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

Tooling

When most people think about computer hackers, they often think of a Hollywood depiction of a hacker persona in which they have all kinds of specialized hardware they are using and custom-crafted exploits they need for some exact purpose – something they have that no other person has. That may work for Hollywood, but the reality is that most threat actors are opportunistic, meaning they take what they can and are looking for the simplest methods to achieve their results.

This means that they will utilize the internal functionalities of an operating system, including its native command and scripting interpreters. This may include interpreters such as the Unix shell, PowerShell, and Windows Command Shell. They will also look at the native functionalities of applications to determine if they provide any scripting functionality. This means that they may be looking for Visual Basic, Python, JavaScript, or even any type of batch functionality.

When they can't achieve...