Terrence Driscoll, Chief Information Security Officer at Cyware, discusses how Threat Intelligence Platforms are helping security teams eliminate the need for manual data assimilation.
The arms race between the cybersecurity industry and threat actors continues at an unrelenting pace. As a result, the role played by threat intelligence has become increasingly important and explains why it now takes centre stage in the security strategies of organisations the world over.
In practical terms, threat intelligence involves the proactive collection, analysis and dissemination of information about potential cyberthreats. It provides organisations with the foresight needed to improve their defences by leveraging evidence-based information or knowledge of an existing or emerging threat’s capabilities, techniques, infrastructure, motives, goals and resources.
This approach has grown in importance because keeping a network and data secure is becoming increasingly difficult as the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by cyberthreat actors continue to become more sophisticated.
The problem is that legacy approaches to threat intelligence often fall short in the face of increasingly dynamic and sophisticated cyberattacks. One of the biggest challenges facing those reliant on manual threat intelligence processes is the sheer volume of alerts and sifting critical intelligence from superfluous or irrelevant noise.
Bridging the capability gap
To bridge this capability gap, organisations are increasingly turning to automated threat intelligence solutions to transform the way they identify, analyse and respond to cyberthreats. By raising the bar for sophistication and speed, Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs) are helping security teams eliminate the need for manual data assimilation – a task which currently requires significant time and resources, and consequently, can be extremely inefficient.
Adding automation to the threat intelligence mix not only allows users to understand their security risks with more clarity but also contributes to an ecosystem where information is shared with internal and external groups more quickly. This has an important knock-on effect across the cybersecurity community, where teams often need to react to emerging threats extremely quickly.
Digging a bit deeper into the legacy processes automation helps to improve, security teams will typically aggregate threat intel data from a vast number of sources and do so using various disparate and incompatible formats. This can include everything from internal logs and open-source feeds to rapidly changing threat intelligence feeds – in huge volumes. The problem here is that properly correlating this information so it can help prevent breaches is extremely labour-intensive work. At the same time, the sheer volume of data involved can result in mistakes being made, especially when analysis has to be completed under intense time pressure.
In this context, the role of automation is to liberate human experts from these repetitive and error-prone tasks. At the same time, the most advanced TIPs can integrate both structured and unstructured data, add further useful context and present it in a format that is easy to understand and evaluate. Moreover, this kind of standardisation means threat intelligence can be more easily integrated into broader enterprise security infrastructure, removing existing inefficiencies and promoting a holistic approach to threat prevention and mitigation.
This also helps address the key role played by intelligence sharing and collaboration, not least because it eliminates information silos and draws meaningful insight from previously unrelated pieces of threat intel. Automated processes can also be scaled quickly and efficiently to address new areas of risk or support other important business activities, such as mergers and acquisitions, for example.
Compare that to existing threat intelligence processes, where the lack of integration can seriously limit specific organisations, and the wider cybersecurity community, from working as effectively as they might.
Proactive protection
TIPs also allow security teams to focus more clearly on their own priorities and protection parameters instead of getting bogged down in irrelevant Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) that might not be relevant. At the same time, they can align their efforts more closely with internal governance standards and wider compliance requirements because, by using automation, technology is doing the heavy lifting.
Armed with these capabilities, security teams can become more effectively involved in the bidirectional information exchange that is at the heart of effective threat intelligence. In this context, vital threat intelligence can be shared across the security, government and industry-specific ecosystems, helping to close security blindspots and drawing on the value of a collective response to cybercrime.
Given the increasing levels of collaboration seen among threat actors, this kind of co-ordinated approach will play a huge role in countering the kind of threats that are emerging on a daily basis. Indeed, hackers are known to be working together in order to share resources and optimise their approach.
The underlying point is that threat actors are more professional, better funded and more effectively organised than ever before. Clearly, this significantly raises the stakes compared to just a few years ago when the cybercrime community was more disparate and populated by groups and individuals largely operating according to their own agendas. Add the risks presented by the use of AI, and cybersecurity is rapidly approaching a crossroads where traditional approaches need to be replaced.
This requires organisations to meet the risks head-on and use innovative technologies that maximise their prevention and mitigation strategies. By doing so, the industry can continue to address the wide-ranging risks it faces and frustrate the efforts of threat actors looking for the next opportunity to emerge.
