Cyber Security is paramount in modern business as attacks are constantly evolving and finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. To help combat these cyber threats, organizations and security professionals must expand their knowledge base and regularly adapt to the changing environment.
Operational Threat Intelligence is part of a wider strategy to help businesses and organizations protect themselves from attacks and data breaches. In this article, we discuss what Operational Threat Intelligence is, how it is used, and why.
Operational Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) focuses on how attacks like malware, Trojans and phishing are executed, what the attack footprints are, and what part of the attack surface is affected. This helps to create counter measures and understand how to patch vulnerable assets.
This intelligence allows cybersecurity teams to take a proactive approach to defend networks, identifying an attack before it can damage the business environment. Operational CTI works in conjunction with other forms of intelligence to form a rounded strategy that identifies weaknesses and takes appropriate action.
Operational threat intelligence uses technical CTI to enrich the correlated data. On a broader scale, tactical CTI uses operational CTI to build an understanding of the adversary and the means they employ to reach their malicious objectives.
Remember, hackers have many online resources to find out about vulnerabilities and coordinate attacks, such as forums and chat rooms. Infiltrating these areas can help to gather the latest information and plan a defense strategy. Defense can include a range of measures, from virtual private networks (VPNs) to firewalls and Zero Trust networks.
To summarize, Operational CTI is used to pre-empt cyberattacks and predict their impact by identifying network vulnerabilities and conducting threat hunting on suspicious activity.
Three other categories of Cyber Crime Intelligence are used to prevent attacks: Technical, Tactical and Strategic.
Operational Cyber Threat Intelligence can be used by a range of cybersecurity professionals. The identification of threats is not limited to just in-house operations, and vulnerabilities relating to customers, competitors, suppliers, partnered organizations, and anyone within the industry or sector are analyzed.
Professionals who might use Operational CTI include:
Security Operations Centers (SOCs) receive a vast amount of security alerts daily, far too many to investigate individually. This large volume of alerts could cause analysts to miss potential threats.
Gathering threat intelligence means that non-serious or non-relevant alerts can be filtered out, leaving only threats that require attention. This can significantly increase analysis times, strengthening prevention.
The gathering of cyber threat intelligence can be broken down into six steps, from the initial planning stages to determine whether the information was useful. CTI is not just data; it is a packaged solution that provides all the details needed to handle attempts of a data breach. Collating this information is meticulous.
Gathering Operation CTI data does not come without its challenges. It can be a lengthy process and requires an abundance of expertise and technical knowledge.
Operational Cyber Threat Intelligence is a vital component in preventing cyber crime. This data is collected from sources such as hacking forums, chat rooms and the dark web, and in vast volumes. The volume of this data means it is not always possible to gather it manually, and technology may be needed to process, organize and structure the raw information.
Once structured, the intelligence is formatted and distributed to relevant parties, including cybersecurity teams and high-level decision makers within organizations, to be acted upon. After action is taken, the effectiveness of the intelligence must be tracked and analyzed to help improve the process for the future.
Gain real-time insights into the global threat landscape with Bitdefender Threat Intelligence.
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Shanice Jones is a passionate business technology writer. She is based in Chicago, USA. For more than five years, she has helped over 20 startups build B2C and B2B content strategies that have allowed them to scale their businesses globally.
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