Cyber threats are more common than ever now, with an increase of 7% in global cyber attacks since 2022. Though various intelligent defense mechanisms companies leverage, approaching cyber threats continue to disturb businesses in multiple ways.
This makes cybersecurity one of the topmost concerns of operating businesses wanting to be a part of the competitive industry. Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is evidence-based knowledge that has been progressively helping companies and institutions acquire and maintain knowledge of the threat and attackers.
In this post, we’ll delve into the CTI space and cover what it is, its combination with a VPN, and how it can help secure enterprise assets from cyber threats.
What is Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI)
Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) is a major component of an organization’s cybersecurity plan. It focuses on planning, collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information about existing and potential cyber threats to lessen and prevent organized cyber attacks.
This proactive security solution prevents data breaches by producing actionable insights to make informed decisions regarding cybersecurity infrastructure. It helps prevent and detect digital attacks through indicators to enable organizations to take defensive countermeasures upstream and find them in real-time.
Types of CTI
CTI can be further divided into four types, which are as follows:
Technical Intelligence
Technical CTI provides information on cybercriminals’ resources used to run attacks. Basically, it allows for fast dissemination and threat response. This type works great in blocking social engineering attacks.
Tactical Intelligence
It is the simplest intelligence that provides a greater view of the danger to address underlying issues. This type plays a major part in protecting the company’s resources and assists professionals in understanding how adversaries can execute an attack on the system and determining the attack routes.
Strategic Intelligence
This type offers information at a high level on cyber security views, attack patterns, threats, and the effects of business decisions, which is used by senior-level managers and executives. It provides assistance to management in identifying current threats and future hazards.
Operational Intelligence
It is concerned with information on the cyber attacks. Operational CTI offers a detailed analysis of important elements related to cyber attacks, like aim, timing, and execution. It collects information from hackers’ online discussions through infiltration, making it challenging to obtain.
CTI and VPN
Cyber Threat Intelligence is a valuable asset that needs to be secured at the time of transmission to prevent any interception or unauthorized access by attackers. While there are different ways of securing the CTI data shared between teams and stakeholders, a virtual private network (VPN) works the best of them all.
A VPN is a service that creates a secure connection between a connecting device and network(s). When used for threat intelligence, even a cheap VPN enables IT experts and decision-makers to collect information related to potential attacks without exposing their real geographic location. When chosen correctly for each device, the right VPN provider can help protect sensitive data, no matter if you use Windows, Mac or any other operating system.
This, as a result, keeps their identity concealed and assets and resources hidden from would-be attackers. Integration of VPNs with CTI applications or platforms is useful since a VPN not only protects the corporate data but it also manages user access to that data. This enhances the system’s security and reduces threats to CTI data to a great extent.
How CTI Aids Businesses
CTI has been around for quite a while now, helping businesses make quick, well-informed, and data-backed security decisions. This section will cover the major role of threat intelligence in protecting enterprise assets in different forms:
Supply Chain Management
Supply chain management involves working with global third-party providers. Threat intelligence help enterprises manage third-party visibility, which helps with countering imminent attack plans that could target vendors in the supply chain.
Furthermore, CTI data enable businesses to assess the latest factors that could impact their business’s risk. It can help identify indicators timely to guard the people and infrastructure comprising the vendor network.
Threat intelligence data enable system managers to collect useful information on IT infrastructure and critical software solutions. This way, organizations can mitigate the risk, as well as increase operational efficiency.
Attack Surface Management
Threat intelligence, when used in attack surface management, refines it with a unique attack surface to expose approaching threats and potential vulnerabilities. It enables the continuous discovery of unknown or new enterprise network assets across the supply chain.
This also filters, sorts, determines, and prioritizes the management of exposed assets depending on the effect level, business criticality, and threat urgency. CTI with attack surface management improves security validation and vulnerability management.
Fraud Prevention
CTI has been around detecting fraud tactics and threats, which involves getting to know the methods, like social engineering and phishing, used by bad actors. It also helps professionals detect the types of systems and data that are targeted.
Companies use threat intelligence data for detecting and preventing all types of fraud. It allows them to provide quick responses to incidents and give insights into the aims of fraudsters for better fraud detection and prevention strategies.
Risk Management
Security and IT teams use threat intelligence to prioritize risks posed to an organization. This not only involves understanding the forms of threats that can affect the organization but the potential outcomes of those threats and strategies to mitigate them as well.
In all, organizations use CTI data for making informed decisions about resource allocation and ways to minimize risk.
Incident Response
CTI aids incident response teams in managing security incidents and controlling their impact on enterprise assets. Teams use this data to identify the type and origin of an attack quickly, determine the potential impact, and come up with the most appropriate response.
CTI data also give teams information on the recent threats and techniques used by attackers, which is used for better preparation and responses to incidents.
Final Thoughts
Nowadays, organizations need to keep ahead of new dangers by collecting, analyzing, and sharing information about prospective dangers and threats. Aside from cybersecurity insurance, threat intelligence data is essential for businesses to stay safe in a threat environment that is getting more complex and shifting more quickly.