What are Threat Intelligence Feeds (TI feeds)

Explore what a threat intelligence feed is and its critical role in preempting cyber threats to protect your organization's data.

What is a Threat Intelligence Feed?

A threat intelligence feed is a stream of data about internal and external cyber threats, providing actionable insights for proactive defense. These feeds contain curated threat data with duplicate entries removed, threats categorized, and false positives reduced. In some feeds, like operational feeds, the threat data is enriched by correlating Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), such as suspicious IP addresses with known threat actors, botnets, and malware families. This context allows security teams to take preventative measures, such as updating firewall rules, deploying security patches, or conducting threat hunting exercises to detect Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and malware.

How Do Threat Intelligence Feeds Work?

Threat intelligence feeds (TI feeds) aggregate data from a variety of sources, including open-source intelligence (OSINT), protected devices, commercial threat feeds, honeypots, malware analysis, and vulnerability databases. Think of these sources as puzzle pieces, each containing clues about potential threats. This raw data is then processed and enriched to become actionable intelligence. This crucial process involves several key steps:

Aggregation and normalization: Combining data from disparate sources into a consistent, usable format.
Filtering and validation: Sifting through the data to remove noise, false positives, and irrelevant information, ensuring accuracy and focus.
Correlation and contextualization: This stage involves linking related data points, such as IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, and URLs, to create a comprehensive picture of a threat. These individual data points are known as Indicators of Compromise (IoCs). For example, if multiple reports link a specific IP address to malware distribution and phishing campaigns, that IP address becomes a high-priority IoC.
Scoring and prioritization: Assigning risk scores to different threats based on their severity, prevalence, and potential impact. This helps security teams focus on the most critical threats first.

The resulting threat intelligence, now a cohesive and actionable picture, is delivered via standardized formats like STIX/TAXII, APIs, or feeds (CSV, JSON). Security teams then use this information to enhance their security posture by:

Improving detection capabilities: Identifying known threats more effectively and reducing false positives.
Prioritizing incident response: Focusing resources on the most critical and imminent threats.
Proactive threat hunting: Actively searching for signs of compromise within their networks before an attack can fully materialize.
Strengthening security controls: Updating firewall rules, intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS), endpoint protection, and other security tools with the latest threat intelligence.

What Data Points Are Used in a Threat Intelligence Feed?

Threat intelligence feeds rely on various data points to provide actionable insights. These data points, known as Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), are pieces of forensic data that suggest a system may have been compromised. By collecting, enriching, and correlating these IoCs, threat intelligence transforms raw data into valuable security insights. Here are some key examples:

IP Addresses:

Role: IP addresses can indicate the source or destination of malicious activity.
Value: By tracking IP addresses associated with known threats, security teams can block or monitor traffic from these sources.
Intelligence Transformation: Correlated with threat databases for geolocation, threat actor associations, and historical activity.

Domain Names:

Role: Used in phishing attacks, malware distribution, and command and control (C2) operations.
Value: Prevent users from accessing harmful websites.
Intelligence Transformation: Checked against blacklists, DNS records, and for unusual activity to identify patterns and links to malicious activity.

Malware Analysis:

Role: Analyzing malware provides insights into how malware operates and spreads.
Value: Generates IoCs for detection and response.
Intelligence Transformation: Reveals communication with external servers, how malware moves within networks, registry changes, and file hashes.

Email Addresses:

Role: Used in phishing and spam campaigns.
Value: Suspicious email addresses can be identified and blocked.
Intelligence Transformation: Analyzed for common phishing tactics and sender reputation/historical activity.

File Hashes:

Role: Unique identifiers for files, used to detect known malware.
Value for security teams: Identify and block malicious files.
Intelligence Transformation: File hashes can be correlated with information about the malware’s behavior, family, and associated threat actors.

Certificates:

Role: Used in man-in-the-middle attacks or to sign malicious software.&
Value: Identify fake websites, spoofed emails, malware, and supply chain attacks.
Intelligence Transformation: Analyzed for reputation, trustworthiness, unusual patterns and associations with other IoCs.

Network Traffic Patterns:

Role: Identify ongoing attacks or data exfiltration.
Value: Identify and block malicious activity like DDoS attacks, port scans, or locate root causes.
Intelligence Transformation: Can help reconstruct an attacks chain and identify threat actor techniques.

Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs):

Role: Describe threat actor methods for achieving their objectives (e.g. phishing tactics, malware delivery methods, lateral movement techniques).
Value: Helps anticipate and mitigate risks.
Transformation into intelligence: Analyzed to identify common attack patterns and link them to IoCs for threat profiling.

Types of Threat Intelligence Feed

Threat intelligence feeds can be broadly categorized as commercial or open source.

Commercial feeds provide analyzed data gathered from research, malware analysis, honeypots, sinkholes, dark web monitoring, and anonymized user telemetry. This data is processed and analyzed by teams of security researchers to reduce false positives and remove duplicates. These feeds are available for a fee and may also be integrated into vendor security products.

Open-source threat intelligence feeds are freely available, typically maintained by organizations, researchers, security communities, or government agencies to provide intelligence on known threats.

Regardless of the source, threat intelligence feeds are often classified according to the specific threat intelligence they deliver: strategic, tactical, operational, or technical.

Comparing threat intelligence feed types

Feed Type	Focus	Characteristic	Use Case	Example / Data Types
Strategic	Long-term trends, geopolitical factors, industry threats	High-level analysis, future oriented, analysis for strategic decisions	Risk assessments, planning, executive-level reporting	Reports on emerging threats, geopolitical analysis, and industry risk assessments
Tactical	Immediate/ short-term threats, active campaigns, vulnerabilities, and TTPs.	Near-real-time detailed, actionable updates for tactical decision making	Incident response, threat hunting, patch management	Malware signatures, phishing tactics, vulnerability details
Operational	Real-time/ near-real-time insights into ongoing threats and incidents	Immediate threat alerts, IoCs, attack patterns	Incident response, security operations centers, threat mitigation	IoCs, attack vectors, and real-time alerts
Technical	Detailed technical data	Specific technical details about threats and vulnerabilities	Direct integration with security tools, automated defenses	Vulnerability details, exploit code, signatures

Building and Implementing a Threat Intelligence Feed

Implementing a threat intelligence program requires careful planning and execution. Acquiring multiple feeds and relying solely on a threat intelligence platform can lead to information overload and irrelevant alerts.

A more strategic approach is required. The following guidelines can help organizations effectively select or build relevant threat intelligence feeds and maintain awareness of cybersecurity developments.

Define your objectives: Work with stakeholders to identify clear goals for your threat intelligence program. Should the feed help incident response, improve threat detection, or support strategic decision-making?
Identify data sources: Select reliable and relevant threat intelligence sources based on your organizational needs and industry context. Consider the timeliness and accuracy of the intelligence to reduce false positives and ensure timely threat detection. Potential sources include: Commercial threat intelligence providers that offer coverage for IoCs, threat actor profiles, vulnerability information.
- Open-source intelligence (OSINT) gathered from public sources like social media, forums, and dark web marketplaces.
- Internal logs gathered from firewalls, endpoint protection platforms (EPP), and other security tools.
Data collection: Implement technologies to collect data from your sources. This may involve setting up APIs for integrating the feeds with your security tools, like extended detection and response (XDR), or specialized log management systems for internal data.
Normalize and enrich data: Standardize data formats and enrich raw threat data with contextual information, such as threat actor attribution, attack techniques, and potential impact. This process facilitates analysis and correlation.
Analysis and correlation: Employ analytics and correlation techniques to identify relationships, trends, and anomalies across different data sources. Assign threat scores based on potential impact, threat actor capabilities, and threat urgency.
Continuous improvement: Establish a workflow for regularly reviewing and updating threat intelligence feeds. Collaborate with other teams to ensure the intelligence remains relevant and being utilized. Adapt data sources and techniques as needed.

How useful is OSINT?

OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) can be a valuable, and cost-effective addition to an organization’s threat intelligence program. It provides access to a wide range of publicly available information sources like social media, forums, blogs, and news sites.

However, OSINT sources also present challenges. Data can be duplicated, unreliable, outdated, or even intentionally planted by threat actors. This is especially true when gathering information from less reputable sources or the dark web, where verifying authenticity is difficult. Therefore, regardless of whether OSINT is integrated via feeds or collected directly, skilled analysts with the time and expertise to process and validate the data are essential to transform it into actionable intelligence.

Real-World Applications of Threat Intelligence Feeds

Use Case	Description	Benefit
Security Operations Center (SOC)	Automates correlation of threat intelligence with SIEM logs to identify active threats. Example: If a feed flags a malicious IP, the SOC automatically searches logs for connections.	Faster threat detection/response, reduced analyst workload, improved threat identification, reduced dwell time.
Incident Response (IR)	Enriches incident investigations by checking IOCs found on compromised systems against threat feeds to determine if the attack is part of a known campaign or linked to a specific threat actor.	Faster incident analysis, better understanding of attacker TTPs, improved containment/eradication.
IT Operations (Vulnerability Management)	Prioritizes vulnerability patching based on threat intelligence, focusing on actively exploited vulnerabilities. May include automated patching.	Reduced exploitation risk, efficient patching, proactive mitigation of high-risk vulnerabilities.
Threat Hunting	Proactively searches for hidden threats using threat intelligence to develop hypotheses about intrusions and find evidence.	Proactive identification of advanced threats, improved security posture, reduced dwell time.
Executive Leadership	Provides context and prioritization for cybersecurity risks to inform strategic decisions and resource allocation.	Informed decision-making, effective resource allocation, improved risk management.
Fraud Prevention	Detects and prevents fraud (phishing, account takeovers, payment fraud) using threat feeds with data on phishing domains, botnets, and stolen credentials.	Reduced financial losses, improved customer trust, enhanced fraud detection.

How to Choose the Best Threat Intelligence Feeds

Choosing the right threat intelligence feed is crucial for maximizing its value. It's not about choosing the largest or most expensive option, but rather one that aligns with specific organizational needs, minimizes irrelevant data, and integrates effectively with existing infrastructure.

Criteria for Selection

Relevance: The feed should focus on threat relevant to your industry, geographic location, and critical assets. A feed focused on North American hospitals is unlikely to be valuable to a private school in rural Australia.
Data quality and accuracy: Accurate and reliable data is essential for reducing false positives and alert fatigue. Look for providers with a proven track record, and consider their data sources and validation methods.
Data types and format: The feeds should provide data compatible with your security tools (e.g. STIX, JSON, CSV) and focus on the data types your teams require.
Coverage and breadth: Comprehensive threat coverage (e.g. malware, DDoS, vulnerabilities) should be balanced with sufficient detail on each threat.
Timeliness and freshness: Regularly updated, ideally in near-real-time, data is essential for proactive defense against emerging threats.
Integration and compatibility: Seamless integration with existing security infrastructure is crucial. Evaluate APIs, formats, and delivery mechanisms to avoid integration challenges.
Support and Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Reliable support and clear SLAs will ensure you get timely assistance when needed.
Actionable insights: The feed should provide contextual information (e.g., TTPs, mitigation strategies) and support automated analysis, correlation with internal data, and ideally, automated responses.
Peer validation: Seek feedback from other security professionals and your team regarding the effectiveness of different feeds. Real-world experience and case studies provide valuable insights.

The Challenges and Best Practices in Managing Threat Intelligence Feeds

Keeping Up with the Dynamic Threat Landscape

Challenge: The threat landscape is constantly evolving, with new and adapting threats emerging regularly.
Best Practice: Maintain frequently updated and comprehensive feeds. Continuously monitor the threat landscape and adjust feed subscriptions accordingly.

Integrating Threat Intelligence into Your Security Posture:

Challenge: Maximizing the value of threat intelligence requires strategic integration with the overall security strategy.
Best Practices: Define clear objectives for threat intelligence use, prioritize and filter data for relevance, establish standardized handling processes, and regularly evaluate feed effectiveness.

Integration with Security Tools and Platforms (for Incident Response and Threat Hunting):

Challenge: Siloed threat data limits its effectiveness.
Best Practice: Ensure seamless integration with security tools using standardized formats and protocols. Automate data ingestion and analysis where possible for enhanced threat detection, incident investigations, and threat hunting.

Responding to Real-time Threats:

Challenge: Slow response times increase the impact of attacks.
Best Practice: Leverage real-time threat intelligence and monitoring to enable rapid actions like blocking malicious traffic, patching vulnerabilities, and isolating infected systems.

Overcoming Common Pitfalls:

Challenges: Data overload, misinterpretation, lack of context, and over-reliance on automation can hinder effective use of threat intelligence.
Best Practices: Implement proper filtering and prioritization, ensure analysts are trained in data interpretation, correlate threat data with internal context, and maintain a balance between automation and human analysis.

Extending the Value of Threat Intelligence

Machine-Readable vs. Human-Readable Formats:

Threat intelligence feeds are delivered in two primary formats: human-readable (reports, articles) and machine-readable (STIX/TAXII, JSON, CSV). Human-readable formats provide valuable context for analysts, while machine-readable formats enable automated processing by security tools. Ideally, organizations leverage both: using human-readable intelligence to inform strategy and machine-readable data to drive automated action.

Leveraging IOCs, TTPs, and Domain Names for Threat Hunting:

Threat hunting actively utilizes threat intelligence to uncover hidden threats. This process often involves combining several key elements:

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs): These technical artifacts of malicious activity (IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, URLs) are used to search for evidence of compromise in network logs, endpoint data, and other relevant sources.

Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs): Understanding attacker TTPs (e.g., phishing, vulnerability exploitation, lateral movement) allows threat hunters to develop targeted hunting scenarios based on known attacker behaviors.

Domain Names: Threat feeds often identify malicious domains (newly registered, DGA-generated, typosquatting). Monitoring network traffic for connections to these domains can reveal phishing or command-and-control activity.

Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs) play a crucial role in managing this complex data. TIPs aggregate, normalize, and analyze threat data from multiple sources, streamlining threat intelligence workflows and facilitating effective threat hunting. Furthermore, sharing threat intelligence with trusted partners and communities enhances collective defense and improves the overall effectiveness of threat hunting efforts.

The Future of Threat Intelligence Feeds

Several key trends are shaping the future of threat intelligence:

AI and Machine Learning (ML): AI/ML is enhancing threat intelligence by automating analysis, enabling predictive threat intelligence through trend analysis, and enriching IOCs with contextual information.
Increased Automation and Orchestration: Integration with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platforms will enable automated responses to threats, reducing response times and impact.
Focus on Behavioral Analysis: The focus is shifting towards dynamic behavioral indicators, making it more difficult for attackers to evade detection by simply changing static IOCs.
Expansion of Data Sources: While previously mentioned, the continued expansion of data sources, including social media, dark web forums, and OSINT, will provide a more comprehensive view of the threat landscape.
Improved Collaboration and Sharing: Advancements in platforms and standards like STIX/TAXII will continue to improve seamless threat intelligence sharing between organizations, strengthening collective defense.

How Bitdefender Can Help

The Bitdefender Threat Intelligence portfolio provides actionable intelligence to help organizations stay ahead of cyber threats, enhancing their security posture.

Operational Threat Intelligence

Bitdefender’s Operational Threat Intelligence offers global visibility into elusive malware, APTs, targeted attacks, zero-day vulnerabilities, and C&C servers. The Bitdefender Intelligence Portal provides easy access to a comprehensive Threats Database, aiding analysts in threat mitigation.

Reputation Threat Intelligence

Bitdefender’s Reputation Threat Intelligence Feeds deliver high volumes of vetted IoCs in real-time. These feeds integrate with systems like XDR, EDR, NGFW, and IDS/IPS to maintain dynamic blacklists and whitelists, stopping known malware and enhancing defenses against new threats.

Integration and Accessibility

Bitdefender’s intelligence feeds and services integrate seamlessly into any platform or infrastructure, enhancing the ability to detect, prevent, and respond to cyber threats.

By leveraging Bitdefender’s solutions, organizations can significantly improve their cybersecurity defenses and stay ahead of evolving threats.

Overview

Definition
How it works
Types
Implementation
Best Practices

Security Solutions

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should threat intelligence feeds be updated?

The ideal update frequency depends on the type of threat intelligence and the organization's needs. For tactical and operational intelligence, near real-time or hourly updates are often necessary to address rapidly evolving threats. Strategic intelligence, which focuses on longer-term trends, may be updated less frequently (e.g., daily or weekly). The key is to balance the need for timely information with the resources required to process and analyze the updates.

What are the key metrics for measuring the effectiveness of a threat intelligence program?

Several metrics can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a threat intelligence program:

Reduced Mean Time to Detect (MTTD): How quickly threats are identified.

Reduced Mean Time to Respond (MTTR): How quickly incidents are contained and resolved.

Number of prevented incidents: How many attacks were stopped due to threat intelligence.

Reduction in false positives: Improvement in the accuracy of threat detection.

Return on Investment (ROI): The cost savings or business benefits achieved through threat intelligence.

Match rate for threats: How often the TI feed delivers context on the IoCs you query/encounter.

These metrics help organizations demonstrate the value of their threat intelligence investments and identify areas for improvement.