Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence
Cybersecurity threat intelligence is information about existing or emerging threats to digital assets. It's more than just raw data; it has been collected, evaluated, and analyzed to provide actionable insights. This intelligence helps organizations anticipate, prevent, and respond more effectively to cyberattacks.
Here's a breakdown of key aspects:
Threat Actors: Threat intelligence provides details about who is behind attacks. This includes their motivations (financial gain, espionage, activism), capabilities (skills, tools, resources), and common tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
Malware and Tools: This section includes information about the specific malware, tools, and exploits that threat actors use. These can range from known viruses to zero-day exploits (vulnerabilities that are unknown to the software vendor).
Vulnerabilities: Threat intelligence identifies systems, software, and hardware weaknesses that threat actors can exploit. This goes beyond just listing vulnerabilities; it often includes information about the likelihood of exploitation and the potential impact.
Indicators of Compromise (IOCs): These are forensic data, such as file hashes, IP addresses, or domain names, that identify potentially malicious activity on a system or network. Threat intelligence provides IOCs to help security teams detect and investigate intrusions.
Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs): Understanding threat actors' operations is crucial. Threat intelligence details the TTPs they use at different stages of an attack, from initial access to data exfiltration.
Context: Threat intelligence provides context around threats. This might include the geopolitical landscape, industry-specific trends, or the timing of attacks, which can help organizations understand the "why" behind an attack.
Actionability: The ultimate goal of threat intelligence is to be actionable. It should provide information that security teams can use to improve their defenses, such as updating security rules, patching vulnerabilities, or training users to recognize phishing attempts.
Cybersecurity threat intelligence transforms raw data into knowledge, empowering organizations to make informed decisions and proactively mitigate cyber risks.
Here’s how ThreatNG can enhance cybersecurity threat intelligence, emphasizing its modules and potential synergies with complementary solutions.
ThreatNG's Help: ThreatNG's external discovery capabilities provide a foundation for threat intelligence by identifying the organization's attack surface from an outsider's perspective. It performs "purely external unauthenticated discovery" without needing connectors, revealing potential entry points for attackers.
Example: ThreatNG discovers all subdomains, open ports, and services associated with an organization, which can be valuable Indicators of Exposure (IOEs) for threat intelligence analysis.
Synergy with Complementary Solutions: Threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) can ingest ThreatNG's discovery data to enrich their context. Knowing all subdomains allows the TIP to better assess the scope of a phishing campaign that spoofs a legitimate subdomain.
ThreatNG's Help: ThreatNG's external assessment modules provide detailed information on an organization's risk posture, which is crucial for understanding potential threats.
Examples:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses web applications' susceptibility to hijacking, providing insights into potential attack vectors.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: It evaluates the risk of subdomain takeovers, which can be exploited in phishing or other attacks.
Data Leak Susceptibility: ThreatNG identifies potential data leak sources, such as exposed cloud storage or code repositories, which are valuable for understanding data breach risks.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG discovers and analyzes mobile apps for potential security weaknesses.
Synergy with Complementary Solutions: TIPs can use ThreatNG's assessment data to prioritize threat intelligence alerts. For example, a high "Web Application Hijack Susceptibility" score can increase the priority of threat intelligence related to web application attacks.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG's Help: ThreatNG's reporting capabilities deliver information about identified risks and vulnerabilities.
Example: ThreatNG provides "Prioritized (High, Medium, Low, and Informational)" reports, enabling security teams to focus on the most critical threats first.
Synergy with Complementary Solutions: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems can use ThreatNG's reports to correlate external threat intelligence with internal security events. This correlation can improve the detection of attacks that exploit external vulnerabilities.
ThreatNG's Help: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring of the external attack surface provides ongoing threat intelligence. It helps organizations stay aware of changes that could introduce new threats.
Example: ThreatNG continuously monitors for new subdomains or exposed services, which attackers could target.
Synergy with Complementary Solutions: SOAR platforms can automate responses to ThreatNG's monitoring alerts. For example, if ThreatNG detects a newly exposed service, the SOAR platform can trigger a workflow to investigate and assess potential threats.
ThreatNG's Help: ThreatNG's investigation modules provide detailed information on various aspects of the external attack surface, aiding in threat analysis.
Examples:
Domain Intelligence: Provides insights into domain registration, DNS records, and related information, which can help identify phishing or domain spoofing risks.
Sensitive Code Exposure: Discovers exposed credentials and secrets in public code repositories, which are valuable for understanding potential attack vectors.
Search Engine Exploitation: Analyzes an organization's susceptibility to information exposure through search engines.
Synergy with Complementary Solutions: TIPs can use the detailed information from ThreatNG's investigation modules to enrich their threat intelligence feeds. For example, indicators of compromise (IOCs) extracted from ThreatNG's analysis (e.g., malicious domains, exposed credentials) can be incorporated into TIPs.
ThreatNG's Help: ThreatNG's "Intelligence Repositories (Branded as DarCache: Data Reconnaissance Cache)" provide curated threat intelligence data.
Examples:
DarCache Vulnerability: Provides information on vulnerabilities, including exploitability and potential impact.
DarCache Dark Web: Provides intelligence on dark web activity, including mentions of the organization and compromised credentials.
DarCache Mobile: Provides details on security issues found in mobile apps.
Synergy with Complementary Solutions: TIPs can integrate ThreatNG's intelligence repositories to enhance their threat feeds. For example, DarCache Vulnerability data can help TIPs prioritize alerts based on the likelihood of vulnerability exploitation.
