From Data to Defense: How Cyber Threat Intelligence Feeds work?

In an unexpected turn of events, Taylor Swift’s record-breaking tour faced a challenge off-stage. While fans celebrated the musical spectacle, cybercriminals were orchestrating their own performance behind the scenes. 

Reports emerged of a massive data breach affecting millions of customers, with sensitive information potentially exposed on illicit online marketplaces.

This incident highlights a growing concern: the vulnerability of businesses and their associated data. As companies push boundaries to deliver exceptional experiences, malicious actors seek to exploit vulnerabilities in the background.

But what if there were ways to detect these cyber threats before they escalate into full-blown attacks? This is where cyber threat intelligence feeds come into play, aiming to identify and mitigate potential security risks.

TL;DR 

Cyber threat intelligence feeds are dynamic data streams that provide up-to-date information about possible security risks, enabling proactive posture in cybersecurity endeavors.

There are four types of cyber intelligence feeds, (strategic, tactical, technical, and operational), each serving different organizational needs and timeframes, from high-level trends to immediate, actionable data.

Due to the complexity and volume of data involved in threat intelligence, multidisciplinary skills are needed in the workforce.

What is a cyber threat intelligence feed? 

A cyber threat intelligence feed is a continuously updated stream of data that provides organizations with real-time information about potential cybersecurity threats. These feeds collect, analyze, and disseminate information on various cyber threats and attacks, including malware, phishing attempts, vulnerabilities, and malicious IP addresses or domain names.

The main aim of these feeds is to give you a proactive edge in your cybersecurity efforts. By consuming and integrating these feeds into security systems, you can stay ahead of emerging security threats, patch vulnerabilities, and tailor your defenses to counter new attacks. 

Cyber threat intelligence feeds can be categorized into different types based on the level of analysis they provide. 

Types of cyber threat intelligence feed

Some feeds offer raw data, such as lists of malicious IP addresses or suspicious domains. In contrast, others provide more contextualized and analyzed information, including threat actor profiles and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). 

Here are the different types of cyber threat intelligence feeds  

1. Strategic threat intelligence

Strategic intelligence feeds provide high-level information about broad trends, risk factors, and industry-specific threats. They are designed to give you a broad, high-level view of your cybersecurity landscape.  

1. Geopolitical analysis
2. Industry specific threat landscape 
3. Threat trends 
4. Profiling threat actors
5. Long-term vulnerability prediction

For instance, if a feed highlights increased state-sponsored attacks on critical infrastructure, you can use this information to strengthen your posture by investing in cyber resilience and recovery capabilities. 

Although these feeds work independently, they require human analysis to interpret and apply the information effectively within your organization’s specific situation. 

2. Tactical threat intelligence

Tactical intelligence feeds are a form of threat intelligence designed to give you timely, specific, and actionable information about current and emerging threats. These feeds are crucial for day-to-day cybersecurity operations. 

Security teams would rely on tactical feeds for day-to-day cybersecurity operations and use this information for:

1. Update security controls in real time.
2. Refine detection rules in SIEM systems. 
3. Inform incident response process.
4. Guide threat hunting activities. 

Your security team can use information from different components to update your firewall, IDS/IPS, and endpoint protection platforms with new rules and signatures.

3. Technical threat intelligence

This type of threat intelligence gives you highly detailed information and technical data about specific threats. These feeds often include information like malware samples, command and control server addresses, and detailed analysis of attack techniques. 

A technical intelligence feed is particularly helpful for incident response teams and malware analysts as it has the ability to:

1. Dissect malware behavior
2. Understand complex attack methodologies
3. Identify and analyze indicators of compromise at a code level 
4. Create targeted remediation plans 
5. Conduct forensic investigations. 

These feeds are particularly valuable for security teams with advanced technical capabilities, as they often require specialized knowledge to interpret and apply effectively. 

4. Operational threat intelligence

Operational intelligence feeds are a different type of threat intelligence feed that focus on the insights into the origin and complexity of the threat actors involved. These feeds give you information about ongoing campaigns, newly discovered vulnerabilities, or immediate threats. An operational intelligence feed helps you prioritize your short-term security efforts. 

It does so by:

1. Assessing for threat severity 
2. Sending you real time threat alerts 
3. Tracking a bad actors attack campaign
4. Identifying emerging potential threats
5. Giving you contextual relevance of the said attacks 

You can use a combination of these feeds by integrating them into your existing security information and event management systems, firewalls and intrusion detection systems to enhance your cybersecurity posture. 

To implement a cyber threat intelligence feed, you should know how it works. 

How does cyber threat intelligence feed work?

Cyber threat intelligence is not about amassing data but rather using data to your own advantage by turning it into actionable insights. It requires constant refinement, contextual analysis and a deep understanding of your own vulnerabilities to truly make a difference. 

“Cyber threat intelligence feeds provide organizations with timely, relevant data about potential security risks. This allows security teams to anticipate threats and take preventive action, rather than always playing catch-up with attackers.” 

Step 1: Collecting data 

Data collection is the foundational step in cyber threat intelligence, where raw information about potential cyber threats is gathered from a wide array of sources. This step casts a wide net to capture as many relevant data sources as possible, which can then be sifted through to analyze and identify genuine threats. 

1. Technical indicators look for specific digital fingerprints of malicious activities.
   1. Malicious IP addresses, malware hashes, bitcoins or wallets linked to ransomware campaigns, suspicious email addresses, or URLs of malicious websites.
2. Network activity data like patterns and anomalies in traffic that could indicate a potential threat.
   1. Unusual traffic patterns, DDoS attacks, protocol anomalies, or network flow data. 
3. Malware information like details about malicious software and the vulnerabilities they exploit.
   1. Software vulnerabilities, zero-day exploits, proof-of-concept exploit code, or affected software versions or patches. 
4. Threat actor information: Essentially the profiles and behaviors of cybercriminal groups or individuals.
   1. Known threat group names or aliases, TTPs used by threat actors, motivations and objectives of threat groups, or geographic affiliations. 
5. Credential data: Information about compromised user names and passwords or breach datasets. 
6. Social engineering tactics: Methods used by attackers to manipulate people into divulging sensitive information.
   1. Phishing, baiting, whaling, etc. 
7. Contextual information:  Broader events and trends that may influence cybersecurity risks.
   1. This Includes geopolitical events that could trigger a cyber attack, threat trends, and regulatory changes that can affect the cybersecurity space. 
8. Dark web intelligence: Information gathered from hidden parts of the internet where cybercriminals operate.
9. Incident reports: Detailed accounts of past cyber attacks and their impacts. 
10. IoT device information: Security risks associated with Internet of Things devices. 
11. Cloud security data: Threats and vulnerabilities specific to cloud computing environments.
12. Mitigation and response strategies: Recommended actions to prevent or address cyber threats.

The data gathering system collects the said data by employing strategies like: 

1. Automation tools continuously scrape and collect information from numerous online sources.
2. Manual research is where security analysts actively search for and collect information from less structured sources. 
3. Set up decoy systems to attract and study malicious activities, like honeypots or sinkholes. 

The data collection process is continuous and dynamic and must consider the legal and ethical aspects of data collection. When dealing with potentially sensitive or personal information, you must ensure that you are complying with relevant laws and regulations. Essentially, this translates to adhering to data protection laws, respecting privacy, and obtaining data using legitimate means. 

Step 2: Processing 

The raw data, once collected, is then structured into a usable format for analysis. This step ensures that the data is consistent, accurate, and ready to be interpreted. Processing involves:

1. To prevent skewed analysis or false positives, it removes duplicates and eliminates redundant data by creating unique hashes for each data point to identify exact matches or by removing repeated entries within a specific time frame. 
2. Standardize data fields by converting disparate data into a uniform format for easier comparison. It converts all timestamps to a standard format and ensures consistent IP address formatting like IPv4 or IPv6. Standardization is achieved through lookup tables for converting between tables or NL processing to extract structured data from unstructured text. 
3. Categorization of threats involves classifying normalized data into predefined categories to facilitate analysis and response. It categorizes data by:
   1. Threat type
   2. Attack vector 
   3. Targeted data asset 
   4. Threat actor type.

Data processing and normalization are critical bridges between raw data collection and meaningful analysis. They lay the foundation for all subsequent threat intelligence activities, ensuring analysts and automated systems can work with reliable data. 

Step 3: Analysis and enrichment 

This step involves recognizing recurring elements or evolving characteristics. It is done by using time series analysis to detect temporal patterns or cluster analysis to group similar patterns and behaviors. Usually, machine learning or heatmaps are deployed for pattern recognition and to represent data relationships. 

The feed then correlates data points between entities through a graph analysis and correlates events to link related activities across different sources. Tools generally use an AI component to process vast amounts of data and structure the unstructured text data. 

The data is also enriched by supplementing information to ensure a better understanding. The context that is added varies across:

1. Historical – previous occurrences and outcomes
2. Geopolitical – regional tensions 
3. Industry-specific – sector vulnerabilities. 
4. Technical – affected systems, exploit methods. 

Analyzing and enriching the data helps in understanding the full scope of a threat and it also aids in identifying more sophisticated multi-stage attacks. 

Step 4: Threat scoring 

 Threat scoring and prioritization is a step in the threat intelligence process that allows you to focus your resources on the most critical and relevant threats. Think of it as a risk assessment for threats. This step transforms analyzed data into actionable intelligence by assigning relevant importance to each threat. 

Based on different assessment areas and the severity of consequences, these threats are scored:

1. Financial impact
2. Operational impact 
3. Data impact 
4. Compliance impact 

The scoring method used for potential threats can vary based on your organizational  preferences:

1. Quantitative approach – estimating in monetary value for potential losses
2. Qualitative scales – categorization of threats based on the severity of impact like ‘low, high, or medium’ and assign a numerical value to each. 

The likelihood of occurrence is factored in after considering the following aspects:

1. Current threat landscape 
2. Historical data
3. Relevance of the threat to the organization 
4. Threat actor capabilities and motivations 

It is recommended that you use the DREAD framework. This framework stands for Damage, Reproducibility, Exploitability, Affected users, Discoverability. 

The threat scoring method is not static; it requires you to continuously refine and adapt in the face of the changing threat landscape. 

Step 5: Intelligence production 

Intelligence production gives you consumable data ready to be understood and used by various stakeholders. This cyber threat intelligence feed phase focuses on creating clearer, relevant, and timely outputs that drive informed decisions and effective cybersecurity measures. 

Essentially, this step produces threat reports which give you a detailed overview of a specific threat. There are different types of reports:

1. Incident reports 
2. Threat actor profiles 
3. Vulnerability assessments 
4. Industry-specific 

The threat report takes into account indicators of compromise. They are forensic data that identify potentially malicious activity on your system or network.  There are different types of IoCs like:

1. Network indicators 
2. Host-based indicators (file hashes, registry keys) 
3. Email indicators 

The threat report also recommends mitigation strategies to address the identified threats and vulnerabilities. Mitigation measures include:

1. Technical controls
2. Procedural controls
3. Strategic recommendations 

Intelligence production is a culmination of the threat intelligence process where raw data is transmitted into valuable actionable knowledge.  

Step 6: Integration and action

Once the reports are vetted by stakeholders and everyone is on the same page, you need to start rolling out the mitigation strategies. This is the phase where the rubber meets the road— the insights transform into concrete security measures and improvements. 

There are 3 crucial aspects to this

1. Updating security controls.
   1. Network security includes firewall rule modification, IPS, or network segmentation adjustments.
   2. Endpoint security enhancements like updating antivirus and endpoint detection and response or adjusting endpoint monitoring rules. 
   3. Email and web filtering. 
2. Patching vulnerabilities and prioritizing those needing immediate attention based on the data from threat intelligence feeds. Once these are fixed, you can move on to scheduling the patch updates for non-critical vulnerabilities. 
3. Adjusting security policies and procedures to accommodate the new threats and vulnerabilities.  

Integration and action require you to delicately balance speed, precision, and operational awareness to implement changes and fortify your security measures without disrupting business operations. 

Step 7: Feedback and refinement 

While cyber threat intelligence feeds work in a loop, feedback and refinement can be considered as the last step before the cycle starts again. Let’s take a look at this phase:

1. Measuring the accuracy and timeliness of alerts sent to you by your system
   1. False positive rates
   2. False negative rates 
   3. Mean time to detect
   4. Alert to incident ratio 
2. Assessing the impact on security incidents. This aspect looks at how threat intelligence has influenced your ability to prevent, detect, and respond to security incidents.
3. Gathering feedback from security teams and cybersecurity professionals who use threat intelligence daily. 

This continuous improvement helps the organization anticipate and better handle future cybersecurity threats and enhance present security operations.

After delving into the workings of cyber threat intelligence feeds it is clear that these systems play a crucial role in contemporary cybersecurity frameworks. The sophisticated combination of automated data collection, human judgment, and machine learning algorithms results in a defense system that is dynamic and goes beyond conventional, static security measures.  

Benefits of having cyber threat intelligence feeds 

The benefits of cyber threat intelligence feeds stem from enhanced situational awareness and proactive stance. Here are four benefits of a cyber threat intelligence feed: 

1. Enhanced threat detection and prevention 

1. Early warning system: By informing organizations ahead of time about new dangers, threat feeds enable you to strengthen your defenses before actual attacks take place.
2. Increased accuracy: You can minimize false positives and negatives and concentrate efforts on real threats by comparing internal security data with external threat intelligence.
3. Extensive coverage: Threat feeds frequently incorporate clues from other sources, offering insight into potential dangers that could otherwise go undetected. 

2. Proactive risk management 

1. Prioritizing vulnerabilities: Using threat intelligence, you can concentrate your patching efforts on the vulnerabilities actively exploited in the wild.
2. Targeted security investments: Understanding the most relevant threats allows for a more strategically allocating security resources and budget.
3. Sensible policy development: Threat feed insights can help develop and improve security policies and processes.

3. Business advantage 

1. Well-informed decisions: Threat intelligence offers insightful background when making corporate decisions about digital projects, collaborations, or growth.
2. Reputation protection: You can safeguard your reputation and customer trust by preventing breaches and responding quickly to threats.
3. Competitive edge: In sectors where clients or partners prioritize cybersecurity, having threat intelligence can set you apart from the competition.

4. Reduction in cost 

1. Breach Prevention: You can avoid the high expenses of data breaches, such as remediation, legal fees, and fines from authorities, by thwarting successful attacks.
2. Efficient Use of Resources: Human and technological resources are used more effectively when threats are prioritized more carefully. 

While beneficial, cyber threat intelligence feeds have a long way to go. 

Cyber threat intelligence feeds have shown promise in helping organizations stay ahead of the evolving threats, their implementation and efficacy have a still long road ahead. The sheer volume of data from various sources can be overwhelming , making it difficult for security teams to distill truly actionable intelligence. Many organizations struggle to integrate these feeds effectively into their existing security architectures, rendering their efficacy. 

Threat intelligence platforms have emerged that promise a solution, aiming to aggregate, correlate, and analyze data from multiple sources. While the platforms are still maturing, their ultimate goal is to generate timely, relevant, and actionable intelligence that combats sophisticated and persistent threats. 

A more sophisticated strategy that blends technical advancements with human knowledge will probably be required as the field develops. It will be necessary for organizations to assess the return on investment (ROI) of their threat intelligence programs closely, emphasizing quality over quantity and building internal capacity to interpret and utilize the information they obtain.

Sprinto; always on the lookout 

Sprinto is a GRC platform that has threat intelligence capabilities. Our tool provides you with providing a pre-mapped risk library with industry-benchmark impact scores. This approach transforms risk management into a more precise, data-driven process. 

1. Sprinto comes equipped with a library of over 60 pre-mapped risks, each assigned impact scores based on industry benchmarks. This extensive library provides a solid foundation for risk assessment, ensuring organizations start with a comprehensive view of potential risks.
2. Sprinto maps risks to specific business processes and assets, providing a clearer picture of how various risks could impact different areas of your organization.
3. Sprinto’s GRC capabilities automate many aspects of the risk management process, from initial assessment to ongoing monitoring and mitigation.
4. Risks are mapped to various compliance frameworks within Sprinto, helping organizations understand how identified risks relate to their regulatory obligations.

Risks are mapped to various compliance frameworks within Sprinto, helping organizations understand how identified risks relate to their regulatory obligations. 

FAQs 

What are cyber threat feeds?

Cyber threat feeds are dynamic data streams that are updated often and provide information on present or anticipated threats to an organization’s cybersecurity. These feeds usually contain known malware signatures, file hashes, malicious domain names, and suspicious IP addresses as indicators of compromise (IoCs). These feeds are used by organizations to improve their threat detection and prevention skills.

What is CTI feed?

A CTI feed is an abbreviation for cyber threat intelligence feeds. 

What is a threat feed IP address?

A dynamic, frequently updated list of potentially harmful network identities is known as an IP address threat feed. Individual IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, address ranges, and subnets connected to cyberthreats are usually included in this list. Typically, these feeds are sent in a plain text file format and are kept up to date on other servers.