Threat intelligence, the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information about events that could negatively impact operations and the well-being of employees, is a critical part of an organization’s security activities. Without comprehensive and properly vetted threat intelligence, organizations are left uninformed and unaware of the risks against their operations, assets, and people. It is, without a doubt, the most important element to an organization’s security strategy and is essential in order for security teams to do their jobs properly.
As a result of digitization, increased globalization, and ever-emerging geopolitical risks, threat intelligence has become more important to security teams in recent years. However, obtaining the information an organization needs from the millions of open source data sets is impossible. Security teams are faced with information overload, resource limitations, and rapidly evolving threats – a trio of challenges that make it impossible to stay informed. However, the consequences of inadequate or delayed intelligence are big.
Organizations that fail to stay on top of events are at risk to financial loss, operational disruptions, and reputation damage. To help security teams stay on top of events in real-time, as well as analyze historical data and conduct trend analysis to forecast risks likely to occur in the future, there are third-party vendors who specialize in this very task. Seerist is an example of such a company. Seerist was founded to help organizations perform superior threat analysis, leveraging augmented analytics, in order to ensure the safety of their people, assets, and operations.
The Threat Landscape: A Complex Ecosystem with Evolving Threats and Attack Vectors
There are many types of threats for organizations to be aware of, including:
- Geopolitical threats – political instability, sanctions
- Economic threats – supply chain issues, trade wars
- Physical threats – civil unrest, natural disasters
- Cybersecurity threats – phishing, ransomware
Threat types are becoming more sophisticated and interconnected, with new attack vectors emerging through IoT, 5G, and cloud technologies. Specific examples include state-sponsored cyberattacks, climate-induced risks, and global supply chain vulnerabilities.
Due to the interconnected nature of modern threats, it is important for organizations to forgo piecemeal approaches to threat analysis and instead adopt a holistic approach that gives them an overarching view. This is especially key as threats are often interdependent, therefore cybersecurity, economic, and geopolitical risks must be assessed together.
Security teams will find it invaluable to have access to a threat intelligence platform that can be integrated into their organization’s processes and platforms. A threat intelligence platform can quickly do what a team of experts can’t – aggregate and analyze these various factors in a matter of minutes. The ability to track open source data and provide analysis to help security teams assess existing and upcoming risks and threats is the only way for teams to stay on top of events happening worldwide.
Building a Robust Threat Intelligence Program
A successful threat intelligence program centers around data. It is important that it includes diverse, vetted data sources, including OSINT, closed-source threat feeds, dark web monitoring, social media feeds, and internal data, such as past incident reports. Best practices for data collection include tactics such as establishing automated feeds, partnerships with intelligence-sharing groups, establishing data quality criteria in regards to accuracy and integrity. Security teams will want to continuously monitor data delivered to ensure the quality level remains high.
Following data collection comes data processing and analysis. There are advanced analysis techniques to help teams stay on top of large data sets, including machine learning (ML) for pattern recognition, natural language processing (NLP) for unstructured data, and human-driven threat modeling.Refining raw data into meaningful insights involves filtering out noise and enriching the data with contextual information. While technology excels at sorting and filtering, it’s the expertise of human analysts that adds essential context, drawing on real-world experience and knowledge to interpret the remaining information effectively.
Analysis will reveal the greatest threats organizations are likely to face so they can prioritize and plan appropriately. Risks will be placed into categories such as severity, likelihood, and potential impact. All of this information will be formatted into reports, which serve to document findings and inform leaders and other relevant stakeholders to the findings. These reports often include various visuals and charts.
Ongoing monitoring of identified risks will rely on tools like real-time alerts, visual dashboards, and actionable intelligence summaries. Threat intelligence platforms like Seerist enhance data processing, streamline workflows, and optimize resource allocation, enabling teams to focus on analysis and strategic recommendations while producing visually-rich reports.
Effective Strategies for Threat Intelligence Analysis
There are a few steps that organizations will want to take to ensure successful threat intelligence analysis:
- Automation: Maximizing available technology to help security teams work smarter and faster. Organizations will want to leverage automation technologies, such as AI and ML, as they can quickly and effectively handle repetitive data collection and preliminary analysis tasks. AI and ML also detect anomalies in network traffic and predictive analytics for trend forecasting, all of which is valuable intel for security teams to filter to leaders to aid in informed, time-efficient decision making.
- Human Expertise: Partnering humans and machines leads to successful intelligence analysis. While AI ML are powerful tools, helping security teams to accomplish tasks in minutes versus days, human expertise is irreplaceable and remains essential for interpreting complex threat intelligence and making nuanced decisions. The need for domain expertise will always be essential, and humans bring this in-depth knowledge, contextual understandings, along with the ability to understand certain complex situations that machines can’t. Human intelligence remains critical and is a vital piece of effective threat intelligence.
- Scenario Planning: Wargaming helps security teams prepare for potential risks and threats. It’s helpful to simulate various threat scenarios to test preparedness at the tactical, operational, and strategic level. This may include “red teaming” and table-top exercises and will help enhance an organization’s ability to respond effectively when under pressure. This experience will also reveal gaps in response plans in order to anticipate potential adversarial moves.
- Continuous Monitoring: Ongoing “threat hunting” helps teams stay prepared. Security teams need to commit to proactive threat monitoring and ensure that machines and analysts are continuously reviewing data for early warning signs of danger. Threat hunting is an advanced tactic where analysts seek out threats before they manifest, leveraging behavioral analysis and anomaly detection to preempt disruption.
Organizations can partner with the best threat intelligence agency, but all of the effort and budget will be a waste if they also don’t prioritize translating intelligence into actionable insights. It is key for security teams to translate raw data into strategies that will allow their organizations to preemptively address threats. Intelligence-driven actions, like adjusting security protocols, altering travel routes, or reinforcing supply chain security, are all spot-on ways for teams to make the most of their data.
Effective threat intelligence should have a positive impact on decision-making across departments, including security’s incident response planning, operations’ business continuity, and finance’s risk assessments. Without this information the organization is left in the dark on many key issues and threats.
Threat Intelligence at Work: Seerist Analysis Spurs Preemptive Evacuations
On December 31, 2021, a Seerist dashboard – the PulseAI tracker – alerted users that stability in Kazakhstan started to drop. This shift was in response to increased chatter regarding the government’s decision to end fuel price caps. Organizations using Seerist saw this as an indicator that there could be major impacts to their people and operations related to threat vulnerability and risk. This assumption was found to be true as on January 2nd, protests began. This information was also delivered via Seerist, giving the opportunity to put safety plans into place, as a PulseAI notification of dropping stability corresponded with a human-derived alert verifying the size, scale, and impact of the protests.
On January 4th, despite the fact that the government pledged to bring back fuel price caps, PulseAI alerted users to continued unrest. On top of that, four Hotspots – ML-driven indicators of abnormal activity – were triggered in multiple parts of the country.
Leveraging this intelligence and analysis, an organization using the Seerist platform was able to stay ahead of the crisis and help its people get out of Kazakhstan four days before deadly protests, which occurred on January 4, 2022. A declaration of a State of Emergency wasn’t even called until January 5th. Had the organizations not had these 96 hours to make the right preparations and arrangements, thousands of people could have been trapped, injured, or even killed.
Putting Threat Intelligence into Action
Organizations that prioritize threat intelligence analysis will be able to maneuver around their greatest threats, including geopolitical threats, economic threats, and physical and cybersecurity threats. While not all threats are avoidable and some are unable to be forecasted, an effective threat intelligence analysis will empower security teams and decision-makers with the strategies and plans they need to put mitigation processes in place when a crisis does arise.
Structured programs and advanced analytics, like those provided by Seerist – which blends technologies like AI and ML with insight from experts based around the globe – contribute to effective risk mitigation and proactive threat response. In today’s unpredictable risk environment, organizations can’t fall short when it comes to creating a vigilant and proactive security posture.
Seerist fuses the best of both automation and human expertise to offer organizations a comprehensive threat intelligence program that evolves alongside today’s ever-changing risk landscape. Interested in learning more? Email info@seerist.com today to schedule a demo or set up a discussion to hear more about how Seerist is a leader in threat and risk intelligence.
