Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI)

Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is the collection and analysis of threat information to develop an actionable security plan against the latest cyber threats. 

Sometimes referred to as threat intelligence, the goal is to provide organizations with a big picture of evolving cyberattack methods. It provides a comprehensive understanding of adversaries’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). 

Organizations use threat knowledge to make informed decisions on protecting their systems and networks. Threat intelligence provides insights into how to prevent, detect, and respond to security threats.

How Does Flare Address Cyber Threat Intelligence?

What You Gain with Flare’s CTI Solution

Flare’s platform continuously monitors the clear & dark web, along with prominent threat actor communities to identify threat exposures so security teams can address them quickly. Organizations can more efficiently manage their security posture and be confident in Flare’s comprehensive coverage. 

What are the key benefits of the Flare CTI solution? 

• Actionable and tailored insights: Look into your organization’s threat exposures by correlating data points from across:
  • 11,000 illicit Telegram channels
  • 70+ million stealer logs
  • 20+ billion leaked credentials 
  • 6,000+ ransomware data breaches tracked in 2024
  • 60+ ransomware threat groups tracked
• Continuous monitoring of your assets: Flare’s platform continuously monitors the clear & dark web as well as prominent threat actor communities, scanning for leaked data and assets. This continuous monitoring gives your team 24/7 coverage, so you will know as sensitive information appears in an unauthorized location.
• A proactive security stance: By actively seeking out leaks and eavesdropping on hacker chatter, your team can catch compromises early, giving leadership and your team an opportunity to take steps to protect your data, systems, and networks.
• Unmatched data collection: Flare uses billions of data points to provide your team with information about your organization’s security stance, relevant threats, and the movement of threat actors between platforms. 
• Transparency: Flare lists every source so you can tell decision-makers exactly where every piece of threat intelligence data is coming from, including with Threat Flow, the industry’s first transparent generative AI application. This provides timely, relevant, and trustworthy summaries of threat actor chatter on the dark web, enabling scaled research and reporting for security teams.

What Are The Four Types Of Threat Intelligence Data?

Your security monitoring needs to incorporate four types of threat intelligence data. They help provide a multi-layered view into possible threats against your organization and subsequently find ways to protect your data.

Strategic Threat Intelligence

Strategic threat intelligence provides non-technical insights into the threat landscape. It focuses on global events such as regulatory compliance and geopolitical issues that can affect an organization’s cybersecurity plan.

Tactical Threat Intelligence

Open-source intelligence feeds provide tactical threat intelligence on new threats or recent security incidents. Security teams use real-time information to identify indicators of compromise (IOC) and TTPs used by threat actors. 

Operational Threat Intelligence

Operational threat intelligence provides insight into the human behavior behind cyberattacks. A threat actor’s motive, tactics, and timing can influence how a cyberattack is created and executed. 

Technical Threat Intelligence

Unlike other types of threat intelligence, technical intelligence is meant for short-term use. It can alert organizations when systems are under attack and help block the threats.

What is the Cyber Threat Intelligence Lifecycle?

The threat intelligence lifecycle refers to a framework for investigating threats. The result is a report on how organizations can detect and respond to specific threats that target their industry. By conducting research for each stage of the life cycle, security teams are better prepared to share actionable intelligence with other departments. 

The threat intelligence lifecycle is broken down into these six phases:

Scoping Threat Intelligence Requirements

Requirements are the foundation of the threat intelligence lifecycle. It serves as a roadmap for what type of intelligence is collected and for what purpose. The planning stage ensures all stakeholders and departments are on the same page for the intelligence program.

Threat Intelligence Collection

Raw data starts getting collected from several relevant and reliable sources. Some sources may include dark web forums, traffic logs, attack group reports, incident reports, and social media. 

Threat Intelligence Processing

Once data is collected, the security team will need to process it. The processing phase usually involves organizing data into spreadsheets and evaluating data for relevancy. Structuring data is essential for making the analysis phase manageable.

Threat Intelligence Analysis

In this phase, security teams will find the answers to the questions posed during the requirements phase. The analysis can help stakeholders make informed decisions and ensure the organization is equipped to handle the latest security threats.

Threat Intelligence Dissemination

Sharing is caring, especially in threat intelligence. Stakeholders and other departments will receive tremendous value by receiving actionable threat data. Take the time to prepare reports with the appropriate technical levels for the receiver. 

Feedback 

Timely, relevant, and actionable threat intelligence is necessary to protect your organization. One way to ensure it’s working is to gather feedback. Ask your teams if the intelligence was at the right level of technical detail or if it resulted in reduced risk. Feedback can help improve your intelligence gathering and dissemination. 

What are the Key Components of Cyber Threat Intelligence?

The combination of powerful key components ensures that threat intelligence is receiving and analyzing useful data on cyberattacks. Key components of a threat intelligence framework include:

• Reliable and advanced threat intelligence data sources: Collecting data from several sources can help security teams spot trends and IOCs. It’s often a multi-organizational effort to gather and share intelligence about the latest security incidents. 
• Real-time threat analysis: Real-time data is crucial for organizations to protect themselves from new threats. However, organizations collect huge amounts of data to sift through. Machine learning (ML) algorithms make it possible to analyze the data faster and share potential threats with human threat analysts for further evaluation.
• Advanced AI/ML tools for data processing: AI and ML tools provide quick and accurate data processing. They help automate processes of data collection and analysis. Organizations are alerted to potential threats faster and can respond in a more timely manner.

How is Cyber Threat Intelligence Beneficial in Today’s Cybersecurity Landscape?

Cyber threat intelligence has enhanced the ability to detect threat actors’ methods and enabled security teams to respond to threats quickly. Threat intelligence provides real-time, data-based insights. The valuable data provides early warning signs of an attack. It also helps empower organizations to respond proactively instead of reactively to threats. 

Some of the other benefits of threat intelligence include:

• Insights into emerging threats
• Enhanced threat visibility
• Efficient resource utilization
• Reduced incident response times 
• Make data-based decisions at all organizational levels
• Aids in regulatory compliance

What are the Emerging Trends in Cyber Threat Intelligence?

Threat intelligence needs continuous monitoring. It’s overwhelming for a team to respond to every potential threat. AI, ML, and automation solutions are a rising trend in threat intelligence since they ensure 24/7 protection and can alert a security team to key incidents. 

Another trend in threat intelligence is to monitor the dark web to locate and remediate data leaks. Threat actors use the dark web to communicate, and security teams should stay aware of any mentions of their organization. Dark web monitoring can help with discovering potential threats. 

How to Use Cyber Threat Intelligence Effectively?

According to Gartner, there are a few action items leaders can take to ensure they are receiving accurate threat intelligence:

• Determine what threat intelligence you need to collect and its intended purpose.
• Before sharing intelligence with stakeholders, make it understandable by providing the threat’s importance, relevancy, and context.
• Share practical, actionable information with your security tools using automatic connections such as API- or TAXII-based integrations.
• Create regular intelligence reports for stakeholders.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your threat intelligence by tracking metrics and gathering feedback on its impact. Demonstrate what losses your organization has avoided by pointing out the observables attributed to the threat.

Cyber Threat Intelligence and Flare

The Flare Cyber Threat Intelligence 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. Automating cyber threat intelligence means your security team has more time to focus on high-level threats.

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.