Advanced Threat Intelligence

Beyond consuming external intelligence, mature programs produce intelligence from internal operations and apply it proactively. This lesson covers intelligence production and strategic application.

Producing Intelligence

Your security operations generate intelligence:

Incident analysis - Every incident reveals attacker TTPs, infrastructure, and indicators. Document findings in structured formats.

Malware analysis - Samples found in your environment yield hashes, C2 domains, behavioral patterns.

Hunting discoveries - Threat hunts identify activity not matching known signatures. New patterns become intelligence.

Attack surface monitoring - Understanding your own exposure reveals what attackers target.

Intelligence Sharing

Sharing benefits both community and self:

ISACs and sharing communities - Industry-specific groups enable peer sharing. Attacks on peers may precede attacks on you.

STIX/TAXII - Structured formats enable automated sharing. Machine-readable intelligence integrates directly into tools.

Private sharing - Trusted partnerships with peers facing similar threats. More detailed sharing than public communities.

Responsible disclosure - Share vulnerability discoveries with vendors. Contribute to broader ecosystem security.

Proactive Application

Intelligence enables proactive defense:

Hunt hypotheses - Intelligence about threat actors informs what to look for. Recently disclosed techniques become hunt targets.

Purple teaming - Use intelligence about real attacks to guide testing. Emulate specific threat actor TTPs.

Control validation - Test whether your controls detect techniques used against peers. Intelligence reveals what to simulate.

Architecture decisions - Strategic intelligence about threat trends informs technology investments.

Building an Intelligence Program

Define requirements - What decisions does intelligence support? Align collection with those needs.

Establish processes - Regular collection, processing, and dissemination cycles.

Measure effectiveness - Track how intelligence impacts security outcomes. Which sources drove actual findings?

Resource appropriately - Intelligence programs require dedicated effort. Part-time attention yields part-time results.

Intelligence should make defenders more effective. If it does not inform decisions, it is not valuable.