A General Overview of Threat Intelligence Requirements#

Threat intelligence is the process of gathering, analyzing, and making sense of information about potential threats to an organization. An effective threat intelligence program requires both technology and human expertise. The right technology will help you collect and organize data from a variety of sources. But it takes human expertise to turn that data into actionable intelligence. In this blog series, we’ll explore the requirements for an effective threat intelligence program.

What is a threat intelligence requirement?#

An intelligence requirement is a known intelligence deficiency inside an enterprise. We recognize this as missing knowledge or a query that cannot be answered, and then we develop an intelligence requirement for it.

What are GIRs?#

GIRs are a compilation of information holes that need the gathering of cyber threat intelligence. Intelligence needs are essentially data gathering objectives that explain the information gap resulting from the data we wish to acquire. To construct a proactive reaction or simply to meet an organizational requirement, all collections must be guided to construct cyber threat information. This is sometimes referred to as an organization’s intelligence repository.

Establishing threat intelligence requirements

The quantity of effort needed to solve any intelligence demand is frequently considered when determining if an intelligence demand is necessary. You may begin with any ongoing attempt to meet a crucial need inside your business. Alternatively, a previously submitted issue that needs crucial effort and is recurring generally supports the necessity for a requirement. Intelligence requirements pose a query to us or specify a particular piece of information that matches the following characteristics:

  • Requirement: Is it required to acquire intelligence to meet this intelligence requirement? Is it in line with our purpose of establishing the intelligence requirement? Does it address the crucial information deficiency that we initially identified?

  • Viability: Is it practical for us to gather the information or intelligence mentioned in this requirement? While analyzing the viability of a potential collection, you must examine not just what is technologically feasible to gather, but also if the collecting efforts are within the range of our firm’s abilities.

  • Timing: Will we be able to gather information and intelligence quickly enough to undertake proactive steps? Timing affects not just gathering but also assessment, verification, and dissemination. Will this operation be finished in time for the accumulation to be implementable?

  • Accuracy: Is the language used in the intelligence needs brief enough that every intelligence analyst or security researcher can comprehend it and properly comprehend what data they need to address the information gap?

The threat intelligence requirements serve as a guide for reproducible and ongoing collection across time. Since intelligence requirements must constantly meet the demands of our company, they must be assessed on a regular basis. If the demand no longer meets the purpose for which it was designed, you must revise, improve, or delete it.

Conclusion#

It is critical that a cyber threat intelligence team fulfills threat intelligence requirements. With a successful implementation of this task, your cyber threat intelligence company can establish a capacity that evaluates risks and gives a unified view of the danger, how it functions in an ecosystem, and how it may be utilized as a part of upcoming threat actors campaigns.

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