Cyber Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs) are software solutions designed to help organizations collect, correlate, and analyze threat data from a variety of sources in real-time. TIPs can process both external threat feeds and internal log files.
External threat feeds are sources of intelligence data collected outside of the organization’s environment. These include open source intelligence (OSINT), commercial and private threat intelligence feeds, and information shared by industry-specific information sharing and analysis centers (ISACs) or government agencies.
Internal log files are sources of intelligence data generated within the organization’s environment. These can be server logs, firewall logs, or logs from other security devices and software. Analyzing these logs can provide insights into the activities happening within the network, including potential threats.
Once the TIP collects this data, it correlates and analyzes it to identify patterns, trends, and potential threats. The TIP can then produce a prioritized and contextualized feed of alerts for the security team.
- Prioritization ensures that the most serious threats are highlighted first, ensuring a more efficient response from the security team.
- Contextualization provides additional information about each alert, such as the potential impact, the systems that could be affected, and possible mitigation strategies. This helps the security team understand each threat and decide on the best response.
Best 7 Threat Intelligent Platforms Vendors 2023
- Anomali ThreatStream
- ManageEngine Log 360 Threat Intelligence
- Qualys Threat Protection
- LookingGlass Cyber Solutions
- Recorded Future
- SolarWinds Security Event Manager
- ThreatConnect
Anomali ThreatStream
ManageEngine Log 360 Threat Intelligence
Qualys Threat Protection
Qualys Threat Protection persistently cross-references external threat data with your IT asset inventory and vulnerabilities, taking advantage of the powerful processing capability of the Qualys Cloud Platform to automate this extensive and demanding data examination process. With the annual disclosure of thousands of vulnerabilities, this system ensures that you’re always informed about which vulnerabilities represent the most significant risk to your organization at any moment.
Information about emerging threats from both internal and external sources, is reflected in the Live Threat Intelligence Feed of Qualys Threat Protection, which presents the most recent vulnerability disclosures and associates them with your affected IT assets. This allows you to view the count of assets impacted by each threat and delve into the specifics of each asset.
Key Features
- Real-Time Threat Indicators: The platform can correlate vulnerabilities across the IT assets with real-time threat indicators from more than 25 intelligence feeds.
- ThreatScore: This feature allows users to prioritize vulnerabilities for patching.
- Vulnerability-based Threat Hunting: The solution can hunt and track active threat campaigns that may cause infections on the IT assets.
- Patchable vs. Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: The platform identifies vulnerabilities that can be patched and those that are not patchable.
- Vulnerability Exploitability: It can track vulnerabilities that have known exploits.
- Asset Correlation: This feature helps to identify the systems at risk.
- Easy-to-use Dashboard: The solution provides an intuitive dashboard for effective vulnerability management and response.
LookingGlass Cyber Solutions
Recorded Future
SolarWinds Security Event Manager
ThreatConnect
What are Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)?
A Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) streamlines the process of gathering, combining, and validating data from external threat intelligence, thereby keeping cybersecurity teams abreast of the latest threat insights. This empowers them to make well-informed decisions and adopt preventive actions, ultimately mitigating the risk posed by threats pertinent to their organization.
It’s essentially a central repository for all threat-related information that an organization collects. This can include details about potential threats, indicators of compromise (IOCs), tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of threat actors, and other threat-related data.
Here’s how a Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) works:
Automated Collection
TIPs can automatically collect threat data from various external sources. These sources can include open-source intelligence (OSINT), commercial intelligence services, industry sharing groups, and more. The platform can continuously scan and pull data from these sources, ensuring a steady stream of up-to-date threat information.
Aggregation
After collecting the data, the TIP aggregates it into a centralized database. This allows for easy access and management of the threat intelligence data. It also enables security teams to see all relevant data in one place, rather than having to check multiple sources individually.
Reconciliation
The TIP can also reconcile the collected data, meaning it can identify and resolve any conflicts or discrepancies in the data. This is important because it helps to ensure that the threat intelligence is accurate and reliable.
Analysis and Prioritization
After the data has been collected, aggregated, and reconciled, the TIP can analyze it to identify trends, patterns, and correlations. This can help security teams understand the nature of the threats they’re facing, and how best to respond to them. The TIP can also prioritize threats based on their relevance and potential impact to the organization, helping security teams to focus their efforts on the most significant threats.
Dissemination and Action
Once the threats have been analyzed and prioritized, the TIP can disseminate this information to the relevant stakeholders within the organization. This can include sending alerts to security teams, integrating with security tools like SIEMs or firewalls to automatically block or flag identified threats, and providing reports to management.
How to Choose a Threat Intelligence Provider?
The following criteria to evaluate a Threat Intelligence Platform illustrates the fundamental functionalities that characterize a Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP), along with the advanced capabilities that incorporate intelligence and automation, enhancing the effectiveness of a TIP for your organization. Top-tier TIP solutions not only encompass these fundamental functionalities, but also integrate advanced features that align with your security requirements.
Core Threat Intelligence Capabilities
Enhancing TIPs with External Threat Feeds
A Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) should have the ability to link up with outside sources of threat intelligence, which provide up-to-the-minute data on malicious software, cyber criminals, and system weaknesses. For instance, these feeds could deliver information about suspicious IP addresses, potentially harmful domains, and unique identifiers for malicious files (known as file hashes).
To elaborate with an example, suppose there’s a known cyber criminal group that has recently been active. External threat intelligence feeds could provide information about this group’s tactics, including the IP addresses they typically use, the domains they’ve been known to compromise, and the file hashes of any malware they’re known to distribute. By connecting to these feeds, a TIP can collect this information and use it to help the organization stay aware of the threat and take preventative measures.