Understanding cyber threat intelligence

What is threat intelligence?

Cyber threat intelligence is information on cybercriminals and their activities which has been processed and correlated to help security defenders protect their environments, their customers and employees. It contains information on threat actor movements, plans, recent attacks, leaked credentials and exposes conversations between cybercriminal gangs. Threat intelligence can be gained from the clear, deep or dark web.

For cybercriminals, the deep and dark web are key channels for communicating and collaborating with other threat actors as well as buying and selling services and resources, such as tools for cyberattacks and compromised information stolen from past attacks. Most importantly for these criminals, the dark web is a place to do all of these things anonymously.

Understanding the dark web is a critical component of a threat intelligence program. Analysts can use it to examine discussions of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), monitor transactions of tools needed in cyberattacks, and investigate the success of earlier attacks by searching for compromised credit cards or credentials that may be listed for sale.

Enhancing cybersecurity with threat intelligence

While cyber threat intelligence is acknowledged as a critical component of cybersecurity, many organizations struggle to collect, process, analyze and use intelligence in ways that improve security posture. This can be due to the rapid pace of change in the threat landscape – their security teams and analysts simply lack the resources and tools to keep up. Some organizations have not yet operationalized external threat intelligence – they lack the right mix of people, processes and technologies, which makes it difficult to act quickly in response to emerging threats. 

The keys to successful threat intelligence analysis

To operationalize and threat intelligence, security teams must take five critical steps.

• Gather intelligence from a broad range of sources. Threat intelligence is more than basic indicators of compromise (IOCs). To proactively predict and prevent threats, security analysts must pull data from sources including social networking sites and deep/dark web chatter.

• Automate processes. Modern security programs rely on threat intelligence that can be customized and automated for specific analysis and operational needs.

• Democratize intelligence. Rather than a siloed approach to security, a superior threat intelligence program should be a service for all security requirements, providing analysts throughout the organization with customized feeds.

• Integrate solutions. To improve threat prevention, detection and response, threat intelligence should be tightly integrated with security controls like firewalls, network proxies, endpoint security, SIEM and SOAR solutions.

• Develop a common data source. SOC and threat analyst teams benefit when they share a common threat intelligence portal where they can query and analyze raw data from shared sources.

Threat intelligence with Cybersixgill 

Cybersixgill’s fully automated threat intelligence solutions help organizations everywhere to fight cybercrime, implement phishing prevention, stop data leaks, prioritize vulnerabilities and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of cyber threat management.

Our technology captures, processes and alerts teams to emerging threats, TTPs and IOCs as they surface on the clear, deep and dark web. Using advanced AI and machine learning algorithms, we prioritize and score data, swiftly publish profiles and identify behavioral patterns that allow security teams to apply timely and proactive solutions to minimize risk and prevent attacks before they are launched.

Cybersixgill provides real-time access to the largest database of deep, dark and clear web threat activity, enabling security teams to:

• Expose the earliest indicators of risk. Our fully automated crawlers infiltrate and maintain access to limited-access sources, extracting and processing data in all languages and formats.

• Preempt attacks. Our AI and machine learning algorithms index, tag and filter threat intelligence, enriching and delivering it to security teams within minutes. This allows our customers to capture and block threats as they emerge, before they can be weaponized in attack.

• Streamline management. With 24 integration partners and 40 API endpoints for a broad range of use cases, Cybersixgill makes it easy to integrate intelligence into existing security stacks, needs and workflows.

Cybersixgill’s Threat Intelligence Solutions 

With the broadest threat intelligence collection capabilities available, we extract data from a wide range of sources, including deep and dark web forums and markets, code repositories, paste sites and more. Cybersixgill fully automates threat intelligence to empower security teams to collect, analyze, research and respond to threats as seamlessly as possible. Our solutions are delivered via:

A dark web intelligence feed

Cybersixgill’s vast collection of cyber threat intelligence data can also be consumed, via an application programming interface (API) that integrates directly into existing workflows and system architectures to address multiple use cases & functionalities. The API offering supports database queries and query-based notifications, actionable alerts tailored to your organizational assets, automated feed of malicious IOCs, detection of leaked user credentials, real-time feed of CVE-related events and developments, multi-tenant (MSSP) configurations and more. A new integration per customer request can be created within a week.

A portal for real-time and ad hoc visualization

The Investigative Portal provides exclusive access to closed, underground sources, allowing security teams to get the answers they need to eliminate threats quickly. With the Investigative Portal, Cybersixgill delivers real-time context and actionable alerts as well as the ability to conduct covert investigations. Security teams can research threat actors’ profiles, motives and history and detect interactions between threat actors in real time. The Investigative Portal can also play an important role in cyber security audits by helping security teams to monitor specific information about their organizations on the deep and dark web.

Why Cybersixgill? 

At Cybersixgill, our mission is to help security professionals continuously expose, identify and remediate the earliest indications of risk. Our solutions enable security teams to overcome the challenge of sorting through a flood of irrelevant data and alerts, allowing them to focus on the most dangerous and urgent threats to their organization. By reducing the amount of incoming information to only data that is relevant, Cybersixgill helps security analysts to more effectively leverage threat intelligence to protect their organizations from cybercrime such as phishing campaigns, data leaks, fraud and vulnerability exploits and to improve security through supply chain and brand monitoring.

FAQs

What is threat intelligence vs. thread hunting?

Threat intelligence and threat hunting are closely related. Threat hunting is a proactive approach to identifying previously unknown threats as well as cyberattacks in progress that have not yet been remediated. Threat hunters rely on intelligence to provide insight into patterns of suspicious activity that may indicate the presence of a threat. Threat intelligence can also help threat hunters to understand the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of specific attackers as they search for indications of compromise or malicious activity.

What is the deep web vs. dark web?

The deep web is a part of the internet where websites cannot be indexed by web crawlers and consequently won’t show up on search engines. The deep web is used mostly for legitimate online activities; typical contents include financial data, email inboxes, medical documentation, legal files and Social Security databases. The dark web is a subset of the deep web that can only be accessed through purpose-built web browsers. Much of the dark web is dedicated to illegal content and criminal activities. Because communication and transactions are conducted anonymously, the dark web is where cyber criminals typically go to buy and sell data and tools of the trade and share information about vulnerabilities and attack vectors.