The Importance of Threat Intelligence Feeds
19.04.2019
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Threat Intelligence Feeds, in fact, are an actionable threat data related to artifacts or indicators collected from any third-party vendors in order to learn from other company’s visibility and access to enhance your own cyber threat response and awareness. The example of these third-party vendors includes Kaspersky Threat Intelligence and Alient Vault OTX. Threat Intelligence Feeds concentrate on a single area of interest and they are delivered online. For instance, these data feeds can be about IP addresses, hashes, or domains.
In the evolving world of technology, cyber-attacks are occurring exponentially and organizations’ defense apparatus is inefficient and inadequate to prevent these culpable attacks. As a result of this prevailing phenomenon, cybersecurity has become a matter of utmost concern in this age. It is widely accepted in the cybersecurity realm that the Threat Intelligence Feeds act as a preventive threat data mechanism against cyber-attacks.
Another important question is about the ingestion of Threat Intelligence Feeds. As aforementioned, Threat Intelligence Feeds are actionable data. If so, then who use it? How use it? As a matter of fact, Threat Intelligence Feeds are used by security tools such as SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) or the next generation firewalls (NGFW). Thus, Threat Intelligence Feeds had its origin from that background as a continuous stream of threat data.
As earlier said, Threat Intelligence Feeds are continuous streams of threat data such as the Indicator of Compromise (IoC). Threat intelligence Platform is used to ingest, store, organize and compare Threat Intelligence Feeds much more manageable. In addition, Threat Intelligence Feeds must be implemented along with technical controls in order to prevent cyber-attacks. Threat data can be collected from numerous sources. There is no limitation. The following section elaborates it further.
There are different sources of Threat Intelligence Feeds each having their own pros and cons. It is opinionated that feeds must be combined from multiple sources for the best result or to yield maximum results. However, threat intelligence feeds can be categorized into two broad categories; Public Threat Intelligence Feeds and Private Threat Intelligence Feeds. Public feeds are feeds available publicly and they are available on the internet. Private feeds need to be purchased from third-party security vendors.
Threat intelligence is undeniably an important investment for any organization’s security posture. It provides the following benefits:
Undoubtedly, Threat Intelligence Feeds are very effective and helpful to prevent cyber-attacks. Since they provide trusted, actionable data feeds, organizations benefit from the research of other third-party organizations who are also working to gather data feeds about multiple threats such as malware, Ransomware, or Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). The collective effort of disparate firms can achieve much more than an individual organization. Therefore, the need for Threat Intelligence Feeds and Threat Intelligence Platforms is inevitable nowadays to protect the security posture of the organizations.
