How does Threat Intelligence Safeguard The Security of User Data?

Threat intelligence offers the toughest security wall to companies, but it is a complex process and needs thorough knowledge and understanding. Software and web industries are always searching for the best security solutions to safeguard their user data. The security landscape includes multiple layers, and those associated with running a website, software applications, and APIs must be aware of the best ways to identify security threats to mitigate those risks. These days, threat intelligence companies are extending their support to businesses and web experts for protecting their networks from hackers and different infiltrations.

Before unfolding different phases of threat intelligence and how it is performed, you must learn about what is threat intelligence.

What is threat intelligence?

Threat intelligence is the complete process of collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating recent and predictive security data. It helps security experts and developers make intelligent decisions for protecting their users’ data. 

Security information plays important role in maintaining a company’s reputation. When security professionals have detailed information, they can also create a defensive wall for an organization’s financial security. 

Threat intelligence offers a smart platform that proves to be very helpful for security automation tools, developer pipelines, and incident response workflows. With data, they will understand the threat landscape and take defensive actions against threats before they arise. 

Steps to threat intelligence:

Finding out the complex security threats in a global landscape is a tough task. To understand threat intelligence, you must learn every phase of threat intelligence that starts with data collection and ends with the dissemination of analyzed data. All threat intelligence companies follow these steps to manage threats and protect confidential data.

Collection:

The first step is collecting raw data. The more you have data, the better your threat protection will be. Such data can be collected from sources like internal and external logs, proprietary data, and open-source intelligence. 

Some important characteristics of these threat data are that they must include Ip addresses, domains, file hashes, and more. It also identifies vulnerability information, including personally identifiable information of users, texts from news sources, and more.

The data can be technical, non-technical, and general. Different threat data must be identified and collected for processing. 

Processing:

For processing, the collection of all raw data is essential. Processing of data makes it more readable which helps in the analysis process. The processing parts include the sorting of data and filtering information. The most important factor here is processing the entire database quickly to initiate the analysis process. 

Large companies generate millions of data every day. The simplification of raw data for making it readable and easily understandable needs professionals. 

Analysis:

Threat intelligence offers comprehensive support to different parts of organizations, and every field strengthens its security level with it. The development team needs threat intelligence for developing strong software applications. Network and system administrators also require this service during configuring application firewalls, and the platform abuse response team can easily remove abuse hosts with the help of threat intelligence. So, the analysis step needs to meet different purposes of analysis depending on the requirements of diverse departments. For example,

• Development teams enjoy the benefits of threat intelligence by identifying emerging threat trends attacking the operating system of their software application.
• Network and system administrators can also protect their networks from active threats by IP addresses.
• Platform abuse response team can also find out abusive hosts.

Analyzing such data is not an easy task. It needs smart identifications of patterns, triage, and predictive analysis. So, machine learning can be a game changer in data processing, making pattern recognition easier.

Dissemination:

Threat intelligence can meet its purpose when it is properly distributed and when proper action is taken. It means that data has to be used by the right people at the right time. So, it is important to identify the right recipients of threat intelligence. 

Along with this, determining the frequency of updates is another crucial thing to discuss. You must decide which systems need daily or weekly updates. There is also another consideration here. You need to decide on the right format of data, depending on the requirements of the audience. The integrated system will work while syncing data through API. Here, you must check whether your threat intelligence service will offer you compressive data on API or not. 

Threat intelligence companies also concentrate on different types of threat intelligence – strategic, tactical, and operational. Strategic threat intelligence focuses on broader trends and is used for non-technical data. Tactical threat intelligence reveals the tactics and techniques of threats, and it is primarily used for a technical audience. And, operational threat intelligence proves to be very effective for analyzing specific attacks and campaigns. 

Threat intelligence is really a complex procedure, and an experienced company can help you get the right solution. Acid Technologies offer reliable platforms against cyber criminals with an array of security strengthening services, including threat intelligence, dark web intelligence, and more. It gives you real-time data about the attacks that target your audience.