In today’s complex digital landscape, where businesses of all sizes are using cutting-edge-technologies to stay ahead of the curve, cybercriminals are also utilizing advanced tools and tactics to gain unauthorized access to confidential information. Whether you are a startup or a well-established business with good trading history, it’s always better to opt for a comprehensive risk-based approach to strengthen your cybersecurity.
If you implement a risk-based approach to cybersecurity, you will not only discover emerging threats but you will also employ ideal policies and procedures to prevent threats.
In addition to implementing top-notch technologies to discover potential threats to your business, you should also focus on boosting your cyber resilience.
One of the best ways to identify emerging risks and increase cyber resilience is to use threat intelligence.
According to Gartner, “Threat intelligence is evidence-based knowledge, including context, mechanisms, indicators, implications and actionable advice, about an existing or emerging menace or hazard to assets that can be used to inform decisions regarding the subject’s response to that menace or hazard.”
Since the threat landscape continues to expand, it is incredibly difficult to defend your business against every possible threat. It is imperative to invest your budget and resources intelligently.
Therefore, it is essential for your cybersecurity experts to concentrate on figuring out who can pose threats to your business. In addition, identifying the capabilities and motives of potential attackers is equally vital in order to protect your organization against cyber attacks.
By offering accurate and real-time intelligence to your cybersecurity experts, threat intelligence can help them make informed decisions.
A Webroot report on ‘ Importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence to a Strong Security Posture’ says that “40% of companies surveyed had a material security breach in the past 24 months, and 80% believe if they’d had threat intelligence at the time of the breach, they could have prevented or minimized the consequences of the attack.”
The same report also says that “49% use “fee-based” sources of intelligence, stating free sources are inadequate for comprehensive threat analysis, making it more difficult to prioritize threats.” This study was conducted on 693 IT and IT Security professionals from some of the best companies in the US. Thus, it is quite reliable.
Without a doubt, you should focus on core areas such as the following: improving the quality of your products and services, expanding your customer base, enhancing revenue, reducing operational cost, and increasing operational efficiency. However, this doesn’t mean that you should ignore the significance of strengthening your cybersecurity practices.
As cyber attacks like phishing and spear phishing attacks, denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service(DDoS) attacks, malware attacks, eavesdropping attacks, cross-site scripting attacks, and SQL injection attacks, etc., are becoming more popular each day, strengthening your cybersecurity practices should become one of your top priorities.
To strengthen your information system; it’s essential for you to discover and contextualize the enemies; threat intelligence can prove to be remarkably helpful in this regard.
Threat intelligence can boost your strategic decision making by providing valuable information on emerging threats to your assets.
Here is a detailed description of why you should use threat intelligence.
To Minimise Risks
Threat intelligence can help security leaders access business and technical risks. It not only allows leaders to identify emerging threats but also allows them to identify “known unknowns,” which can significantly impact a business.
Threat intelligence is also essential for security experts to create the right strategies and to implement efficient tools and technologies to reduce the risk associated with their businesses.
Since the threat landscape continues to fluctuate, the risk associated with your assets also continuously changes. Threat intelligence helps you discover both emerging and existing risks, and it eventually allows you to:
Minimize the risk of data loss
Strengthen business operations, and
Enhance regulatory compliance
To Avoid Financial Problems
There is little doubt that security breaches can have a tremendous financial impact on your business. You not only have to spend a considerable amount of money to remediate a data-breach but can also incur financial impact through fines and investigations.
However, if you utilize threat intelligence, you can make informed decisions at the right time, which can help you avoid financial loss.
To Invest Smartly in Your Security System
Since threat intelligence makes it easier for you to identify the most pressing threats to your business, you can employ ideal policies and procedures to protect your business. In other words, if you have a clear idea of what can create problems for your organization, you can make financial investments to address the real issue.
To Strengthen The Efficiency of Your Security Experts
If you want your security team to have up-to-date knowledge both about the types of security threats that can target your business and about how to deal with these threats effectively, then it’s crucial to invest in threat intelligence.
To Reduce Operational Cost
Since threat intelligence will give a comprehensive idea of emerging threats, you should invest your resources wisely. You don’t have to think about spending the money for defending your business against every possible threat. And it can eventually help you reduce your operational cost.
Lastly, as cybercriminals employ more sophisticated techniques to attack businesses and steal confidential information, it is wise to invest in threat intelligence to strengthen cybersecurity.
