PlexTrac ConceptsThreat Intelligence

Threat Intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing data to identify and mitigate cyber threats and attacks. By understanding the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) used by malicious actors, organizations can enhance their security strategies and proactively defend against existing and emerging threats.

Threat Intelligence is crucial for predicting and preventing advanced persistent threats (APTs) while enhancing detection and response capabilities. Combined with advancements in automation, AI, and machine learning, threat intelligence enables faster data analysis to quickly identify anomalies and patterns and generate precise, actionable insights.

Threat Intelligence is important to help organizations combat new threats, data overload, and a shortage of security professionals. By providing timely, actionable insights, threat intelligence adds context to security risks, strengthens information systems, and supports informed decision-making.

By implementing a threat intelligence program, organizations can better prioritize threats and enact effective defensive measures for mitigating risks and enhancing their security posture.

Typically, threat intelligence consists of three subcategories:

1. Strategic Threat Intelligence

Strategic threat intelligence provides a high-level overview of cybersecurity trends, risks, and potential impacts. This type of threat intelligence is designed for non-technical decision-makers and is delivered via reports or executive briefings to support long-term security strategies. The focus is typically on policy changes, emerging threats, and overall risk scores rather than specific attacks or indicators.

2. Tactical Threat Intelligence

Tactical threat intelligence focuses on threat actors’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Gathered continuously to support real-time threat defense, this intelligence helps security teams and technical professionals understand how attackers operate.

2. Operational Threat Intelligence

Operational threat intelligence details technical aspects of specific attacks, vulnerabilities, and ongoing threat campaigns. This real-time intelligence empowers security analysts and IT teams to identify attack patterns, understand attacker intent, and proactively strengthen defenses.

Threat intelligence helps organizations to:

• Identify and prevent attacks before they impact data or infrastructure.
• Stay ahead of emerging threats by sharing TTPs internally.
• Strengthen defenses and reduce the damage of successful attacks.
• Provide valuable insights for risk modeling and informed decision-making.
• Prioritize resources to focus on the most prevalent threats.
• Meet compliance requirements by offering clear security best practices.

When implementing threat intelligence, organizations are often challenged to:

• Contextualize raw data, making threat relevance unclear.
• Manage large volumes of diverse threat data.
• Effectively allocate resources to sustain intelligence efforts.
• Ensure data accuracy to avoid wasted efforts and missed threats.
• Standardize data formats for easier analysis.

PlexTrac is the market-leading offensive security management and reporting platform. PlexTrac ingests data from all your sources—including threat and dark web intelligence—to enable:

• Standardizing findings
• Efficient tracking and reporting
• Contextual scoring and prioritization
• Enhanced collaboration

Maximize the value of threat intelligence by using it in PlexTrac’s contextual risk scoring engine to efficiently prioritize based on all risk factors. PlexTrac supports data aggregation, collaboration, and tracking through the complete security lifecycle so organizations can achieve a continuous assessment and validation strategy.

Request a personalized demo to see how PlexTrac can help.

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