Understand the process of setting up a successful cyber threat intelligence (CTI) practice within an established security team. This book shows you how threat information that has been collected, evaluated, and analyzed is a critical component in protecting your organization’s resources. Adopting an intelligence-led approach enables your organization to nimbly react to situations as they develop. Security controls and responses can then be applied as soon as they become available, enabling prevention rather than response.

There are a lot of competing approaches and ways of working, but this book cuts through the confusion. Author Aaron Roberts introduces the best practices and methods for using CTI successfully. This book will help not only senior security professionals, but also those looking to break into the industry. You will learn the theories and mindset needed to be successful in CTI.This book covers the cybersecurity wild west, the merits and limitations of structured intelligence data, and how using structured intelligence data can, and should, be the standard practice for any intelligence team. You will understand your organizations’ risks, based on the industry and the adversaries you are most likely to face, the importance of open-source intelligence (OSINT) to any CTI practice, and discover the gaps that exist with your existing commercial solutions and where to plug those gaps, and much more.

You will:

• Know the wide range of cybersecurity products and the risks and pitfalls aligned with blindly working with a vendor
• Understand critical intelligence concepts such as the intelligence cycle, setting intelligence requirements, the diamond model, and how to apply intelligence to existing security information
• Understand structured intelligence (STIX) and why it’s important, and aligning STIX to ATT&CK and how structured intelligence helps improve final intelligence reporting
• Know how to approach CTI, depending on your budget
• Prioritize areas when it comes to funding and the best approaches to incident response, requests for information, or ad hoc reporting
• Critically evaluate services received from your existing vendors, including what they do well, what they don’t do well (or at all), how you can improve on this, the things you should consider moving in-house rather than outsourcing, and the benefits of finding and maintaining relationships with excellent vendors

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Cybersecurity Wild West

Chapter 2: Cyber Threat Intelligence - What Does It Even Mean?

Chapter 3: Structured Intelligence - What Does It Even Mean?

Chapter 4: Determining What Your Business Needs

Chapter 5: How Do I Implement This? (Regardless of Budget)

Chapter 6: Things to Consider When Implementing CTI

Chapter 7: The Importance of OSINT

Chapter 8: I Already Pay for Vendor X - Should I Bother with CTI?

Chapter 9: Summary

Chapter 10: Useful Resources

About the Author

Aaron Roberts is an intelligence professional specializing in Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). He is focused on building intelligence-led cyber capabilities in large enterprises and conducting online investigations and research. He has worked within several the public and private sectors as well as the British Military. As such he understands how intelligence can and should be utilized within a range of environments and the fundamental approach that businesses must take to get the maximum value out of their cyber threat intelligence program.