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Cyber Threat Intelligence

Evidence-based information on attackers, including their indicators, strategies, motivations, and practical recommendations for countering them, is known as cyber threat intelligence (CTI). These can be used to safeguard important assets and provide management and cybersecurity teams with information for business decisions.

CTI is separated into multiple categories:

Strategic CTI	Decision-makers can benefit from high-level, long-term threat insights that emphasize patterns, new threats, and overall risk evaluation.
Tactical CTI	Gives details about particular dangers, attack trends, and adversary tactics.
Operational CTI	Emphasizes actionable, real-time intelligence that can support security teams in addressing and reducing present threats.
Technical CTI	Contains particular information such as malware hashes, IP addresses linked to threats, and indicators of compromise (IOCs).

The terms “data,” “information,” and “intelligence” are commonly used interchangeably in CTI.

Data

Unprocessed, uncontextualized facts and figures make up data. Meaning is not provided by data alone; processing is required to make the foundational layer useful.

Information

Data that has been structured, arranged, or processed to give it context and meaning is called information. Information makes data comprehensible and practical by providing answers to fundamental questions like who, what, where, and when.

Intelligence

Analyzing and interpreting data to aid in decision-making is intelligence. It entails spotting trends, forecasting patterns, and offering useful information. By providing answers to the “why” and “how” questions, intelligence facilitates strategic planning and well-informed decision-making.

In Short:

Data: Raw facts and figures.

Information: Contextualized data processing.

Intelligence: Analyzed data to offer guidance for making decisions.

Data ➔ organized becomes ➔ Information ➔ analyzed becomes ➔ Intelligence.

Why is Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) Important?

Role in Proactive Defense

CTI assists organizations in foreseeing risks before they result in harm. CTI enables security teams to anticipate, identify, and stop possible attacks before they happen.

Mitigating Risks

By giving you information about the particular challenges your company confronts, CTI enables you to focus resources where they are most needed. helps you identify the assets that are most likely to be attacked, which aids with patch management, vulnerability scans, and risk assessments.

Enhancing Decision-Making

CTI helps security teams and leaders make smarter, quicker, and more informed decisions. Aids in coordinating security plans with actual threat environments rather than only theoretical ones.

In Short:

You become proactive instead of reactive using CTI.
Lowers operational and business risks.
At every level, it enables smarter cybersecurity judgments.

Key Terms and Concepts

Threat Actors

Individuals, teams, or institutions who target systems or networks with malevolent intent. For example: Hacktivists, cybercriminals, nation-state actors, etc. We are protecting ourselves from these bad guys.

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

Fragments of forensic information that reveal indications of a real or possible compromise. For example, phishing domain names, malicious file hashes, suspicious IP addresses, registry key modifications on Windows systems, etc. After or during an assault, IOCs assist in identifying infections or intrusions.

Threat Intelligence Feeds

Both internal and external sources generate constant streams of threat data and IOCs. For example: Email alerts about new ransomware groups; lists of dangerous IPs updated hourly; etc. Feeds enable analysts and security tools to automatically stay up to date on the most recent threats.

Kill Chain

A framework that outlines the actions an attacker takes to finish a cyberattack.

Stages:

You can halt an attack by breaking any link in the death chain.

MITRE ATT&CK Framework

A knowledge base of adversary tactics, methods, and procedures (TTPs) based on actual observations that is available worldwide. For example: Phishing technique; Initial access tactic; etc. By mapping attacks, ATT&CK enhances defensive, reaction, and detection tactics.

CTI Lifecycle

Planning and Direction

Clearly state your objectives, priorities, and the intelligence required.

Collection

After goals have been established, collect raw data from multiple sources, such as threat feeds, internal logs, dark web monitoring, etc. The available commercial, private, and open-source resources will be used by analysts to do this. Given the amount of data analysts often deal with, automating this step is advised to free up time for incident triage.

Processing

When utilized to investigate an incident, raw logs, malware, vulnerability information, and network traffic typically come in various forms and may be disconnected. During this stage, the data is extracted, sorted, organized, correlated with the proper tags, and visually presented in a way that the analysts can use and comprehend. SIEMs provide rapid data parsing and are useful tools for accomplishing this.

Analysis

After gathering information, security analysts need to extract insights. Determine dangers, trends, and motivations by interpreting the processed data.

Dissemination

The intelligence will be consumed by many organizational stakeholders in a variety of formats and languages. Distribute the completed intelligence to the appropriate parties (partners, SOC teams, and executives). It is increasingly probable that analysts will share threat IOCs, opponent TTPs, and tactical action plans with the technical team.

Feedback

The most important portion is covered in the last step, where analysts use stakeholder feedback to enhance the threat intelligence procedure and security control implementation. Teams should regularly engage in feedback exchanges to maintain the lifecycle’s functionality.

Plan ➔ Collect ➔ Process ➔ Analyze ➔ Disseminate ➔ Feedback ➔ (Cycle repeats)

Threat Intelligence Collection and Sources

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)

Gathering data from sources that are open to the public. For example: government alerts, blogs, forums, social media, news websites, etc.

Human Intelligence (HUMINT)

Intelligence obtained straight from the source. Sources: Informants in cybercriminal organizations, interviews, insider reports, etc.

Technical Intelligence (TECHINT)

Gathering technical information straight from networks and systems. Sources include malware analysis, network logs, honeypots, and more.

Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT)

Keeping an eye on social media sites for information about threats. Sources include Telegram hacker channels, threat actor tweets, dark web marketplaces, and more.

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT)

Obtaining intelligence via intercepting electronic signals. Sources include traffic pattern analysis and the monitoring of suspect communications.

Tools for Threat Intelligence Analysis

SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) Tools

By examining vast volumes of data, SIEMs assist in identifying trends and anomalous activity.

Purpose: Gather, organize, and evaluate security logs from all areas of the company.
Examples: Elastic SIEM, IBM QRadar, Splunk, etc.

Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs)

TIPs assist in automating threat hunting and analysis by centralizing all CTI information.

Purpose: Combine, oversee, and evaluate threat intelligence from many sources.
Examples: ThreatConnect, Anomali ThreatStream, Recorded Future, and so on.

Malware Analysis Tools

Building defenses and IOCs is aided by knowing what malware does.

Purpose: Examine questionable files to learn about their capabilities, threats, and behavior.
Examples: Joe Sandbox, Cuckoo Sandbox, VirusTotal, and so forth.

Network Analysis Tools

Identify any irregularities or C2 (command and control) activity.

Purpose: Keep an eye out for harmful activity by monitoring and analyzing network data.
Examples: Wireshark, Bro/Zeek, Snort, etc.

Forensics Tools

Essential for thorough investigation and event response.

Purpose: Examine hacked systems and learn about the attack route.
Examples: Autopsy, Volatility, FTK, etc.

Conclusion

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About The Author:

Yogesh Naager is a content marketer who specializes in the cybersecurity and B2B space. Besides writing for the News4Hackers blogs, he also writes for brands including Craw Security, Bytecode Security, and NASSCOM.