Book Image

Operationalizing Threat Intelligence

By : Kyle Wilhoit, Joseph Opacki
Book Image

Operationalizing Threat Intelligence

By: Kyle Wilhoit, Joseph Opacki

Overview of this book

We’re living in an era where cyber threat intelligence is becoming more important. Cyber threat intelligence routinely informs tactical and strategic decision-making throughout organizational operations. However, finding the right resources on the fundamentals of operationalizing a threat intelligence function can be challenging, and that’s where this book helps. In Operationalizing Threat Intelligence, you’ll explore cyber threat intelligence in five fundamental areas: defining threat intelligence, developing threat intelligence, collecting threat intelligence, enrichment and analysis, and finally production of threat intelligence. You’ll start by finding out what threat intelligence is and where it can be applied. Next, you’ll discover techniques for performing cyber threat intelligence collection and analysis using open source tools. The book also examines commonly used frameworks and policies as well as fundamental operational security concepts. Later, you’ll focus on enriching and analyzing threat intelligence through pivoting and threat hunting. Finally, you’ll examine detailed mechanisms for the production of intelligence. By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with the right tools and understand what it takes to operationalize your own threat intelligence function, from collection to production.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: What Is Threat Intelligence?
6
Section 2: How to Collect Threat Intelligence
12
Section 3: What to Do with Threat Intelligence

Metadata tagging in threat intelligence

Metadata tagging is an important concept throughout computer science and the information security industry. It is a keyword, label, or term that is assigned to a piece of information. Metadata tags help you to describe the piece of information that they have been tagged with. Tags are a type of metadata that is applied by users to help them retrieve that content in an organized and structured way. Tags are meant to facilitate easy location in the future by browsing or searching. Tags can commonly be determined by the analyst or be chosen from a controlled vocabulary. In many cases, tags can convey a quick snapshot of information about data, such as the following screenshot of PassiveTotal:

Figure 10.3 – An example of PassiveTotal tagging

Tagging can be done in a wide variety of ways and formats, often with different terminologies in place of tagging. Additionally, tagging is supported across a very diverse set...