With the recent launch of our first standalone cybersecurity product, eSentire Threat Intelligence, we thought we would spend some time discussing why quality threat intel feeds matter.
In cybersecurity, quality threat intelligence is not just a tool—it's a necessity for any security team that needs to adopt a proactive cyber defense strategy and make informed decisions to reduce cyber risk. Unfortunately, security leaders often make the mistake of buying multiple threat feeds that have outdated data.
As a result, they’re challenged with filtering through large volumes of data while making sure their teams focus on the threats that matter rather than chasing false positives.
This raises a critical question: How can organizations elevate their security posture with threat intelligence that is both actionable and reliable? The answer lies in using high-quality, vetted threat intelligence that covers a broad spectrum of potential threats and malicious activities with multiple IOCs (i.e., IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, etc.).
In this blog, we'll review the consequences of mediocre threat intelligence, the key factors to consider when evaluating threat intelligence services, and how you can extend eSentire’s threat intelligence expertise to reduce false positive alerts and improve your threat detection and response capabilities.
Consequences of Unvetted, Open-Source Threat Intelligence
Mediocre Threat Intelligence
When every second counts and the ability to swiftly identify and respond to actual threats is critical. Mediocre threat intelligence, which has become a commodity in today’s market, can take a high toll on your organization’s resources. It can result in your staff spending considerable time investigating incidents that may turn out to be false positives.
Beyond the impact on operational efficiency, mediocre threat intelligence can lead to a more serious problem: alert fatigue. If you’re not able to reduce noise security teams can become desensitized to alerts, potentially delaying or failing to respond to a real threat.
The Risks of Relying on Unverified Data
Although open-source threat intelligence can appear to be a cost-effective solution, it’s often riddled with inaccurate, outdated information. Without being properly vetted, this data can introduce unnecessary noise, leading to your team being unable to operationalize threat intelligence effectively.
The Importance of High-Fidelity IOCs
To truly bolster your threat detection and response capabilities, you must prioritize getting access to high-fidelity Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) that have at least a 95% true positive rate. Leveraging high-fidelity IOCs means your security team can allocate their resources to threats that pose a genuine risk, enhancing your organization's resilience against sophisticated cyberattacks.
Together, these factors underscore the importance of high-quality threat intelligence. By ensuring that alerts are both accurate and actionable, organizations can avoid the costly pitfalls of wasted resources and missed threats, maintaining a strong defense in the face of an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
Key Factors to Consider When Evaluating Threat Intelligence Services
Freshness and Relevance of IOCs
With new vulnerabilities and threat actor TTPs emerging daily, the value of a threat intelligence service hinges on the freshness and relevance of its IOCs. Up-to-date IOCs ensure that your security team is armed against the latest tactics used by adversaries. The relevance of these indicators is equally crucial—they must be relevant to your organization’s industry and security environment.
An effective threat intelligence service doesn’t just flood a system with data; it provides timely, applicable insights that align with your organization's unique threat profile, enabling a proactive and pre-emptive security posture.
Expertise Behind the Intelligence
Behind every reliable threat intelligence service, there should be a team of Elite Threat Hunters who bring depth and context to the data. Their expertise transforms raw data into nuanced intelligence, ensuring that the intelligence flags potential threats and provides the context needed to understand and act on them effectively. When evaluating a threat intelligence service, make sure you consider the team's expertise as it’ll be a critical indicator of their ability to provide actionable intelligence.
Seamless Integration with Security Tools
An effective threat intelligence service should be compatible with a wide range of security tools, from firewalls and email servers to endpoint protection platforms. This integration enables you to take a more cost-effective approach to enhance your threat detection capabilities, respond more rapidly, and minimize the impact of a potential incident.
Why Choose eSentire for Threat Intelligence
eSentire Threat Intelligence offers a curated list of high-fidelity IOCs meticulously vetted and approved by our Elite Threat Hunters and Threat Response Unit (TRU) based on positive Security Operations Center (SOC) investigations across our global customer base so you can confidently integrate the actionable intelligence into your existing security tool stack.
Every IOC in our threat feed is observed by our 24/7 SOC Cyber Analysts during threat investigations around true positive threats. These IOCs are then reviewed further by our team of Elite Threat Hunters, who provide additional context to the indicators. Finally, these IOCs are then shared with you in STIX format as the eSentire Threat Intelligence offering.
Security Expertise from Industry-leading 24/7 SOC Cyber Analysts and Elite Threat Hunters
With an average tenure of 6 years, our SOC Analysts and TRU team leverage their extensive experience to analyze patterns, understand attacker behavior, and anticipate emerging threats, providing intelligence that is both timely and relevant.
Rich Context Around Threats
Understanding the who, what, when, and how of potential threats allows you to gain a comprehensive understanding of the threat landscape. We use the Structured Threat Information Expression (STIX™) format to provide rich context provided around each IOC. This enriched intelligence includes insights into threat actors, their motives, the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and the types of assets targeted.
Easy Integration with Existing Security Tools
Using a standardized format like STIX helps improve interoperability and collaboration among different organizations and security teams. In addition, it ensures that threat intelligence can be easily integrated with your existing security tool stack for a cost-effective approach to reduce your false positive alerts and enhance your threat detection and response capabilities.
High Fidelity Threat Feed from a Proven Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Leader
With a false positive rate of <1%, we use collective threat intelligence from 2000+ customers across 71 industries to only add high fidelity IOCs observed across customer environments. All IOCs are refreshed every 24 hours, and we continuously remove old IOCs, so you only focus on critical threats that matter.
Investing in quality threat intelligence is an investment in your organization's resilience. The benefits of this approach are extensive – enhanced operational efficiency, better resource allocation, and strengthened defenses against an ever-evolving threat landscape.
By relying on high quality threat intelligence, your team can enhance your threat detection and response capabilities on real threats, reduce noise across your security tool stack, and improve your automated blocking capabilities of known threats.
To learn about how eSentire Threat Intelligence services can help you reduce cyber risk and improve your threat detection and response capabilities, contact an eSentire cybersecurity specialist now.
