Strategic Threat Intelligence
Strategic threat intelligence in cybersecurity focuses on understanding the broader threat landscape and the long-term risks facing an organization. It goes beyond immediate threats and vulnerabilities, providing a high-level view of the motives, tactics, and capabilities of potential attackers. This intelligence helps organizations make informed decisions about their security strategy and proactively defend against emerging threats.
Think of it as the "big picture" view of the cybersecurity landscape. It's like having a spyglass that allows you to see the entire battlefield, identify potential enemies, and anticipate their moves before they happen.
Here's what strategic threat intelligence encompasses:
Threat Actor Profiling: Identifying and analyzing the motives, targets, and tactics of different threat actors, such as cybercriminals, hacktivists, and nation-state actors.
Industry Trend Analysis: Understanding emerging threats and trends within specific industries or sectors.
Geopolitical Risk Assessment: Evaluating the potential impact of geopolitical events and conflicts on cybersecurity.
Long-Term Risk Forecasting: Predicting future cyber threats and vulnerabilities based on current trends and emerging technologies.
Regulatory and Compliance Landscape: Staying informed about relevant cybersecurity regulations and compliance requirements.
How does strategic threat intelligence help organizations?
Proactive Security Posture: By understanding the broader threat landscape, organizations can proactively adapt their security strategies and defenses to address emerging threats.
Informed Decision-Making: Strategic threat intelligence provides valuable insights for making informed decisions about security investments, risk management, and incident response planning.
Resource Allocation: Helps organizations allocate resources effectively by prioritizing defenses against the most likely and impactful threats.
Enhanced Cybersecurity Awareness: Educates leadership and security teams about the evolving threat landscape and the organization's overall risk profile.
Sources of Strategic Threat Intelligence:
Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): Publicly available information, such as news articles, security blogs, and academic research.
Commercial Threat Intelligence Platforms: Subscription-based services that provide curated threat intelligence data and analysis.
Government and Industry Reports: Reports and alerts from government agencies and industry organizations.
Information Sharing Communities: Participating in information sharing communities, such as ISACs and ISAOs, to gain insights from peers.
By incorporating strategic threat intelligence into their cybersecurity strategy, organizations can move from a reactive to a proactive security posture, better anticipate and mitigate emerging threats, and strengthen their overall resilience against cyberattacks.
ThreatNG can help organizations gather and leverage strategic threat intelligence in the following ways:
External Discovery: ThreatNG automatically discovers and maps an organization's internet-facing assets, including websites, subdomains, social media accounts, and more. This provides a comprehensive view of the organization's online presence, which is crucial for understanding its exposure to strategic threats.
External Assessment: ThreatNG assesses the discovered assets for various risks, including those related to brand impersonation, social media threats, and dark web presence. This helps identify potential vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to damage the organization's reputation or manipulate public opinion.
For example, ThreatNG's Brand Damage Susceptibility assessment evaluates an organization's vulnerability to brand impersonation and other attacks that could damage its reputation. This assessment considers various factors, including the organization's online presence, social media activity, and dark web exposure.
Reporting: ThreatNG generates detailed reports on the organization's external attack surface, vulnerabilities, and security ratings. These reports help organizations understand their security posture and prioritize remediation efforts.
Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface for changes and new threats. This helps organizations stay ahead of emerging risks, such as new brand impersonation attempts or social media manipulation campaigns.
Investigation Modules: ThreatNG provides in-depth investigation modules that can help organizations identify and mitigate strategic attack vectors.
For example, the Domain Intelligence module provides detailed information about a domain, including its registration details, WHOIS history, and DNS records. This information can be used to identify potentially malicious domains that are impersonating the organization's brand.
The Social Media module analyzes an organization's social media presence for potential threats, such as fake accounts or malicious posts.
The Dark Web Presence module scans the dark web for mentions of the organization or its employees, which could indicate that sensitive information has been leaked or that the organization is being targeted by attackers.
The Sentiment and Financials module analyzes online sentiment and financial data to identify potential risks to the organization's reputation. This module can also help identify negative news articles or social media posts that could be used by attackers to spread misinformation.
Intelligence Repositories: ThreatNG leverages intelligence repositories on the dark web, compromised credentials, ransomware events and groups, known vulnerabilities, ESG violations, bug bounty programs, SEC Form 8-Ks, and Bank Identification Numbers. This threat intelligence helps organizations understand the broader threat landscape and proactively defend against strategic attacks.
ThreatNG can also work with complementary security solutions like brand monitoring tools, social media analytics platforms, and threat intelligence platforms. ThreatNG's external attack surface management capabilities complement these solutions by providing a comprehensive view of the organization's online presence and potential strategic attack vectors.
Examples of ThreatNG Helping:
ThreatNG's BEC and Phishing Susceptibility assessment flagged a heightened risk for a financial institution, indicating potential phishing campaigns targeting its customers. Upon further investigation using the Domain Intelligence module, a domain with a deceptively similar name to the institution's legitimate website was discovered. This fake domain hosted a phishing page designed to steal login credentials. By proactively detecting and shutting down this domain impersonation attempt, the financial institution protected its customers from potential financial fraud and prevented damage to its reputation.
Examples of ThreatNG Working with Complementary Solutions:
ThreatNG integrates with a brand monitoring tool to provide real-time alerts about brand impersonation attempts or other online threats to the organization's reputation.
ThreatNG integrates with a social media analytics platform to provide insights into the organization's social media presence and identify potential threats, such as fake accounts or malicious posts.
