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

Developing intelligence requirements

Now that you have an understanding of the depth and breadth that intelligence and collection requirements can cover, let's work on developing some to give you a better understanding of how they are created.

Attack surface versus threat actor focused

As you will read later in the book when we discuss conceptual models, the Pyramid of Pain explains the level of threat intelligence that can be obtained and the level of difficulty that is often associated with collection at each phase. At the very bottom of the pyramid, and what is considered simple, easy, and trivial to obtain, are threat indicators. They are also referred to as indicators of compromise (IOCs). They are at the bottom because the base is wide, and this data is often plentiful for collection. From a collection point of view, this is also considered to be attack surface data. The attack surface is usually represented by the digital footprint an organization has connected to...