Threat Actor Profiling

Threat actor profiling is a cybersecurity strategy to identify malicious bad actors and how they deploy their attacks. By understanding the motivations, methods, and tools of threat actors, organizations can build a proactive defense posture. 

Crafting a threat actor profile isn’t necessarily an easy task though. Organizations must constantly monitor incidents and glean information with other entities to learn valuable insights into bad actors’ operations. 

Threat Actor Profiling: Brief Overview

What is threat actor profiling?

Threat actor profiling is the process of identifying key characteristics of bad actors that pose a danger to cybersecurity. A threat actor profile helps organizations understand bad actors’ processes and build a cyber defense strategy against potential attacks from them. 

Key components of a threat actor profile include:

• Motivations: Reasons behind their attack, including financial gain, espionage, and disruption. 
• Capabilities: The skills and resources available to the bad actor.
• Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs): Specific methods and tools deployed when executing attacks.
• Typical Targets: The types of systems, data, or industry that the bad actor usually targets in their attacks.
• Region of Operation: The geographic area where bad actors are active.

The characteristics of a bad actor can help categorize them. Some common threat actors include:

• Cybercriminals: Looking for financial gain, cybercriminals tend to run phishing and ransomware attacks.
• Hacktivists: Motivated by ideological or political causes, they aim to disrupt systems or leak data.
• Nation-State Actors: Operated by a government or state entity that targets critical infrastructure.

Threat actor profiling provides organizations with an accurate and detailed analysis of potential attacks of specific bad actors. By knowing historical events and emerging trends, organizations can tailor their cybersecurity to counter threats more effectively. 

Benefits of cyber threat actor profiling

Bad actors are constantly changing their methods to evade cybersecurity defenses. This puts organizations in a position where they must continuously evaluate their defense posture and review historical threat activity to find threat trends. As a result, security teams can proactively prioritize threats and allocate resources to mitigate risks.

Some additional benefits of threat actor profiling:

• Informs organizations to make decisions based on real cyber risks.
• Educates executives about the threats facing the organization.
• Enables a shift from a defensive to a proactive cybersecurity strategy.
• Bridges communication gaps between stakeholders about threat priorities.
• Tailor security measures to focus on high-risk areas.
• Enhances threat modeling processes
• Analyzes profiles to predict future attacks.
• Integrates with threat intelligence for a holistic view of the bad actor landscape.

How to profile threat actors

Traditional methods of profiling threat actors involve manual research of past security incidents to find the TTPs of bad actors. Tools like the MITRE ATT&CK matrix can help map TTPs. However, the overall process is often time-consuming, prone to human errors, and contains an overwhelming amount of data to sift through.

AI is changing the way threat actor profiles are built. By automating data collection and analysis, AI has streamlined the entire process. AI threat intelligence can spot patterns, monitor for red flags, and update in real time.

Using threat intelligence services can help craft threat actor profiles. They often use predictive analysis, dark web monitoring, and industry-specific insights to learn about bad actor activity. The data is analyzed to find potential threats and predict future issues.

Threat intelligence sharing with external sources is also a crucial part of building a threat actor profile. Entities like government agencies and cybersecurity companies often have valuable insights.

Why is Threat Actor Profiling Relevant Today?

Threat actors don’t need to have technical skills to deploy a cyberattack, due to AI and the ease of purchasing services like Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) over the dark web. As a result of this growing accessibility and scale of cybercrime, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that global losses could reach $1 trillion per month by 2031.

Security teams face a lot of pressure to mitigate the risks of cyber threats. Threat actor profiling is one way to improve defense mechanisms. Profiling analyzes current threats which can inform decisions about how to enhance an organization’s defense posture.

Threat intelligence services can provide predictive analytics that enable organizations to stay ahead of emerging threats. Intelligence pulls from multiple sources, including dark web forums. These platforms are customized with industry-specific data for higher relevancy. 

AI and threat intelligence services are paving the way to provide accurate and timely threat actor profiles that help organizations anticipate cyberattacks. 

How Flare Helps with Threat Actor Profiling

What is Flare’s approach to building a threat actor profile?

The Flare Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution monitors the clear & dark web, cybercrime forums, and illicit Telegram channels to track and analyze external threats. 

When Flare spots a mention related to your organization, it will notify your security team automatically. Flare’s capabilities can add to threat actor profiles and provide relevant insights into risks to your organization.

Why security teams work with Flare

You need a proactive approach to stay ahead of threat actors. But many bad actors operate within the dark web which makes it difficult to track their movements. You can’t afford to wait until a security incident happens to build their threat actor profiles though.

Flare’s solution for monitoring illicit sources is designed to meet this challenge. It provides automated, real-time insights into the top cybercrime forums to help your team take swift, decisive action. 

Combining threat intelligence with advanced technologies like AI can enhance threat actor profiling and stay informed about emerging threats.

What are the key benefits of using Flare?

• Monitors thousands of cybercrime communities including the dark web, Telegram channels, and I2P.
• Translates forum and channel posts written in foreign languages.
• Provides relevant, summarized, and easily accessible threat intelligence.
• Actionable alerts that filter noise and identify risks.

Threat Actor Profiling and Training with Flare Academy

Flare Academy training provides security practitioners with highly relevant and highly engaging lessons on subjects like threat intelligence, operational security, investigation techniques, and more. Led by expert instructors, these free trainings combine on-demand video lessons with diverse learning tools. Students can also gain access to the Flare Academy Discord Community where they can ask questions, explore advanced topics, and continue their learning journey wherever it leads. 

Find the right option at Flare Academy: sign up for the next training here.