What is Threat Intelligence? Threat intelligence is data that is collected, processed, and analyzed to understand a threat actor’s motives, targets, and attack behaviors. Threat intelligence enables us to make faster, more informed, data-backed security decisions and change their behavior from reactive to proactive in the fight against threat actors.

In the world of cybersecurity, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and defenders are constantly trying to outmaneuver each other. Data on a threat actor’s next move is crucial to proactively tailoring your defenses and preempt future attacks. Organizations are increasingly recognizing the value of threat intelligence. However, there is a difference between recognizing value and receiving value. Most organizations today are focusing their efforts on only the most basic use cases, such as integrating threat data feeds with existing network, IPS, firewalls, and SIEMs — without taking full advantage of the insights that intelligence can offer.

Companies that stick to this basic level of threat intelligence are missing out on real advantages that could significantly strengthen their security postures. Threat intelligence is important for the following reasons: sheds light on the unknown, enabling security teams to make better decisions empowers cyber security stakeholders by revealing adversarial motives and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) helps security professionals better understand the threat actor’s decision-making process empowers business stakeholders, such as executive boards, CISOs, CIOs and CTOs; to invest wisely, mitigate risk, become more efficient and make faster decisions