Indicator of Compromise (IoC) Feed

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) are signs of malicious activity within an organization’s environment. An IoC feed compiles and shares this threat intelligence in a structured format so that security teams can threat hunt more effectively. 

IoC Feed: A Brief Overview

What are IoCs?

Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) are evidence or clues that suggest a security breach might have happened within a network or system. These indicators can be anything from IP addresses and domain names to URLs and file hashes. By identifying IoCs, security teams can better understand how a network has been compromised. 

Some examples of IoCs include:

• Specific URLs, IP addresses, or domains flagged as suspicious because they’re linked to attacks
• File hashes linked to viruses and breach attempts

IoCs are artifacts that reveal a network has been breached, making them different from indicators of attack (IoAs) which focus on a malicious actor’s behavior to highlight the tactics and techniques used. 

What are IoC feeds?

IoC feeds are streams of data that help cybersecurity teams identify potential threats in real-time. Security teams often incorporate IoC feeds as part of their threat intelligence gathering because the feeds offer actionable insights about potential threats and ongoing malicious activities. 

What are STIX and TAXII?

To integrate IoC feeds into security tools, the data provided needs to be machine readable. 

STIX, or Structured Threat Information Expression, is a tool designed for describing cybersecurity threats in a machine-readable format. This open source framework provides consistency when sharing threat information so that security teams can easily integrate the data into their security tools. Many IoC feeds adopt STIX so that threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) can be interpreted across different platforms. 

TAXII, or Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information, is a protocol built specifically for transmitting STIX formatted threat intelligence. Organizations using TAXII need not maintain their own TAXII infrastructure; they can simply accept STIX feeds from an external server. 

Why are IoC Feeds Important in Today’s Cybersecurity Landscape?

What are the benefits of IoC feeds?

IoC feeds offer actionable insights that enable security teams to manage risks based on specific threats relevant to their environment. The integration of IoC feeds offers several benefits:

• Uncover Threats: Helps identify and classify threats faster.
• Proactive Security: Shifts security posture to be proactive, catching threats early.
• Actionable Intelligence: Provides actionable intelligence to security professionals.

Additionally, by comparing system interactions against known malicious IoCs, security teams can better classify and mitigate threats. 

Why are more IoC feeds better than solitary feeds?

By combining data from multiple IoC feeds, security teams gain a clearer view of security threats. The combination of different threat intelligence feeds helps inform security policies and adjust strategies as needed. Each source has a unique focus, data collection methodology, and analysis process. Incorporating multiple IoC feeds enables organizations to benefit from:

• Diverse data sets: Multiple specialized feeds offer a wider range of insights.
• Broader coverage: With multiple feeds, organizations have a backup in case one feed fails to identify a threat. 
• Cross-referencing: Validating data and indicators across different feeds improves accuracy and relevance.
• Customization: Integrating multiple feeds enables the security teams to choose the most relevant data from each one.

More IoC feeds also means a more proactive approach since security teams can identify and react to cyber threats faster.

What are some IoC feed best practices?

When implementing IoC feeds, security teams should consider the following best practices:

• Use more than one: Gather data from various reliable sources to overcome gaps that any one feed would have.
• Review feeds: Consider each feed’s data quality, contextualization capabilities, false positive management, range of relevant data, and ability to integrate with current security tools.
• Verify data: Compare data across feeds to ensure accuracy, relevance, and timeliness.
• Integrate with security tools: Connect IoC feeds to security information and event management (SIEM) or other security tools to correlate data with insights from the environment.  

What You Get with Flare’s IoC Feeds

How does Flare answer IoC feed needs?

Flare’s Threat Flow provides timely, relevant, and trustworthy dark web intelligence related to IoC feed technical information. For example, with Flare, security teams can summarize attacker dark web conversations relating to known vulnerabilities or malware signatures to gain insights around geographic region or industry targeting. With this information, security teams can create specific detections or review their environment more precisely, saving time and improving their security posture. 

How does Flare augment IoC feeds?

Flare provides high-quality structured data from thousands of sources so that security teams have unified coverage focusing on external risks. With Flare’s platform, security teams have automated event contextualization that enables them to create more efficient workflows and stay ahead of threats. 

What are the key benefits of using Flare with IoC feeds?

Flare enhances IoC feed value by:

• Enriching data: Visibility into the organization’s external attack surface across broad sources
• Leveraging artificial intelligence: AI-driven system with sophisticated analysis and transparent data collection to prioritize relevant alerts and actions
• Offering customization: Ability to customize and prioritize sources based on the team’s application or technology needs. 

IoC Feed and Flare

The Flare Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution empowers organizations to proactively detect, prioritize, and mitigate the types of exposures commonly exploited by threat actors. Our platform automatically scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities 24/7 to discover unknown events, prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Flare’s platform enables security teams to augment their IoC feeds with context from over 8,000 cybercrime communities, 70 million stealer logs, and 2 million threat actor profiles to gain targeted insights about security threats facing their organization. 

Flare integrates into your security program in 30 minutes and often replaces several SaaS and open source tools. Learn more by signing up for our free trial.