Threat Intelligence
Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI)
Cyber Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence is processed knowledge about threats — about attackers, their tools, procedures and indicators — distilled from raw data into actionable insights. It answers not only „What happened?“ but „Who threatens us, how, and what do we do about it?“. Good threat intelligence turns data into decisions.
History & facts. A distinction into three levels is common: strategic (situational picture and trends for the leadership), operational (campaigns, actors, their tactics, techniques and procedures — see Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP)) and tactical (concrete, machine-usable indicators such as Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, hashes or domains). Sources range from open data (OSINT) through commercial feeds and sharing communities to one's own observations, for instance from honeypots. Standards and platforms such as STIX/TAXII and MISP — Open Source Threat Intelligence Platform (MISP) enable structured exchange. Decisive is the refinement: raw data becomes „intelligence“ only through assessment, context and relation to one's own environment.
Outlook & recommendation. The most common mistake is to subscribe to feeds without using them — indicators without context produce above all noise. Threat intelligence becomes valuable when it prioritises (what is relevant for my sector and my systems?), flows automatically into the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and detection and triggers concrete measures. With the platform intel.neosec.eu, NEOSEC operates exactly this refinement process: indicators are collected, deduplicated, prioritised and made usable for detection in Extended Security Incident and Event Management (XIEM)®. This turns the flood of threat data into a manageable, relevant stream.