The Threat Intelligence Lifecycle and Its Phases

With rising digitalization, threats have also gone manifold. Now, imagine having a scenario where you can get an idea of an adversary’s moves in advance.

In the year 2024, that’s exactly what a well-tuned cyber threat intelligence lifecycle delivers!

• Your team intercepts a nation-state APT before it breaches your financial data
• You neutralize a ransomware attack targeting your healthcare network—before it even launches
• Your board praises your foresight as competitors scramble to patch zero-days you’ve already mitigated

This is the power of a strategic cyber threat intelligence lifecycle, allowing you to transform raw data into your best defense.   

Benefits of implementing a structured lifecycle

Here are the key benefits of implementing a structured Cyber threat intelligence lifecycle approach, such as the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), for software projects:

Improved Quality

A structured SDLC enhances the quality of the final software product by:

• Enabling early detection and resolution of defects and issues through systematic testing at each stage
• Continuously validating requirements with stakeholders to ensure alignment with expectations
• Using an iterative approach to build software in small increments, with each iteration subject to testing and validation

Better Risk Management

The SDLC provides a well-structured and documented process that helps manage risks by:

• Identifying goals and problems clearly at every stage
• Providing flexibility to follow the same loop if roadblocks occur until the team succeeds
• Enabling project managers to have better control and prevent overlapping responsibilities

Enhanced Communication and Collaboration

The SDLC promotes effective communication and collaboration among stakeholders, developers, project managers, and other team members by:

• Involving all stakeholders at each stage to include their point of view
• Providing a common approach and structure for project delivery
• Enabling progress tracking across the organization

Reduced Costs and Time-to-Market

By following a structured process, the SDLC helps reduce software development costs and time-to-market by:

• Minimizing rework and defects that can lead to delays and budget overruns
• Enabling projects to be completed within a short period with minimum cost
• Providing a well-documented trail of the entire project for new team members to quickly get up to speed

In summary, implementing a structured SDLC approach offers significant benefits in terms of quality, risk management, collaboration, and cost-effectiveness, making it a preferred choice for software development projects.

Phases of the Threat Intelligence Lifecycle

Phase 1: Scoping Requirements

In addition to their regular duties like monitoring dark web markets and forums for mentions of the organization, cyber threat intelligence projects often begin with a crucial step – requirements identification. During this phase, the cybersecurity threat intelligence (CTI) team or intelligence collection personnel directly engage with other business units and executives to determine the specific type of intelligence that needs to be gathered and the objectives of the project.

Requirements identification is essential for ensuring that CTI processes are properly aligned with the organization’s business goals and risk management objectives. It also helps guarantee that the collected intelligence can be acted upon by relevant stakeholders within the company.

For the purpose of illustrating the threat intelligence lifecycle, let’s assume that the CTI team has been tasked with gathering information about initial access brokers operating on dark web markets. More specifically, the team has been asked to:

1. Identify the most prominent initial access brokers and their associated dark web personas
2. Determine the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by these brokers to gain initial access to target networks
3. Assess the potential impact and risk posed by initial access brokers to the organization’s assets and operations
4. Provide actionable recommendations for mitigating the risks associated with initial access brokers

Phase 2: Collection

The collection phase involves gathering relevant information to address the most critical cyber threat intelligence requirements identified during the requirements identification stage. This information can be gathered using various means, including:

1. Extracting metadata and logs from internal networks and security tools: By analyzing data from firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and other security solutions, the CTI team can gain valuable insights into potential threats targeting the organization.

2. Subscribing to threat intelligence feeds from industry organizations and cybersecurity vendors: These feeds provide up-to-date information on emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and malicious indicators, helping the team stay informed about the latest developments.

3. Conducting targeted interviews and conversations with knowledgeable sources: Subject matter experts, industry peers, and trusted contacts can offer valuable context and insights that may not be available through other channels.

4. Scanning open-source news, blogs, and social media (a common OSINT practice): Open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques allow the team to gather information from publicly available sources, such as news articles, blog posts, and social media platforms.

5. Scraping and harvesting data from websites and forums: The CTI team may also collect information by extracting data from websites and online forums, including dark web marketplaces and hacking communities.

6. Infiltrating closed sources, such as dark web forums: In some cases, the team may need to gain access to restricted or private sources, such as dark web forums, to gather intelligence on specific threats or actors.

The collected data typically consists of a combination of finished intelligence products, such as reports from cybersecurity experts and vendors, and raw data, like malware signatures, leaked credentials, or indicators of compromise (IOCs).

By employing a variety of collection techniques, the CTI team can gather a comprehensive set of data to support the analysis and production phases of the cyber threat intelligence lifecycle.

Phase 3: Processing

The processing phase involves transforming the collected raw data into a format that is usable and actionable for the organization. Almost all raw data gathered during the collection stage requires some form of processing, whether manually by human analysts or automatically by machines. The specific processing methods often depend on the collection techniques employed.

For instance, human-generated reports may need to be correlated, ranked, deconflicted, and verified for accuracy and reliability. For example, you might pull IP addresses from a security vendor’s report and organize them into a CSV file. This file can then be loaded into a SIEM system for further analysis and monitoring.

In more technical scenarios, processing may involve extracting indicators of compromise (IOCs) from a malware sample or phishing email, enriching them with additional context, and then communicating with endpoint protection tools for automated blocking or further investigation.

Other processing tasks may include:

• Normalizing data formats and structures for consistency
• Deduplicating information to avoid redundancy
• Translating or transcribing data from foreign languages
• Decrypting or decoding encrypted or encoded data
• Geolocating IP addresses or physical locations
• Linking related data points to establish connections and patterns

By transforming raw data into a standardized, enriched, and actionable format, the processing phase prepares the information for effective analysis and production of cyber threat intelligence reports.

Phase 4: Analysis

The analysis phase is a critical step in the threat intelligence lifecycle, as it transforms the processed data into actionable, relevant intelligence that can inform decision-making and risk reduction strategies. During this phase, cyber threat intelligence lifecycle analysts work to create meaningful context and actionable insights from the structured data provided by the processing stage.

To ensure the effectiveness of the analysis, CTI teams should:

1. Tailor the analysis to the target audience: For instance, analysis intended for the vulnerability management team can be highly technical, focusing on commonly exploited vulnerabilities. However, reports destined for executives and the board should emphasize actionable recommendations and risk-related information in a concise, easy-to-understand format.
2. Provide only the necessary level of detail: Analysis should be as succinct as possible while clearly explaining the results and providing relevant recommendations. Keep it concise to avoid excessive information.
3. Prioritize the most critical threats and risks: Analysts should identify the most significant threats to the organization, such as initial access brokers (IABs) operating on the dark web, and provide additional context about their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
4. Offer specific, actionable recommendations: Based on the analysis, CTI teams should propose concrete steps the organization can take to mitigate the identified risks, such as implementing security controls, updating policies, or conducting targeted threat hunting activities.
5. Maintain objectivity and transparency: Analysts should strive for impartiality in their assessments, acknowledging uncertainties or gaps in knowledge while clearly communicating their confidence levels in the analysis.

In our example scenario, the CTI team would likely provide context on the IABs discovered on the dark web, identify those posing the greatest threat to the organization, and offer specific recommendations for mitigating the risks associated with initial access brokers and their TTPs.

By delivering high-quality analysis tailored to the needs of various stakeholders, the CTI team can ensure that the organization makes informed decisions and takes appropriate actions to reduce its exposure to cyber threats.

Phase 5: Dissemination

This phase of the cyber threat intelligence lifecycle involves delivering the finished intelligence products to the relevant stakeholders and teams within the organization. Threat intelligence can be valuable for at least six different teams within typical cybersecurity organizations:

• Security operations center (SOC): Handles security event monitoring and incident response
• Incident response (IR): Handles the investigation and mitigation of security breaches
• Vulnerability management: Identifies, assesses, and remediates vulnerabilities in systems and applications
• Threat hunting: Proactively searches for signs of compromise and advanced threats
• Risk management: Assesses and manages the organization’s exposure to various risks
• Executive leadership: Makes strategic decisions and allocates resources based on risk and security considerations
• Phase 6: Feedback

At the core of an effective cyber threat intelligence program is a deep understanding of the organization’s overall intelligence priorities and the specific requirements of the various security teams that will be consuming the intelligence. These needs and objectives should guide and inform all phases of the cyber threat intelligence lifecycle, ensuring that the intelligence produced is relevant, actionable, and aligned with the organization’s security goals.

By clearly defining the requirements upfront, the cyber threat intelligence team can determine:

1. What types of data to collect from internal and external sources to address the identified priorities
2. How to process and enrich the collected data to transform it into useful, actionable information
3. How to analyze the information and present it in a format that is easily understood and actionable by each target audience
4. To whom each type of intelligence should be disseminated, how quickly it needs to be delivered, and how to respond to follow-up questions or requests for additional information

Regular feedback and communication with the intelligence consumers are essential for maintaining alignment between the threat intelligence program and the organization’s evolving security requirements. The CTI team should actively seek input from the various security teams to ensure they understand their current needs and priorities, and make necessary adjustments to the cyber threat intelligence lifecycle accordingly.

By keeping the focus on meeting the specific requirements of the organization, the threat intelligence program can provide maximum value in supporting the overall security objectives and risk management strategies.

Conclusion

The Sensfrx Cyber Threat Intelligence lifecycle solution helps organizations stay ahead of cybercriminals by finding and addressing vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. Our platform works around the clock, automatically searching the clear web, dark web, and suspicious Telegram channels. 

It uncovers hidden threats, ranks risks by importance, and provides ready-to-use insights to boost your security immediately. This proactive approach allows you to spot and fix potential problems quickly, strengthening your defenses against cyber attacks.

Sensfrx’s comprehensive approach provides a practical, ready-to-use cyber threat intelligence lifecycle to enhance your cybersecurity efforts. To learn more, request a demo.