With new online platforms and threats emerging daily, companies are more vulnerable to fraud, brand abuse and cybercrime. For big businesses, especially those with large online platforms or e-commerce marketplaces, protecting your brand in this crazy world is key to success and trust.
This blog looks at how actionable threat intelligence, derived from analysis of network traffic and attack patterns, can help strengthen your cybersecurity and protect your brand. Specialized feeds for phishing, malware and fraud are vital in a hostile online world.
What is Threat Intelligence?
In the world of cybersecurity, threat intelligence is the process of gathering, analyzing and sharing information about potential or actual cyber threats to an organization’s security infrastructure. This is key to spotting patterns, trends and anomalies that could be a security risk. By using threat intelligence feeds, organizations can stay one step ahead of cyber threats and make informed decisions about their security stance. These feeds give you insight into the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of the threat actors, so you can strengthen your defenses and protect your digital assets.
Threat Intelligence Use Case: Strengthening Digital Brand Integrity
The Situation: Protecting Your Brand
As companies expand across multiple online channels, they face a multitude of digital risks. From brand misuse on fraudulent websites to targeted phishing campaigns impersonating their services, the threats come in many forms. These risks can destroy customer trust, damage your brand and even lead to financial and legal consequences.
Take the example of a major e-commerce company that faced this very issue. With a massive online marketplace and millions of transactions daily, their brand was a prime target for the threat actors. Phishing campaigns, domain registrations and fraudulent promotions were launched regularly to deceive customers and compromise the brand.
The company had a big problem: how to detect and manage these threats? With the size of the digital environment and the speed of new threats emerging every day, the company needed a solution that could give them real-time visibility into the risks to their brand. To protect their brand integrity they also needed to detect known malware, using historical data of cybercriminal activity to identify and mitigate the risks.
The Challenge: Detecting Cyber Threats at Scale
There are so many digital channels where a company’s brand can be attacked. From social media and third-party marketplaces to websites and email campaigns, the opportunities for fraud and brand misuse are endless. Phishing attempts have got more sophisticated, often lookalike legitimate websites or emails to deceive even the most vigilant customers. IP addresses are key to tracking and identifying cyber threats, they provide valuable data on known threat actors.
This e-commerce company, like many others, faced several big challenges:
Real-time Detection: To protect their brand they needed to detect threats as they emerged. But with the vast and complex digital landscape, this was no easy task. Traditional monitoring tools struggled to keep up with the speed of new phishing sites or fraudulent domains being created.
Accuracy and Precision: They couldn’t afford to be bombarded with false positives. They needed a solution that could identify genuine threats to their brand whilst minimizing unnecessary alerts.
Broad Coverage: Digital threats can appear anywhere – on popular social media, obscure websites or even in email inboxes. They needed a solution that covered all threat vectors.
Scalability: As a major e-commerce company they needed a solution that could scale with their business. This meant handling millions of interactions and monitoring multiple online platforms without performance or accuracy suffering.
These challenges show the complexity of digital brand protection today. Fortunately, threat intelligence feeds, like Data443’s Threat InDepth, provided the answer.
Common Cybersecurity Threats
In today’s digital world cybersecurity threats are more frequent and more sophisticated. Organizations need a robust threat intelligence strategy to combat these evolving threats. Some of the common cybersecurity threats are:
Malware: Malicious software designed to harm or exploit an organization’s systems and data. This includes viruses, worms and trojans.
Phishing: Social engineering attacks that trick users into revealing sensitive information or gaining unauthorized access to systems. These attacks often look like legitimate communications to deceive users.
Ransomware: A type of malware that encrypts an organization’s data and demands payment in exchange for the decryption key. This can cause significant downtime and financial loss.
DDoS Attacks: Distributed Denial of Service attacks flood an organization’s systems with traffic, making them unavailable to users. These attacks can take down online services and damage reputation.
Zero-Day Threats: Unknown or previously unknown threats that exploit vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems. These threats are particularly dangerous as they can bypass traditional security controls.
The Solution: Using Threat Intelligence Feeds for Brand Integrity
To address these challenges the company turned to advanced threat intelligence feeds as part of their brand integrity management strategy. Specifically the “Threat InDepth – Malware URL Feed” and the “Threat InDepth – Phishing and Fraud Feed” were used. Using multiple threat intelligence feeds is important to determine which threats are relevant to your organization’s security needs.
Real-time Malware and Phishing Detection
The Threat InDepth – Malware URL Feed allowed the company to detect malicious URLs in real-time. This was key to identifying websites or domains that were set up to impersonate the company’s brand or to conduct phishing attacks. By integrating this feed into their threat management infrastructure the company could scan and analyze millions of URLs continuously, providing proactive protection against phishing and malware sites. Managing multiple data feeds can be tricky but context is key to making these feeds actionable and relevant.
Fraud Activity Monitoring
The Threat InDepth – Phishing and Fraud Feed added another layer of protection by focusing on fraudulent activity. This feed allowed the company to detect not only phishing but also more sophisticated fraud schemes such as unauthorized use of their brand in fake promotions, counterfeit websites or illicit offers. Monitoring network traffic helps to understand attack patterns and unauthorized access attempts, to improve the overall threat intelligence.
Seamless Integration with Existing Systems
By integrating these feeds into their existing security infrastructure the company could use threat intelligence without having to rip and replace their entire system. This allowed them to monitor across all digital platforms – websites, social media, email and third-party marketplaces. Integrating other security tools with threat intelligence feeds helps the company to detect and respond to cyber threats better.
The feeds worked with the company’s internal threat intelligence tools so the security teams could respond to threats quickly and efficiently. Alerts were triggered based on predefined risk thresholds so the company could see in real-time where their brand was being used or threatened. A systematic approach to collecting and using threat intelligence involves defining data requirements, automating data collection, converting raw data into analyzable formats, analyzing for actionable insights, sharing with stakeholders and having a feedback loop to adapt to the changing threat landscape.
Types of Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence can be broken down into several types:
Strategic Threat Intelligence: Provides high level information on the motivations and goals of the threat actors. This type of intelligence helps organizations understand the bigger threat landscape and make informed strategic decisions.
Tactical Threat Intelligence: Focuses on the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of the threat actors. This intelligence is key to developing specific countermeasures and improving defensive tactics.
Operational Threat Intelligence: Provides real-time information on active attacks or threats. This type of intelligence is critical for immediate threat detection and response.
Technical Threat Intelligence: Looks at the technical details of the threats, such as malware analysis and reverse engineering. This intelligence helps the security teams understand the technical aspects of the threats and develop mitigation strategies.
Threat Intelligence Feed Formats
Threat intelligence feeds are available in several formats to make sharing and integrating threat data easier:
STIX (Structured Threat Information Expression): A standard format for sharing threat intelligence. STIX allows organizations to share threat information in a consistent and structured way.
TAXII (Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information): A protocol for sharing threat intelligence. TAXII enables the automated exchange of cyber threat information between organizations.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation): A lightweight data format. JSON is used for its simplicity and ease of integration with many systems.
CSV (Comma Separated Values): A plain text format for sharing data. CSV files are easy to read and can be imported into many different tools and systems.
Using Threat Intelligence Feeds
Using threat intelligence feeds requires careful thought and consideration of several factors to make them work:
Data Quality: The threat intelligence feed must provide accurate and reliable data. High-quality data allows organizations to make informed decisions and respond to threats.
Data Relevance: The threat intelligence feed must provide data that is relevant to the organization’s specific security requirements. This means the intelligence is actionable and applicable to the organization’s threat landscape.
Integration: The threat intelligence feed must be compatible with existing security tools and systems. Seamless integration means data can be analyzed and threats detected efficiently.
Scalability: The threat intelligence feed must be able to handle large volumes of data and scale to the organization’s needs. This is especially important for large enterprises with big digital footprints.
Real-Time Threat Detection
Real-time threat detection is a key part of a good cybersecurity strategy. It’s about identifying and responding to security threats as they happen, using threat intelligence feeds and other data sources to detect threats in real-time. Real-time threat detection is key to staying ahead of cyber threats and preventing data breaches.
Key components of real-time threat detection are:
Threat Intelligence Feeds: Providing real-time information on potential threats. These feeds allow organizations to detect and respond to threats as they emerge.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Systems: Collecting and analyzing log data from multiple sources to detect potential threats. SIEM systems provide a single platform to monitor and manage security events.
Incident Response: Responding to identified threats in real-time to prevent data breaches. Effective incident response means containing and mitigating threats quickly to minimize their impact.
Automation: Automating the threat detection and response process to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Automation allows organizations to respond to threats faster and reduces the risk of human error.
By using real-time threat detection organizations can strengthen their security and reduce the risk of data breaches. This proactive approach means potential threats are identified and addressed before they can cause damage.
The Result: Brand Integrity and Customer Trust
The threat intelligence feeds deployed helped the company to maintain its brand integrity. Threat intelligence feeds are a key part of modern cybersecurity, providing information on cyber threats like malware and phishing scams. Some of the results were:
Brand Misuse and Fraudulent Activity. With real-time detection and monitoring in place the company was able to quickly identify and address brand misuse. This meant taking down phishing sites, removing unauthorized domains and stopping fraudulent promotions before they could cause damage.
Customer Trust and Satisfaction. By protecting its brand the company was also protecting its customers. The quick removal of phishing sites and fraudulent campaigns meant customers weren’t being scammed and that reinforced the company’s reputation as a trusted brand.
Legal and Law Enforcement Collaboration. Where legal action was required the threat intelligence feeds provided the company with the detailed evidence of misuse. This allowed the company to take legal action or collaborate with law enforcement to prosecute cybercriminals.
Proactive Threat Management. Most importantly the feeds allowed the company to move from a reactive to a proactive approach. Instead of waiting for an attack to happen the company could detect potential threats before they reached customers or damaged the brand.
For large digital businesses brand integrity is an ongoing problem. The threat landscape is changing all the time and companies must stay ahead of the game in detecting and addressing the many ways their brand can be attacked.
By using specialist threat intelligence feeds like the Threat InDepth’s Malware URL Feed and Phishing and Fraud Feed businesses can strengthen their digital brand integrity and be a trusted name in the market. These feeds provide full coverage and real-time detection and allow companies to act fast when threats arise.
Digital threats are changing so threat intelligence isn’t a nice to have for big companies it’s a must have for brand integrity and customer trust.