What Is Threat Intelligence and How Does It Work?

Technologies lie at the heart of almost every organization today. Their speed and convenience have completely revolutionized business. However, with these benefits comes the risk of cyber threats and data breaches.

In this article, we help you understand threat intelligence, explore variations of threat intelligence, provide real-world examples, and give you implementation guidance to safeguard your organization.

What is threat intelligence?

Threat intelligence is knowledge of an organization's various current and potential cyber attacks. It allows organizations to be proactive instead of reactive by identifying, preparing, and preventing cyber attacks or mitigating their effects if they occur. 

These cyber attacks include zero-day exploits, phishing, DNS tunneling, and malware such as ransomware.

Threat intelligence identifies a threat and provides context; it answers the "who," "why," and "how" of a potential attack. It differs from threat detection, which is the automated process of flagging malicious activity as it happens. 

For example, a security tool might detect a connection to a known malicious IP address. Threat intelligence explains why that IP address is malicious, who is behind it, and its objective, empowering your security team to respond strategically rather than reactively.

To illustrate, threat intelligence is used to:

• Prevent phishing attacks by actively monitoring newly registered domains that mimic your brand. This allows you to block them preemptively before a campaign is even launched.
• Track ransomware groups by following their specific tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and identifying their infrastructure to predict their next moves and fortify your defenses.

Why is threat intelligence important?

The cyber landscape faces numerous challenges. These include an increase in advanced persistent threats (APTs), huge raw data losses due to data breaches, a lack of knowledge about available security solutions, false alarms across cybersecurity systems, and a shortage of skilled professionals who can cope with the growing variety of threat actors.

Apart from addressing these issues, when well implemented, cyber threat intelligence can also:

1. Reduce costs

Threat intelligence can help you avoid costs such as fines, investigation expenses, loss of goodwill, loss of market position and market share, and post-incident restoration fees, among others, in case of a breach. For example, the Equifax data breach cost them well over $600 million.

2. Reduce risks

By having a proper threat intelligence system, you get insight into emerging cybersecurity hazards before they are used against you. This threat hunting minimizes the risk of loss of information.

3. Avoid loss of data

A threat intelligence system prevents infiltration by threat actors. It’s always on the lookout for suspicious domains or IP addresses that try to access your network, improving the speed and effectiveness of its incident response.

4. Deeper cyber intelligence analysis

Threat intelligence reveals cybercriminals' different techniques, strategies, and decision-making processes, helping organizations determine whether their current systems can prevent cyber attacks such as malware, phishing, etc.

5. Evaluate security posture

Cyber threat intelligence provides information on the vulnerabilities of your organization's various tools and software, allowing you to determine whether your network is secure. This helps in proper vulnerability management in real time.

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Who can benefit from threat intelligence?

Threat intelligence may sound like something that only benefits elite analysts and experts. However, it has various applications in organizations, including security teams and consumers.

Some of its benefits to each member of the security team and others who interact with your organization include:

• It helps executive management understand all the risks available and what they can do to mitigate their effects and improve their security controls.
• Helps the intelligence analyst uncover and track threat actors targeting the organization.
• Improves the prevention and detection capabilities and strengthens defenses, benefiting the IT analyst.
• Actionable intel on all current and potential risks allows management to plan strategically while factoring in the probability of occurrence and effects of the risks.
• Fraud prevention means consumers and other players in the organization can rest easy knowing their information is safe.
• The security operations center or team can reduce the impact of the occurrence of these risks by prioritizing and working on the most impactful first.

In one way or another, cyber threat intelligence benefits all the members of an organization and those who interact with it. So, the help of a product that offers threat intelligence services can come in handy.

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The threat intelligence lifecycle

The threat intelligence life cycle is a step-by-step process that guides the cybersecurity team through the process of transforming raw data into actionable information that can be used for decision-making.

Although cyber threats are ever-evolving, this feedback cycle loop allows the team to uncover advanced persistent threats (APTs) and come up with ways of dealing with them proactively.

Direction

The team's first task is to lay out the main goals and tasks based on the organization's goals. The better the plan, the better the team will be at tracking key performance indicators (KPI) and indicators of compromise (IOC).

• Objective: Define the specific intelligence requirements based on the organization's needs and assets.
• Involved teams: Executive leadership, security operations center (SOC), and incident response (IR) teams.
• Outputs: Specific questions to be answered, such as "What ransomware groups are targeting our industry?" or "What are the common vulnerabilities being exploited in our software?"

Collection

As per the plan, the team collects raw data to be used to satisfy the objectives.

• Objective: Gather raw data from various internal and external sources to fulfill the requirements.
• Involved teams: Threat intelligence analysts.
• Outputs: Raw data feeds, internal log files, technical reports, and open-source information.

Processing

Some of the activities involved in processing the raw data into usable form include decrypting files, organizing it into spreadsheets, processing it into graphs, and evaluating whether it is relevant and credible.

• Objective: Transform raw data into a usable format.
• Involved teams: Threat intelligence analysts, security engineers.
• Outputs: Cleaned, formatted data such as spreadsheets, graphs, and parsed text ready for analysis.

Analysis

Using the actionable information from the analysis, logical conclusions are derived. The team answers all the questions asked during the planning stage by recommending the appropriate course of action.

• Objective: Analyze the processed data to produce actionable intelligence.
• Involved teams: Threat intelligence analysts.
• Outputs: Logical conclusions, threat actor profiles, and recommendations. This is where the "who," "what," and "how" of a threat are uncovered.

Dissemination

The security team simplifies the reports and presents them to the organization’s stakeholders. The manner and format used depend on the audience. Nonetheless, it should be easy to understand with as little technical jargon as possible.

• Objective: Present intelligence to the relevant stakeholders in an easy-to-understand format.
• Involved teams: Threat intelligence analysts, executive leadership.
• Outputs: Tailored reports, briefings, automated alerts, and dashboards.

Feedback

After implementing the recommendations per the report, the security team may have to improve or change their threat intelligence program. The decision is made based on the data they collect and the feedback they get from the stakeholders.

• Objective: Refine the process based on how the intelligence was used and its effectiveness.
• Involved Teams: All stakeholders.
• Outputs: Improved plans for the next cycle, adjusted intelligence requirements, and updates to the threat intelligence program.

Types of threat intelligence

The cyber threat intelligence lifecycle above has demonstrated that the result varies because of:

• The intended audience
• The intelligence sources of information
• Requirements of the organization

Based on these criteria, there are three categories of threat intelligence.

Strategic threat intelligence

Strategic intelligence is generally less technical because it helps the organization’s decision-makers understand its risks and vulnerabilities. It is usually presented through briefings or reports.

Information used in strategic intelligence is sourced from:

• News from various news sources
• Policy documents
• Research reports
• White papers

These can include reports on market-wide trends, geopolitical risks that could impact business operations, and the financial impact of a breach in your sector.

Tactical threat intelligence

Tactical intelligence is more technical than strategic intelligence due to its audience and objectives. It is intended for personnel involved in the security system of the organization, such as the security staff, system architects, and system administrators.

The goal is to get them to understand, in technical terms, the specific way that the organization can be attacked and how to defend against it. This information is used to improve the existing security controls and operations. Tactical intelligence can be found via open source and free data feeds.

This includes Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) such as malicious IP addresses, file hashes from malware samples, or known phishing email subject lines.

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Operational threat intelligence

Operational threat intelligence provides insight into who the threat is, why they are a threat, when they are likely to act, and what tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) they are likely to employ.

Operational threat intelligence includes technical information such as what attack vector is likely to be used, what weakness is being exploited, and what domains or commands will be used. Its sources of actionable information include:

• Interception of the communication of threat groups
• Threat data feeds
• Forensic reports

These alerts include details on a specific threat actor campaign targeting your organization, details on a compromised account found on the dark web, or a forensic report on a recent attack.

Threat intelligence tools and sources

• Open-source feeds: Publicly available threat data, often from security researchers and communities. While a good starting point, they can lack the context of commercial feeds. Examples include AlienVault OTX and Shodan.
• Paid Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): Commercial platforms that collect, aggregate, and enrich threat data from underground forums, the dark web, and proprietary research. They provide curated, actionable intelligence for security teams. Examples include Recorded Future and Flashpoint.
• In-house telemetry: Data generated from an organization's own network and systems. It's a critical source for insights into which threats are targeting you. This includes logs from firewalls, SIEMs, and EDR solutions.
• Vendor-supplied intelligence: Intelligence provided by cybersecurity vendors, often tailored to the specific threats their tools are designed to protect against. For example, a breach risk platform like UpGuard can identify compromised vendor credentials.

How to implement threat intelligence

Operationalizing threat intelligence is a strategic process that actively uses data to strengthen your organization’s defenses. 

Here’s how to implement it:

1. Define objectives: Identify what you need to protect and why (e.g., brand protection, fraud prevention, or improving incident response). This ensures your efforts are focused and deliver tangible value.
2. Choose sources and tools: Select the right combination of open-source and commercial tools based on your objectives. A blend of sources often provides the most comprehensive view. For example, you might use an open-source feed for general IOCs and a paid platform for more detailed threat actor profiles and strategic insights.
3. Integrate into SOC workflows: Integrate intelligence feeds with tools like your SIEM, firewalls, and EDR solutions. This allows the intelligence to automatically enrich alerts, block malicious activity, and prioritize threats that pose the most significant risk.
4. Assign owners and create escalation paths: Assign a dedicated team or individual to manage the process. Establish clear escalation paths so that the right security team members act on critical alerts immediately.
5. Continuously tune and evolve: The threat landscape is always changing, so your program should, too. Review feeds regularly, adjust objectives as needs evolve, and adapt to new threats. This ensures your defenses remain proactive and effective.

Real-world use cases

Threat intelligence is not just a theoretical concept; it delivers tangible results by preventing attacks and minimizing damage.

Preventing phishing attacks via domain monitoring

Consider a financial services company that uses threat intelligence to monitor for newly registered domains that contain its brand name.

The threat intelligence platform identifies a new domain, log-in-bankofexample.com, and a matching SSL certificate. This intelligence is immediately fed into the company's email filters and firewalls, blocking the malicious site before the phishing campaign can even be launched. This proactive measure prevents countless customers from having their credentials compromised.

Identifying compromised vendor credentials

For example, a manufacturing firm subscribes to a threat intelligence service that monitors dark web marketplaces for leaked credentials and breach data.

The service finds an employee's corporate email address and password for a third-party vendor in a recent data dump. The company's security team is instantly alerted. They can then force the employee to reset their password and revoke access to the vendor's system, preventing a potential supply chain attack before it can be exploited.

The future of threat intelligence

According to Research and Markets, the threat intelligence market will be worth $13.56 billion by 2025. This clearly indicates how organizations are increasingly viewing it as a necessity. Even smaller organizations are starting to use it.

As its worth grows, so will its efficiency as it becomes more and more proactive. Due to machine learning and pattern recognition, technology will be able to learn and recognize what we do and when we do it. If we do anything out of the norm, interpreted as a potential threat, it will be easy to raise escalations and stop threats before they occur.

Download our ebook to learn how Attack Surface Management helps you monitor and secure your most critical data and assets.

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