It’s widely understood that threat intelligence must be “actionable.” Although this is true, it’s just one characteristic of what makes threat intelligence valuable to a business. There are several other criteria that must be satisfied for intelligence to be impactful.
At Cyberint, we believe that impactful intelligence is the next step in the evolution of cyber threat intelligence.
An Increasing Volume Of Cyber Attacks
Every organization with a digital footprint experiences cyber attacks. This is true no matter how small the organization’s digital presence is— even if it only consists of a website and several social media profiles, there are plenty of attack vectors for threat actors to leverage.
Of course, the vast majority of organizations have a much, much larger digital footprint. Large enterprises often have thousands of IP addresses, domains, and subdomains to manage, typically spread out across different environments, from legacy on-prem data centers and private clouds to public clouds from multiple service providers and infrastructure hosted by third-parties like SaaS providers. This is not even considering the vast amount of social profiles that need to be monitored and apps under the brand’s portfolio.
As if all of this complexity wasn’t challenging enough, the volume of cyber attacks is remains high. The Anti-Phishing Work Group (APWG) observed over 1 million phishing attacks in the fourth quarter of 2023 alone. The 2024 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index reported a 71% year-over-year increase in cyberattacks that used stolen or compromised credentials.
the Cyberint Q2 ransomware report showed that while the number of ransomware attacks decreased in Q1 2024 to 1,048 cases, in Q2 2024, it increased to 1,277 cases. You get the picture—and it’s pretty grim.
Although many of these attacks are not sophisticated, the sheer volume presents serious challenges. Large organizations receive a constant barrage of alerts every day, often with very low fidelity, so it’s not easy to effectively triage alerts and uncover the real threats.
The Risk of the Supply Chain Risk
It was recently reported by Verizon that 15% of breaches involved a 3rd party. While third-party services are making our lives much easier, they also attract the attention of many threat actors, especially after last year’s successful MOVEit campaign.
An Asymmetry
This underscores a serious asymmetry in the cyber world: bad actors get unlimited attempts to breach the corporate network, but cyber defenders must have a perfect record. After all, it only takes one successful attack to cause serious financial damage to the enterprise.
Time For A Shift In Cyber Strategy
Not so long ago, the goal of the cyber defender was to prevent even a single cyber attack. Today, this is completely unrealistic. Rather than trying to stop every single attack, the most effective strategy is one of cyber agility.
Cyber agility focuses on identifying the real risks amidst a sea of alerts and responding to them as quickly as possible. The earlier a threat is detected and defeated, the smaller the chances that the attackers will be successful and cause harm to the organization.
So the question becomes: how can organizations accelerate the detection and elimination of a threat? The answer: impactful intelligence that improves visibility on relevant risks and minimizes response and takedown times.
Defining Impactful Intelligence
Intelligence must be actionable—otherwise, it simply wouldn’t be useful. Although it is a necessary condition, actionability alone is not sufficient for threat intelligence to be of value.
Threat intelligence must be impactful and have the following 4 properties:
- Accurate – threat intelligence must be accurate and true
- Relevant – threat intelligence must be relevant to the organization
- Actionable – there must be a way to mitigate and/or eliminate the threat
- Cost Effective – the cost of the threat must be greater than the cost of remediation
This new framework views cybersecurity as a business challenge rather than a strictly technical problem. Consequently, this new paradigm requires cyber threats to be addressed in an efficient and cost effective manner.
A Platform Approach to Improve External Risk Management
Now, no longer does threat intelligence just need to be impactful, in order for it to reach its full potential, threat intelligence needs to be part of the bigger external risk management. It needs to be intertwined with Attack Surface Management, Brand Protection and Supply Chain intelligence to be truly impactful.
This cuts costs since you’re paying for a single solution instead of four, making the system far more efficient and streamlined. Reducing time for risk mitigation generates a positive impact on the business and reduces the overall cyber risk.
Threat Intelligence: An Investment, Not An Expenditure
Cybersecurity is undergoing a fundamental shift where it is no longer seen as merely an expense. Now, it’s starting to be viewed as a business enabler. As a result, security leaders must be able to measure and report the results of investments in cybersecurity tools and technologies.
In other words, threat intelligence can no longer be a line item. It must be an investment that provides measurable outcomes and helps the business prosper.
At Cyberint, we are committed to providing real value to customers along the following metrics:
- Improved visibility on external IT assets, such as domains and IP addresses
- Increased visibility on abuse of brand assets, such as trademarks and logos
- Improved visibility on vendor targeting and risk
- Reduced number of false positive alerts in the SOC
- Reduced response time and takedown time
- Reduced risk from external threats on the deep and dark web
The Cyberint Argos platform delivers these measurable results, helping security leaders to make a business case for deployment.
To schedule a trial of the Argos Edge platform tailored to your organization, submit this digital risk assessment form and Cyberint’s experts will get in touch.
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