Threat Intelligence Platform

Security teams are in a constant race against cybercriminals;  security professionals are always working to better secure their organizations’ digital assets, while criminals are constantly developing better and more efficient attacks. Because the cyber threat landscape is always changing, threat intelligence is able to give security teams an edge. Threat intelligence platforms use automation and analytics to provide that intelligence. 

Threat Intelligence Platform: How Flare Gathers Information

How does Flare monitor threat intelligence? 

Flare’s threat intelligence platform automates the process of scanning for threats. Flare monitors the clear & dark web — as well as prominent threat actor communities — continuously, sending your team alerts when your organization, employees’ names, domains, IP, or any other key information is posted where it should not be. 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 the Flare threat intelligence platform? 

• Automated continuous monitoring: Using an automated solution gives you 24/7 coverage, so you will know as soon as your information appears where it should not be. 
• Relevant alerts: Flare rises above the noise by only delivering notifications when a threat is relevant to your security.
• A proactive security stance: By actively seeking out potential threats, you can catch breaches early and take steps to protect your data, systems, and networks.
• Visibility into the deep and dark web: Flare’s monitoring solution scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities, to find leaks before an attack happens. 
• 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 know exactly where your threat intelligence data is coming from. 

Why use Flare to monitor threat intelligence? 

Security teams are living with constant noise from notifications, many of which aren’t relevant to your organization’s security at all. Flare automates the process of scanning for threat intelligence data for information that specifically targets your organization, only notifying your team when relevant information is discovered. Flare is also able to provide context for every threat, translating notification from other languages, or translating technical information so that it’s more easily presented to business stakeholders. 

Threat Intelligence Platforms: An Overview

What is threat intelligence? 

Threat intelligence is any data about potential cyberthreats to an organization’s digital assets. While the terms “security intelligence” and”threat intelligence” are often used interchangeably, they’re not technically the same thing. Security intelligence usually refers to a larger process or strategy, while threat intelligence refers to the data being gathered and used as part of that strategy.

What is a threat intelligence platform? 

A threat intelligence platform is a system designed to collect, aggregate, and analyze threat data from multiple sources. The platform uses automation and advanced analytics to spot patterns in data and notify security teams. This provides organizations with actionable insights that allow security teams to prioritize potential threats, and address vulnerabilities — potentially before an attack occurs. 

What does a threat intelligence platform do? 

Threat intelligence platforms give teams a continuous, real-time view of their cyber risk. This is done by bringing together threat data from several sources, including open source intelligence (OSINT), external feeds, internal telemetry, and other intelligence sources. The platform then uses advanced analytics to predict potential attacks, and prioritize responses. 

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 platforms collect information from a wide variety of sources including networks, applications, software, OSINT, and scans of the web focused on particular keywords or information. You may also get information from proprietary or restricted information sources, such as commercial threat intelligence feeds, private forums, underground marketplaces and dark web sources. Your own data can also provide valuable security insights. You can draw this information from network logs, security event logs, endpoint telemetry, firewall logs, intrusion detection system (IDS) alerts and any other internal security data sources you may have.

Why do organizations need threat intelligence platforms now? 

Why is threat intelligence platform a necessary tool in today’s digital landscape? 

It can be difficult to be proactive in security; your security team is always reacting to threats. A threat intelligence platform gives your team a chance to catch their breath, assess threat data, and make a proactive plan to mitigate vulnerabilities. 

How can threat intelligence platforms help stop breaches? 

Strong threat intelligence can make a huge difference to the security of your data. A good threat intelligence platform serves up the most relevant information, which helps your organization strengthen cyber defenses, hunt for threats, remediate vulnerabilities, improve compliance, and streamline your cybersecurity processes. 

What is the impact of a data breach?

The average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million. This includes the cost of finding and remediating the breach, interruptions of operations, legal fees and other fines. However many industries experience higher costs, which can be devastating for small and midsize businesses. 

Monitoring Threat Intelligence with 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 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.