The cybersecurity threat landscape is increasing in size and complexity and many organizations face a similar predicament: They don’t know what threats to be most worried about.
According to the “2021 Gartner® Market Guide for Security Threat Intelligence Products and Services,” organizations are inundated with data, but most can’t properly sift through it all, “resulting in poor operational use of the data and information to which they have subscribed.” This is where threat intelligence (TI) comes into play.
Once deemed a luxury or rarely used by businesses while crafting their security operations, “TI products and services deliver knowledge, information, and data about cybersecurity threats and other cybersecurity-related issues,” making them essential to thoroughly protect your business.
In this report, Gartner® recognized LookingGlass as a Representative Vendor.
Here are 3 things you should have in a threat intelligence program and why we believe LookingGlass’ solutions meet those needs.
1. An ‘outside-in’ approach
The “inside-out” approach to cybersecurity has been a common mainstay among most organizations. This may have been an effective security stance when the majority of employees worked in the office, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed all that.
A mass migration to remote work was born out of necessity, but it’ll likely be a permanent fixture moving forward. While this enhances flexibility for workers, it also expands an organization’s digital attack surface, giving threats actors more entry points into their system.
With an “inside-out” approach, network visibility is already limited. As your attack surface grows, it becomes even less effective. Which is why you must combine it with an “outside-in” view.
What do you look like to attackers on the public-facing internet? What kind of vulnerabilities are you exhibiting? What kind of exposures do you have? What could be attacked to gain access to your system? These are all questions an “outside-in” approach answers. And with scoutPRIME®, that visibility is never in doubt.
scoutPRIME ingests and pinpoints digital footprints for any organization connected to the internet and shows you any vulnerabilities and exposures you may have. With this information in tow, you can invest your resources where they’ll be most effective.
2. Third-party risk and supply chain monitoring
Understanding your organization’s digital footprint and having a clear attack service view are the most critical aspects of a threat intelligence solution, but it must also be able to assess what’s happening outside your own four walls.
Do you know the risk posture of your third-party vendors? What about your critical partners and supply chain? The tool should be able to provide you with insight into your own unique threat landscape.
scoutPRIME offers a holistic view of the things you care about, giving you a reliable assessment of your external threat landscape and making it easier to identify where, when, and how likely a vulnerability or exposure could be exploited.
3. Unstructured threat intelligence analysis
The “Gartner® Market Guide for Security Threat Intelligence Products and Services” notes that “Threat intelligence remains a steady topic of end-user inquiry but more advanced use cases like threat modeling remain largely unexplored by many users.” These users should reevaluate their position.
For example, LookingGlass’ scoutTHREAT™ solution, using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine (ML), was able to unearth a looming threat from DarkSide – the group behind the Colonial Pipeline attack – by pulling out relevant indicators from mounds of unstructured data. When it comes to predicting future cyberattacks, threat-actor tracking and unstructured threat data analysis are more important than ever.
Invest in intelligent attack surface management
2021 was an explosive year for cyberattacks, and things aren’t slowing down. By 2025, Cybersecurity Ventures believes the costs of global cybercrime will reach $10.5 trillion USD.
That’s why Gartner® predicts threat intelligence spending will reach $2.6 billion by that same point. Of course, threat intelligence is only as effective as the solutions you invest in.
There are thousands of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs), and you can’t fix them all. So, you need to focus on the right ones. If your tools utilize an “outside-in” approach, include third-party risk and supply chain monitoring, and analyze unstructured threat data, your organization can prioritize its most-pressing risks first and enhance its security posture.
*Gartner®, Inc., Market Guide for Security Threat Intelligence Products and Services, John Collins, Ruggero Contu, Mitchell Schneider, Craig Lawson, Published 10 December 2021.
Gartner® Disclaimer: Gartner® does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner® research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner®’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner® disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
