Threat Intelligence Lifecycle

The intelligence lifecycle is a process to transform raw information into finished intelligence for decision making and action. You will see many slightly different versions of the intelligence cycle in your research,  but the goal is the same, to guide a cybersecurity team through the development and execution of an effective threat intelligence program.

Threat intelligence is challenging because threats are constantly evolving requiring business to quickly adapt and take decisive action. The intelligence cycle provides a framework to enable teams to optimize their resources and effectively respond to the modern threat landscape. The intelligence cycle consists of six steps resulting in a feedback loop to encourage continuous improvement:

Let’s explore the 6 steps below:

1. Requirements

The requirements stage is crucial to the threat intelligence lifecycle because it sets the roadmap for a specific threat intelligence operation. During this planning stage, the team will agree on the goals and methodology of their intelligence program based on the needs of the stakeholders involved. The team may set out to discover:

• who the attackers are and their motivations

• what is the attack surface

• what specific actions should be taken to strengthen their defenses against a future attack

2. Collection

Once the requirements are defined, the team then sets out to collect the data required to satisfy those objectives. Depending on the goals, the team will usually seek out traffic logs, publicly available sources, relevant forums, social media, and industry or subject matter experts.

3. Processing

After the raw data has been collected, it will have to be processed into a format suitable for analysis. Most of the time, this entails organizing data points into spreadsheets, decrypting files, translating information from foreign sources, and evaluating the data for relevance and reliability.

4. Analysis

Once the dataset has been refined, the team must then conduct a thorough analysis to find answers to the questions posed in the requirements phase. During the analysis phase, the team also works to decipher the dataset into action items and valuable recommendations for the stakeholders.

5. Dissemination

The dissemination phase requires the threat intelligence team to translate their analysis into a digestible format and present the results to the stakeholders. How the analysis is presented depends on the audience. In most cases the recommendations should be presented concisely, without confusing technical jargon, either in a one-page report or a short slide deck.

6. Feedback

The final stage of the threat intelligencelifecycle involves getting feedback on the provided report to determine whether adjustments need to be made for future threat intelligence operations. Stakeholders may have changes to their priorities, the cadence at which they wish to receive intelligence reports, or how data should be disseminated or presented.

Malware Attacks: A kind of Cyber Attacks

Malware Attacks

Malware is a code that is made to stealthily affect a compromised computer system without the consent of the user. This broad definition includes many particular types of malevolent software (malware) such as spyware, ransomware, command, and control.

Many well-known businesses, states and criminal actors have been implicated of and discovered deploying malware.

Malware differs from other software in that it can spread across a network, cause changes and damage, remain undetectable, and be persistent in the infected system. It can destroy a network and bring a machine’s performance to its knees.

Ransomware

Ransomware blocks access to a victims data, typically threating delete it if a ransom is paid. There is no guarantee that paying a ransom will regain access to the data. Ransomware is often carried out via a Trojan delivering a payload disguised as a legitimate file.

Drive-by Attack

A drive-by attack is a common method of distributing malware.

A cyber attacker looks for an insecure website and plants a malicious script into PHP or HTTP in one of the pages. This script can install malware into the computer that visits this website or become an IFRAME that redirects the victim’s browser into a site controlled by the attacker. In most cases, these scripts are obfuscated, and this makes the code to be complicated to analyze by security researchers. These attacks are known as drive-by because they don’t require any action on the victim’s part except visiting the compromised website. When they visit the compromised site, they automatically and silently become infected if their computer is vulnerable to malware, especially if they have not applied security updates to their applications.

Trojan Horses

A Trojan is a malicious software program that misrepresents itself to appear useful. They spread by looking like routine software and persuading a victim to install. Trojans are considered among the most dangerous type of all malware, as they are often designed to steal financial information. For more about cyber attacks

Cyber Threat Monitoring: What Is It, And Do You Need It?

Any business of any size, will always be in danger of cyber attacks. Not surprisingly, small to medium-sized businesses are more likely to suffer data breaches, as they often have their guards down, appearing to be easy targets for cyber hackers.

Simply, anyone using the internet is at risk of being a victim of a cyber-attack, and this is not something that should be treated lightly. Luckily, cyber threat monitoring is a forceful, effective way of maintaining your security.

There are endless risks companies face on a daily basis, which include online scams, identity theft, viruses, worms, web-based attacks and fraud. These could have devastating effects on a company, where cyber criminals look for important data regarding your business. This could be anything from customer records to employee and banking information.

Do you really need cyber threat monitoring?

Simply, yes. It is an essential security process and without it, you’d be considered an open target for cyber attacks and dangerously vulnerable as a company. The three main reasons as to why you need cyber threat monitoring are:

1. Valuable data. A naïve trait by a number of companies is to think they don’t have any data or information worth stealing. No matter how big or small a company is, any information should be kept safe, secure and remain in private. Examples of information that should not be disclosed could be anything from employee’s personal data to customer transactions, or even credit card numbers.
2. Cyber criminals are more adept than ever to knowing exactly how to take advantage of the vulnerabilities that may exist within your business. Cyber threat monitoring is an efficient process to provide your business with the resources needed to manage threats and compliance.
3. Without cyber threat monitoring, businesses are considered an easy, open target. Regardless of business size, cyber criminals will be savvy enough to choose the easiest and weakest businesses and infiltrate them.

CYBERCRIMINALS NEVER STOP

Today’s effective control can become tomorrow’s data breach. As more companies adopt anti-malware to protect themselves from ransomware and other viruses, cybercriminals evolve these programs.

For example, in August 2018, a new ransomware called Ryuk infected several businesses. During the first few months, businesses paid the attackers nearly $640,000 in ransom. However, more important than its existence is that it’s not an entirely new virus. Ryuk shares code with another ransomware variant called Hermes.

People often assume that cybercriminals focus on previously unknown vulnerabilities, called cyber security attacks. In reality, a cyber security attack requires time and effort that makes it inefficient and costly. Therefore, cybercriminals tend to evolve their methodologies rather than create new ones.

COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS ENFORCE IT

Whether a business needs to comply with an industry-standard or governmental regulation, continuous monitoring stands as a core principle since cybercriminals continuously evolve their methodologies.

The underpinning of continuous monitoring as a compliance requirement lies in bureaucracy. While cybercriminals change their attack methods, regulations and standards need to go through long review phases that cause them to lag behind threats. As such, incorporating continuous monitoring as a requirement intends to prevent data breaches and give auditors a way to detect control deficiencies.

Be Prepared for These Advanced Cyber Threats in 2020

Cybersecurity is the foundation that can prevent and protect your organization from harm. Plus, with a strong security framework in place, you’ll have a guideline in place for implementing any new state-of-the-art technology.

  

Even though the new tech is thrilling, there are a lot of threats to cybersecurity. The concept of cyber security is not so new but over the last 20 years it has taken on considerable importance. With the rise of social media, digital media, cloud technology and more, the idea of cybersecurity has become ever more difficult to uphold.

The Importance of a Cybersecurity Framework

Modern technology has more than ever been connecting people and businesses. This revolutionizing development caused the IT barrier to be lowered and the filed to be exposed to various opportunities as well as threats. This ever-evolving technology is both a blessing and a potential curse.

If you are involved with the implementation of new technology, then you should be prepared for the challenges of cybersecurity. It’s significant that you consider your strategic security foundation to cope with various types of cyber threats like the Internet of things attacks, insider threats, supply chain concerns, endpoint attacks, social engineering, AI-driven attacks, cyberbullying, phishing, ransomware, malware, 5G concerns, new cyber regulations, etc.

Staying ahead of cyber thieves and bullies should be vitally important for any company. No matter what current solutions you have, it is important to continue developing new methods to take care of cyber protection.

The Importance of _Proactive Cyber Security Monitoring

In an age of sophisticated, evolving and unpredictable cyber threats, proactive security monitoring is now considered an essential part of day-to-day cyber risk management.

Monitoring your organization’s entire IT environment isn’t easy, however, requiring not only the latest security technologies, but also the expertise and resources to maximize its benefits.

Cyber security monitoring services is the collection of data from a range of security systems and the correlation and analysis of this information with threat intelligence to identify signs of compromise.

 Security monitoring is a crucial part of cyber risk management, enabling organizations to detect cyber-attacks in their infancy, and rapidly escalate threats for remediation before they cause damage and disruption.

Baselining – the process of establishing an agreed level of typical network performance – plays an important role in cyber security monitoring. Any network behaviour that falls outside what is considered regular behaviour should be analysed to identify whether or not it could be malicious.

Cyber Safety Tips - Protect Yourself Against Cyber Attacks

How can businesses and individuals guard against cyber threats? Here are our top cyber safety tips:

1.      Update your software and operating system: This means you benefit from the latest security patches.

2.      Use anti-virus software: Security solutions like Kaspersky Total Security will detect and removes threats. Keep your software updated for the best level of protection.

3.      Use strong passwords: Ensure your passwords are not easily guessable.

4.      Do not open email attachments from unknown senders: These could be infected with malware.

5.      Do not Click on links in emails from unknown senders or unfamiliar websites: This is a common way that malware is spread.

6.      Avoid using unsecured Wi-Fi networks in public places: Unsecure networks leave you vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

End-user protection or endpoint security is a crucial aspect of cybersecurity. After all, it is often an individual (the end-user) who accidentally uploads malware or another form of the cyber threat to their desktop, laptop or mobile device.

So, how do cyber-security measures protect end-users and systems? First, cyber-security monitoring services rely on cryptographic protocols to encrypt emails, files, and other critical data. This not only protects information in transit but also guards against loss or theft.

In addition, end-user security software scans computers for pieces of malicious code quarantines this code and then removes it from the machine. Security programs can even detect and remove malicious code is hidden in Master Boot Record (MBR) and is designed to encrypt or wipe data from a computer’s hard drive.

Electronic security protocols also focus on real-time malware detection. Many use heuristic and behavioral analysis to monitor the behavior of a program and its code to defend against viruses or Trojans that change their shape with each execution (polymorphic and metamorphic malware). Security programs can confine potentially malicious programs to a virtual bubble separate from a user's network to analyze their behavior and learn how to better detect new infections.