The increasing frequency of physical security threats can make it challenging to get a solid understanding of today’s threats. New disruptions and chaos-inducing events can arise at any time, especially as the world continues to become more connected. A localized event no longer stays local – it has a ripple effect on international operations and its impact can be felt continents away. In addition, the convergence of physical and cyber threats, such as cyberattacks on physical infrastructure, further complicates security planning – making it incredibly difficult for security professionals to do their jobs successfully.
While the security landscape is very complicated, there are ways for teams to tackle these issues head-on; specifically, leveraging threat intel feeds as a critical security tool for anticipating and mitigating physical threats.
The Role of Threat Intelligence in Physical Security: Find a Partner that Fills Your Gaps
Threat intelligence is an invaluable strategy for security leaders and their teams. The actionable intelligence obtained via threat intelligence software gives organizations the ability to proactively safeguard their personnel, assets, and operations. If your organization struggles with threat intelligence and has not yet been able to benefit from the power of threat intel feeds, there are experts to assist you.
External partners can help internal teams by providing expertise, knowledge, and support with no downtime. Seerist is one such company. With the ability to bring external experts to security teams, along with a powerful platform that can collect, parse, and analyze OSINT data.
Seerist also is staffed with hundreds of on-the-ground analysts available to add context and provide actionable insight on events and disruptions happening around the world; this intel can be a game-changer for any security department or team looking to improve their knowledge on the threat landscape. With rapid reporting capabilities that leverage artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP), Seerist was founded to help organizations maintain a watchful eye on activities happening around the globe. Additionally, third-party experts such as Seerist can deliver intuitive charts, graphics, and dashboards that make threat intelligence data easy to digest and is accessible at all times.
Threat Intelligence Feeds: An Overview
Threat intelligence feeds are streams of data providing insights into potential physical threats. Information provided by these feeds can be incredibly impactful to security teams – empowering organizations to foresee, prioritize, and respond effectively to risks.
There are a few types of threat intelligence feeds:
- Commercial Feeds: Proprietary services offering granular, location-specific insights on risks like geopolitical instability, transportation disruptions, and environmental hazards.
- Government Intelligence: Alerts and advisories from government agencies, such as travel warnings or public safety announcements.
- Open-Source Feeds: Freely available data from news outlets, social media, research reports, and public forums.
The benefits of leveraging intelligence feeds include improved situational awareness for physical threats due to teams receiving timely alerts about incidents impacting specific regions of interest. The feeds also give teams the ability to enhance their coordination with local and global stakeholders to mitigate risks effectively. Receiving verified information gives decision-makers the ability to make confident decisions.
Why Threat Intelligence Feeds are Crucial
Threat intelligence feeds keep security teams informed. Without this broader threat data visibility, teams will be limited by internal data. Relying on internal observations or reports alone will leave organizations blind to external events. Additionally, external feeds provide a comprehensive view of physical threats, such as emerging protests, natural disasters, or conflict zones. A team that isn’t leveraging threat feeds is operating in the dark and is undoubtedly missing crucial information that will impact its ability to safeguard people, assets, and operations.
One of the key benefits of integrating actionable threat intelligence feeds into your organization is proactive threat detection.
Proactive threat detection is one of the best ways to mitigate challenges and disruptive incidents. It will provide early alerts about physical events, such as unrest that may result due to escalating political tensions. For example, by reviewing intelligence gleaned from the feeds, a logistics company can learn of predicted road closures and establish route adjustments, ensuring business as usual.
In addition to proactive threat detection, tactical threat intelligence will also create improved incident response. The feeds will offer detailed intelligence on the nature, scope, and potential impact of incidents to help organizations respond swiftly. For example, an organization may decide to deploy additional security personnel in response to intelligence about a planned large-scale demonstration near corporate offices. This will minimize disruption and ensure the safety of employees.
Lastly, threat intelligence feeds empower enhanced decision-making. Leveraging the information received via the feeds, security teams can create insights to better prioritize resources based on the likelihood and severity of emerging threats.
Integrating Feeds: The Challenges & How to Solve Them
Many threat intelligence feeds have clear benefits to organizations. However, due to the volume of intelligence available, many security teams face data overload and alert fatigue. There is no person or team of people who are capable of monitoring all of the information being dispersed at any given time.
Solutions such as Seerist can offer security partners access to platforms that aggregate and streamline data into a unified platform – making it easier for internal teams to review the intel and turn it into actionable insights. This reduction in manual effort not only gives security teams more bandwidth to focus on strategy development but ensures a holistic view of potential threats.
In addition to being overwhelmed by the quantity of data that needs to be monitored, security teams need to manage data quality and accuracy, as physical threat intelligence can sometimes be inaccurate. Therefore it is crucial that feeds are vetted for reliability to validate and cross-check incoming data.
Seerist offers the ability for teams to generate concise reports with actionable insights. For example, Seerist delivers alerts about potential disruptions in supply chain routes due to geopolitical events – giving the organization the opportunity to improve speed to decision and strengthen organizational resilience.
A Strategic Threat Intelligence Platform is Critical & Third-Party Experts Make it Possible
The value of integrating threat intelligence feeds for proactive and informed physical security management is invaluable. Yet it is often an overwhelming task for internal teams. Partnering with an expert can be the only solution to ensure that information is received in a timely manner in order to positively support an organization’s physical security strategies. If you aren’t currently working with a partner, or would like to review additional offerings available, schedule a demo with Seerist today.
