Threat Intelligence for SOCaaS Providers

The Security Operations Center (SOC) has undergone a significant change in recent years. What began as an actual physical place in some enterprises — a room where security guards monitored video feeds and access control — has morphed into a nerve center for the enterprise. Today’s SOC is responsible for monitoring global cyber threats, handling high volumes of notifications, and acting quickly to prevent attacks. Strong accurate threat intelligence is a critical tool for providers of SOC as a Service (SOCaaS), who must act quickly to protect their clients. 

How Flare’s Solution Helps Providers of SOC as a Service

Why use Flare to monitor threat intelligence? 

Any security team is likely to experience alert fatigue, but for providers of SOC as a Service, the constant noise of notifications can be particularly taxing. With numerous clients, SOCaaS providers process data and threat intelligence from several environments, including on-premise, cloud, and hybrid infrastructures. 

The sheer number of logs, alerts, and incidents can be overwhelming. Flare combats alert fatigue by automating the process of scanning for threat intelligence data for information that specifically targets your clients, only notifying your team when relevant information is discovered. 

How does Flare monitor threat intelligence for SOCaaS providers? 

Flare provides continuous monitoring of your clients’ assets, with automated monitoring across the clear & dark web, as well as monitoring prominent threat actor communities. This includes monitoring for stealer logs, especially those that contain access to RDP, VPN, and SSO credentials that could lead to a compromise of your customers’ data. As soon as your clients’ data appears in an unauthorized location, Flare sends your team a notification. This allows you to proactively discover leaked or stolen data or attacks that are still in the planning stages. 

What are the key benefits of Flare threat’s intelligence platform? 

• Unmatched data collection: Flare uses billions of data points to provide your team with information about your customers’ security stance, relevant threats, and the movement of threat actors between platforms. 
• Transparency: Flare lists every source so you can tell customers exactly where your threat intelligence data is coming from. 
• A proactive security stance: By actively seeking out potential threats, you can catch breaches early, giving customers an opportunity to take steps to protect their data, systems, and networks.
• Context: Flare provides context for every threat so that you are able to provide the nuance your customers need to make decisions quickly.

Threat Intelligence for SOCaaS Providers

What is threat intelligence and why do SOCaaS providers need it? 

Threat intelligence is data about any potential threats to your customers’ organization, data, or other digital assets. For SOCaaS providers, who are tasked with monitoring cyberthreats for their customers, threat intelligence is a key tool. A good threat intelligence platform empowers SOCaaS providers to respond quickly when a risk appears, notifying their clients immediately, so that decisions can be made as soon as possible.

What is a threat intelligence platform? 

Threat intelligence platforms are systems designed to collect, aggregate, and analyze threat data from multiple sources. Such a platform uses automation and advanced analytics to spot patterns in data and notify your team. This provides SOCaaS providers with actionable insights that allow them to prioritize potential threats, notify clients, and address vulnerabilities — potentially before an attack occurs. 

What are the four types of threat intelligence?

• Strategic: Strategic threat intelligence provides a high-level overview of threats allowing senior leadership to make decisions based on the current threat landscape. Because it’s  aimed at business leaders, strategic threat intelligence focuses on non-technical information.
• Tactical: Tactical threat intelligence focuses on malicious actors’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), providing insight into potential attacks and an attack’s possible impact. 
• Technical: Technical threat intelligence is the information that security teams usually get from their open-source intelligence feeds. Security teams use technical threat intelligence to monitor new threats or investigate security incidents.
• Operational: Operational threat intelligence gives security teams actionable information relating to threat actors’ natures, motives, timing, and methods.

Where does threat intelligence come from? 

Threat intelligence can come from many different sources, both internal and external. Threat intelligence platforms like Flare collect information from a wide variety of sources including networks, applications, software, open source intelligence (OSINT), and scans of the web focused on particular keywords or information. Information can also be gathered from proprietary or restricted information sources, such as commercial threat intelligence feeds, private forums, underground marketplaces and dark web sources. A business’s own data can provide valuable threat intelligence as well. This information might come from network logs, security event logs, endpoint telemetry, firewall logs, intrusion detection system (IDS) alerts and any other internal security data sources a company may have.

Why is Threat Intelligence So Important to SOCaaS Providers Now?

Why is threat intelligence so important in today’s cyber landscape? 

Cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, often involving advanced persistent threats (APTs), fileless malware, and polymorphic attacks. SOCaaS providers must continually stay on top of current information and attack trends to serve the diverse needs of their many clients. Strong relevant threat intelligence allows SOCaaS providers to meet those needs quickly, while staying ahead of attackers. 

How can threat intelligence help speed up response times? 

Continuous monitoring for threats is key to delivering the service your customers need, and being able to provide both translation and context for notification helps them quickly make important decisions about response and prevention.

How does threat intelligence help you serve your clients?

Every client has their own needs, and SOCaaS providers must meet those needs, no matter the client’s industry, risk profile, or security maturity. Threat intelligence helps you offer customized service and information to each and every client..

SOC as a Service and Flare

Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Integrate Flare into your offerings today.

Our solution integrates into your security program in 30 minutes to provide your team with actionable intelligence and automated remediation for high-risk exposure. See it yourself with our free trial.