Threat Intelligence

Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) is the collection, processing, and analysis of data about current and potential cyber threats to help organizations understand the risks they face and make informed security decisions. Rather than simply reacting to attacks, threat intelligence enables a proactive security posture by providing context about who is attacking, how they operate, what they are targeting, and why.

Threat intelligence is categorized into four levels. Strategic intelligence provides high-level analysis of threat trends and risks for executive decision-makers. Tactical intelligence describes the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by threat actors, helping security teams understand how attacks are conducted. Operational intelligence provides details about specific impending attacks or campaigns. Technical intelligence consists of specific indicators of compromise (IOCs) such as malicious IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, and email addresses that can be directly used by security tools for detection.

Organizations consume threat intelligence from multiple sources, including commercial threat intelligence providers, open-source intelligence (OSINT) feeds, government agencies (such as CISA), industry-specific Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs), and their own internal telemetry. Threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) aggregate, normalize, and enrich data from these sources, making it actionable for security operations.

Effective threat intelligence programs integrate intelligence into security operations workflows. This includes enriching SIEM alerts with threat context, updating firewall and IDS rules based on IOCs, informing vulnerability prioritization based on active exploitation, and supporting red team exercises with real-world adversary TTPs. The goal is to move from raw data to actionable intelligence that measurably improves security outcomes.