As more business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) enterprises flock online, cybercrime has been an ever-growing concern. With hundreds of different threat actors scattered across the Web, a great deal of expertise is necessary to protect an enterprise adequately.
Sadly, not all businesses can find or even afford a team of security professionals to protect their infrastructure and users from attacks. In parallel, digital crimes against organizations of all sizes have become more targeted, sophisticated, and severe.
This leads us to a few important questions: How can businesses make cybersecurity part of their business strategy? More specifically, what is the role of data in making this possible?
In this post, we'll take a closer look at the impact of cyber attacks and the means by which sources of threat intelligence can be acquired and put into practice.
How Do Cyber Attacks Impact a Business?
Cyber attacks can put a business at risk of losing money and sensitive data as well as cause equipment damage. Indeed, once attackers gain access to a network, they can potentially also access:
Client, supplier, and partner lists
Customers' payment card information
Employment records
Sensitive corporate financial data
Confidential product designs and other intellectual property
Manufacturing and development processes
Business plans for expansion
In short, attacks can compromise a company's entire operation as well as its network of partners and stakeholders.
What Is the Value of Threat Intelligence to Combat Cyber Attacks?
Businesses must understand the nature of threats before they can come up with ways to combat them. They need so-called "threat intelligence."
Threat intelligence refers to the result of a systematic and in-depth analysis of internal and external threats to an organization. It comprises exhaustive information about the possible dangers that a company has to deal with.
In essence, threat intelligence is a means to anticipate and defend against an attack proactively rather than merely reacting to incidents as they occur.
How Can Businesses Acquire Threat Intelligence?
Businesses can primarily benefit from integrating tools like Threat Intelligence Platform into their security processes. Such applications help companies mitigate cyber attacks by providing the following insights:
Phishing information: Countercheck any domain of interest in phishing URL databases to make sure you are not about to access a phishing page.
Malware ties: Verify if domains and hosted sites are likely to contain malware. Threat intelligence software does so by cross-checking domains against several external malware databases.
Domain reputation data: Running a domain reputation check can tell if a domain is safe to access or not as evaluated by a series of factors.
These and other layers of verification, such as checks for ties to spamming, botnet, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, help users avoid interacting with dangerous recipients or visiting harmful sites that can affect their business.
How Do You Make the Most Out of Threat Intelligence?
For threat intelligence to be more useful, organizations must make the information they gather actionable. Once all disreputable domains, website URLs, email addresses, and site owners and organizations are identified, users can find all other connected digital vectors and add them to their blacklists.
Blocking access to all potential threat sources is the most effective way to protect a business. This practice does away with relying on employees to determine which links they can and cannot access. That is especially helpful since most data breaches occur due to human error.
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Cyber attacks keep increasing in volume and sophistication by the minute. Threat actors always manage to find new ways to attack businesses, and the best way to fight them is by identifying and blocking where threats come from before they can wreak havoc. Companies can ensure proactive defense by using threat intelligence to mitigate risks.
About the Author
Jonathan Zhang is the founder and CEO of Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)-a data, tool, and API provider that specializes in automated threat detection, security analysis, and threat intelligence solutions for Fortune 1000 and cybersecurity companies. TIP is part of the WhoisXML API family, a trusted intelligence vendor by over 50,000 clients.
