how you can best defend against those attacks. Tactical threat intelligence is generally technical and is used by security staff, system architects, and administrators who are directly involved in cybersecurity.
Tactical threat intelligence can be found in reports produced by security vendors. It is important for informing improvements to your existing security controls and processes and to speeding up response time. Many tactical intelligence questions need to be answered on a short deadline, so it is important to have a threat intelligence solution that can integrate data from within your own network.
3. Operational threat intelligence is specific knowledge about cyber attacks, campaigns, or events that can help your incident response teams understand the nature, intent, and timing of specific attacks. This is also known as technical threat intelligence because it includes technical information such as what vulnerabilities are being exploited, what command and control domains are being employed, or what attack vector is being used. Threat data feeds are a common source of this technical information, as are closed sources such as the interception of threat group communications.
The following are barriers that can get in the way of gathering operational threat intelligence:
Many of these issues can be overcome with threat intelligence solutions that collect data through machine learning processes.
1. Social engineering. Almost one-third of security breaches in 2020 incorporated social engineering techniques. These include phishing (posing in an email or phone call as a legitimate institution to get personal details and passwords; scareware (manipulating users into believing they need to download malware), and quid pro quo (calling random people and pretending they are tech support int order to get access to the victims’ computers). At the core of all of these techniques is a manipulation of human psychology.
2. Ransomware. This is a program that encrypts data and then demands payment for its release. Ransomware is one of the most popular kinds of malware used for data breaches.
3. DDoS attacks. A distributed denial-of-service attack occurs when a system’s bandwidth or resources are flooded, causing a disruption in service. While the computers are down, hackers employ those that were previously compromised by malware to perform criminal activity. Criminals have also begun to employ AI (artificial intelligence) to perform DDoS attacks. Recent dependence on digital services and increased online traffic has created more vulnerability than ever.
4. Third-party software. If a program that was developed by a company other than the original developer is compromised, this opens a gateway for hackers to gain access to other domains. As many as 80% of organizations have experienced a cybersecurity breach caused by a vulnerability from one of their third-party vendors.
5. Cloud computing vulnerabilities. Criminals scan for cloud servers that are not password protected, exploit unpatched systems, and then perform brute-force attacks to access user accounts. Some also try to steal sensitive data, plant ransomware, or use the cloud systems for coordinated DDoS attacks or cryptojacking (mining cryptocurrency from victims’ accounts).
People often conflate threat intelligence and threat hunting, but they are not the same thing. Threat detection is a more passive approach to monitoring systems and data for potential security issues. Threat intelligence can be used to identify potential threats, aiding a threat hunter in his active pursuit of bad or threatening actors on the network that automated detection methods may have missed. It prioritizes the process over the matching of patterns.
Threat hunters develop hypotheses based on their knowledge of the behaviors of threat actors. They then validate those hypotheses when they actively search the environment for the threat actors. A threat hunter doesn’t necessarily start with an alert or an indicator of compromise (IoC), but rather with forensics and deeper reasoning. In many cases, the threat hunting is actually what creates and substantiates the alert or the IoC.
To be successful, a threat hunter must be able to use his or her toolset to find the most dangerous threats. He or she must also have knowledge of network protocols, exploits, and malware in order to navigate all of the data at hand.
Cyber threat hunting is often compared to real-life hunting. It requires patience, creativity, critical thinking, and a keen eye for spotting “prey.” The prey generally comes in the form of network behavior abnormalities, and a good hunter can detect it even before it has actually been spotted “in the wild.”
Threat intelligence is a part of the greater threat hunting process, but just because you have threat intelligence does not necessarily mean you have a threat hunting program.
Threat hunting is used to find threats that manage to slip through your perimeter-based security architectures. On average, it takes a company more than six months to identify when one or more of its internal systems have been compromised. And once an attacker has snuck into your network, they may stealthily remain, quietly collecting data, looking for confidential material, and obtaining login credentials so that they can move laterally across the environment.
Threat hunting is necessary in order to reduce the amount of time between when our protections fail and when a response to the incident can be initiated. Once an attacker has penetrated your organization’s defenses, you need to be able to find them and stop them. Cyber threat hunters gather as much information as possible about an attacker’s actions, methods and goals. They also analyze collected data to determine trends in an organization’s security environment, eliminate current vulnerabilities, and make predictions to enhance security in the future.
There are typically three steps in the threat hunting process:
Threat levels indicate the level of risk to your organization cyberattacks.
The cybersecurity industry faces a multitude of challenges - from increasingly devious and persistent threat actors to false alarms and extraneous information to a shortage of experts on the subject. A cyber threat intelligence solution can help with all of these issues, using machine learning to automate the collection and processing of data, integrate with existing solutions, gather data from various sources, and then provide you with context on IoCs (indicators of compromise) and the TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) of threat actors.
Large enterprises are particularly vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks because of their size and the fact that it might take time for the IT team to discover that one of their departments has been compromised.
Well-implemented threat intelligence can help your organization to:
Threat intelligence platforms comprise various features that will help your security team to quickly understand what threats your organization is facing, to make better decisions, and to act upon them faster. Threat Intelligence Platforms can be deployed as an on-premise or SaaS solution and should be able to perform the following key functions:
There are three kinds of threat intelligence:
Analysts who have expertise outside of technical cybersecurity skills - such as an understanding of business and sociopolitical concepts - are required for producing strategic threat intelligence. They must conduct large amounts of research, some of which is difficult to perform manually. Threat intelligence solutions that automate data collection and processing are helpful in this process.
2. Tactical threat intelligence outlines the TTPs of threat actors in order to help you understand specifically how your organization might be attacked and how you can best defend against those attacks. Tactical threat intelligence is generally technical and is used by security staff, system architects, and administrators who are directly involved in cybersecurity.
Tactical threat intelligence can be found in reports produced by security vendors. It is important for informing improvements to your existing security controls and processes and to speeding up response time. Many tactical intelligence questions need to be answered on a short deadline, so it is important to have a threat intelligence solution that can integrate data from within your own network.
3. Operational threat intelligence is specific knowledge about cyber attacks, campaigns, or events that can help your incident response teams understand the nature, intent, and timing of specific attacks. This is also known as technical threat intelligence because it includes technical information such as what vulnerabilities are being exploited, what command and control domains are being employed, or what attack vector is being used. Threat data feeds are a common source of this technical information, as are closed sources such as the interception of threat group communications.
The following are barriers that can get in the way of gathering operational threat intelligence:
Many of these issues can be overcome with threat intelligence solutions that collect data through machine learning processes.
1. Social engineering. Almost one-third of security breaches in 2020 incorporated social engineering techniques. These include phishing (posing in an email or phone call as a legitimate institution to get personal details and passwords; scareware (manipulating users into believing they need to download malware), and quid pro quo (calling random people and pretending they are tech support int order to get access to the victims’ computers). At the core of all of these techniques is a manipulation of human psychology.
2. Ransomware. This is a program that encrypts data and then demands payment for its release. Ransomware is one of the most popular kinds of malware used for data breaches.
3. DDoS attacks. A distributed denial-of-service attack occurs when a system’s bandwidth or resources are flooded, causing a disruption in service. While the computers are down, hackers employ those that were previously compromised by malware to perform criminal activity. Criminals have also begun to employ AI (artificial intelligence) to perform DDoS attacks. Recent dependence on digital services and increased online traffic has created more vulnerability than ever.
4. Third-party software. If a program that was developed by a company other than the original developer is compromised, this opens a gateway for hackers to gain access to other domains. As many as 80% of organizations have experienced a cybersecurity breach caused by a vulnerability from one of their third-party vendors.
5. Cloud computing vulnerabilities. Criminals scan for cloud servers that are not password protected, exploit unpatched systems, and then perform brute-force attacks to access user accounts. Some also try to steal sensitive data, plant ransomware, or use the cloud systems for coordinated DDoS attacks or cryptojacking (mining cryptocurrency from victims’ accounts).
People often conflate threat intelligence and threat hunting, but they are not the same thing. Threat detection is a more passive approach to monitoring systems and data for potential security issues. Threat intelligence can be used to identify potential threats, aiding a threat hunter in his active pursuit of bad or threatening actors on the network that automated detection methods may have missed. It prioritizes the process over the matching of patterns.
Threat hunters develop hypotheses based on their knowledge of the behaviors of threat actors. They then validate those hypotheses when they actively search the environment for the threat actors. A threat hunter doesn’t necessarily start with an alert or an indicator of compromise (IoC), but rather with forensics and deeper reasoning. In many cases, the threat hunting is actually what creates and substantiates the alert or the IoC.
To be successful, a threat hunter must be able to use his or her toolset to find the most dangerous threats. He or she must also have knowledge of network protocols, exploits, and malware in order to navigate all of the data at hand.
Cyber threat hunting is often compared to real-life hunting. It requires patience, creativity, critical thinking, and a keen eye for spotting “prey.” The prey generally comes in the form of network behavior abnormalities, and a good hunter can detect it even before it has actually been spotted “in the wild.”
Threat intelligence is a part of the greater threat hunting process, but just because you have threat intelligence does not necessarily mean you have a threat hunting program.
Threat hunting is used to find threats that manage to slip through your perimeter-based security architectures. On average, it takes a company more than six months to identify when one or more of its internal systems have been compromised. And once an attacker has snuck into your network, they may stealthily remain, quietly collecting data, looking for confidential material, and obtaining login credentials so that they can move laterally across the environment.
Threat hunting is necessary in order to reduce the amount of time between when our protections fail and when a response to the incident can be initiated. Once an attacker has penetrated your organization’s defenses, you need to be able to find them and stop them. Cyber threat hunters gather as much information as possible about an attacker’s actions, methods and goals. They also analyze collected data to determine trends in an organization’s security environment, eliminate current vulnerabilities, and make predictions to enhance security in the future.
There are typically three steps in the threat hunting process:
Threat levels indicate the level of risk to your organization cyberattacks.
