Security teams can no longer gain by responding to alarms. They are able to win when they know what’s likely to happen to them the next time, what is important about it and what they can do to prevent it from happening. That’s the promise that cyber-security intelligence (CTI). This guide will explain the meaning of CTI is what it is, how it functions and where it can be found in your arsenal and the best way to demonstrate its worth.
What is Cyber Threat Intelligence Really Is
cyber Threat intelligence is information on threats and their campaigns, tools and actions that has been converted into information that you can use to make decisions. It’s not just an indicator feed. It’s a repeatable process that aids in making decision-making across the entire business.
Three layers comprise CTI
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Strategic The latest trends, the risks and probable scenarios for risk owners. Provides answers to “who is focusing on our industry and why” “what might happen in this quarter” and “what will the impact on business be.”
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Operational Acting campaigns, threats, as well as TTPs pertinent to your particular environment. Helps plan, prioritize Tabletop exercises, prioritization, and the need to strengthen your efforts.
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tactical: Technical artifacts that are short-lived and provide guidelines to SOC as well as incident responses. This includes IOCs as well as the rules for detection, questions along with response playbooks.
The Intelligence Cycle in Five Steps
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Specifications: Define Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs). Make them a part of real-world choices, like “Which TTPs most likely against our crown jewels” and “Which suppliers carry the highest risk.”
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Collect: Gather from internal data, open source commercial intel monitoring dark webs as well as sharing networks (ISACs as well as National CSIRTs).
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Processing Standardize, reduce duplicates enhance as well as score the data. Monitor confidence and source reliability.
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Production and analysis: Turn signals into evaluations, detections, and actions. Map to frameworks, so that other can benefit from it.
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Feedback and dissemination: Deliver the right information to the most relevant people at the appropriate time, then you can refine your PIRs.
Where CTI is a good fit within the Security Stack
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SOC and SIEM/XDR: Convert TTPs into the rules of correlation, analytics and hunts. Tag detections can be converted into strategies and methods for measuring the extent of coverage.
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SOAR and IR: Make use of intel to power automatic containment, ticket enhancement and playbook branching in response to the behavior of actors.
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Manage Vulnerabilities: Prioritize patches using exploit availability, active exploit, and the interest of actors instead of CVSS all by itself.
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Identity and Email Secure: Tune controls for the entices of lookalike domains, MFA techniques to bypass your industry is experiencing right now.
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Risk and GRC: Translate technical threat trends into business scenarios and choices for board members.
Frameworks that Create CTI Effective
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MITRE ATT&CK A language that is shared by strategies, tactics, and methods. Make use of it to coordinate hunts, detections and the metrics of coverage.
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MITRE D3FEND Technique mappings for defensive defense that you can utilize to design strategies to counter the ATT&CK methods you’re concerned about.
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Lockheed Martin Kill Chain An esoteric view which can help you disrupt your system quickly and inexpensively.
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Diamond Model A method of analysis to switch between adversary, infrastructure, capabilities and the victim to create directions and actions.
Standards and Sharing
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STIX 2.1 to structure information in machine-readable format.
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TaxiI 2.1 to transport it between partners and platforms.
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TLP 2.0 to label sensitivity and establish sharing rules.
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MISP or something similar to manage sightings, communities, and trust.
This makes your Intel easily portable, testable and secure to share.
Data Sources Which Matter
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Internal: Endpoint, network identity, cloud as well as application logs. Gold for relevance and validation.
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External links: OSINT, vendors feeds and portals, malware sandboxes and scan information.
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Spaces that are closed: Broker markets and forums for dark web to provide early warning of credentials as well as access listings.
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Communities Sector groups and ISACs and government advisory to share benchmarks and benchmarks.
The journey from intelligence to action Practical Applications
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Ransomware as well as Data Extortion Track groups that target your business, their intrusion pathways and toolchains. Make it harder to access the initial and their lateral pathways they prefer. Develop detectors for their most commonly used techniques, and then validate them using exercises for the purple team.
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Corporate E-mail Compromise (BEC)
Examine lookalike domains as well as the patterns of payment fraud. Implement out-of-band verification for payments. Include the detection of unusual mail regulations, theft of tokens or MFA efforts to exhaustion. -
Risks to Supply Chain
Be aware of vendors and dependencies for exploited weaknesses, repo abuse and malicious publication of packages. Make sure you add provenance and allowlists in your build procedure. -
Cloud Identity abuse
Be aware of sessions hijacking OAuth Consent abuse and misconfigurations of workload identities. Include detections for potentially risky grants and consent flows that are not typical, as well as silent mailer rules.
The process of turning Intel into Controls
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Detected: Analytics mapped to ATT&CK. Unit tests and data sets for validation.
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Blocking A short-lived blocker network, or mail blocking to indicate high-confidence with review and expiration.
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Hunts Searches based upon hypotheses derived from the latest behavior of actors. Document the procedure and expected results.
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hardening Changes to policies, segments, and identity control prioritized by the TTPs that you anticipate to meet.
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Playbooks Soar steps that include branches on signals from Intel which include legal, communication and recovery tasks.
Measurement Value Metrics that Last through the CFO Test
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Timing: Mean time to recognize and respond. Time to block following the publication of intel.
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coverage: Percentage of priority techniques that are reliable in their detection. The percentage of detections tested during the previous quarter.
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quality: False positive rate for rules driven by Intel. Percentage of intel used in SOC as well as IR.
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End-Result: Incidents prevented or controlled earlier. The loss was avoided. Audit findings and compliance diminished.
The process of creating the CTI Plan: A 30–60-90 Day Plan
Days 1-30: Foundations
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Document PIRs and the stakeholders.
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Set up an intake of light for information and set TLP policy.
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Include at least one reliable source in SIEM and also ticketing.
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Select five ATT&CK strategies that correspond to your top dangers.
Day 31 to 60: Use It
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Produce weekly operational briefs focusing on those strategies and the current campaigns.
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Create new detections, as well as a simple pack for hunting.
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Start an enrichment process within SOAR for identity and phishing instances.
Days 61-90: Scale, Prove and Prove
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Include STIX/TAXII ingestion as well as sharing.
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Create a team that is purple in the playbook of your top actor.
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Results of reports to management including coverage, time and outcomes metrics.
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Join or renew an existing Sector sharing group.
Common Mistakes and Tips to Avoid These
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Indicator hoarding millions of IOCs without context and no expiration. Repair using scoring, validation and TTLs.
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Siloed Intel: Reports that don’t modify controls. Repair with the owners of the product for hunts, detections, or SOAR-related playbooks.
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The Vanity Metrics: Accounting for feeds, indicators and other sources rather than outcomes. Change the coverage, time quality, and outcomes set.
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Sharing that is not labelled: No TLP or confidence ratings. Repair using template fields and required fields.
AI is in CTI Promise and Risis
AI can group reports, summarize chatter and even suggest the most effective detections. AI also reduces the costs for attackers to design traps and to iterate over payloads. Involve a human in the loop, document proof of authenticity and confidence and then test the AI-generated content prior to it touching production controls.
Quick Checklist
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PIRs defined and owned by stakeholders
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TLP policy and sharing agreements in place
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Intel sources prioritized for relevance and confidence
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ATT&CK mapping for detections and hunts
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SOAR playbooks that use intel signals
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Coverage, time, quality, and outcome metrics reported quarterly
Conclusion
Cyber intelligence is the way security systems become proactive and aligned to business. Through the use of specific requirements, trustworthy data sharing and frameworks such as ATT&CK, CTI turns raw information into actions and decisions which reduce the risk. Begin small, then integrate thoroughly analyze the results, then repeat. This is how intelligence defends itself.
