Partnership Matters: Strategies for Aligning Threat Intelligence with Your Business
In the face of escalating cyber threats targeting the financial and aviation sectors, collaboration has become a vital strategy for bolstering cybersecurity defenses. Threat intelligence sharing communities offer significant benefits to Financial Services and Banking (FS&B) organizations by enhancing their cybersecurity posture through collaborative defense efforts.
These communities enable the secure exchange of actionable threat data, helping institutions anticipate, detect, and respond to cyberattacks more effectively. Key benefits and mechanisms for FS&B organizations include:
### Enhanced Early Warning and Preparedness
FS&B organizations, which face an average of 114 cyberattacks weekly, according to recent research, require early threat detection to stay ahead of sophisticated adversaries. Sharing threat intelligence across organizations offers actionable insights that allow members to prepare against emerging and known attack patterns in real time.
### Visibility Across Supply Chains
Sharing intelligence within trusted communities extends an organization’s visibility beyond its perimeter to multiple supply chains. Smaller organizations, often embedded at different supply chain points, can provide frontline insights into novel threats. Larger organizations contribute mature, extensive intelligence, creating a comprehensive, multi-layered defense network.
### Collective Defense Against Sophisticated Threats
Threat sharing enables FS&B institutions to understand trends such as increasing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Communities like FS-ISAC help financial organizations assess their cyber maturity and readiness, guiding investment and improvement efforts to sustain resilience against such attacks.
### Facilitation of Secure Data Exchange
Secure, sector-specific communities like FS-ISAC provide platforms where verified members share threat intelligence confidentially and securely. The use of open standards like STIX and TAXII enables automated, anonymized, and standardized data exchange, allowing organizations to share detailed threat data efficiently without exposing sensitive internal information or operations.
Anonymization and data privacy mechanisms protect sensitive details, allowing organizations to contribute actionable intelligence while mitigating privacy and confidentiality risks. Aggregated intelligence from multiple sources supports predictive analytics and proactive security measures, enabling organizations to anticipate future attack vectors and reduce incident response times.
Threat intelligence sharing communities empower FS&B organizations to move from isolated, reactive cybersecurity efforts to collaborative, proactive defense strategies. By providing a secure, standardized, and trusted environment for sharing threat data, they bolster resilience against sophisticated cyber threats, enable comprehensive visibility across ecosystems, and facilitate timely, actionable responses that reduce risk and damage from cyberattacks.
These communities are not only a tactic for meeting the requirements of regulations like DORA and NIS2, but they also provide valuable resources for smaller organizations. Sharing one's own threat intelligence within a trusted community can be beneficial, as it can offer insights and perspectives that may not be available within an organization's own security team.
Advanced threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) can automatically generate threat intelligence reports, ready to be securely shared into the organization's threat intelligence sharing community. In-person meetings within threat intelligence communities can establish trust and verify the individuals sharing threat intelligence information.
However, managing the large volume of threat information generated and shared daily within these communities can be challenging for resource-stretched teams. Cybersecurity teams must remain vigilant, as they are only as strong as their weakest link and their most silent partner.
Chris Jacob, VP, Global Field Operations at ThreatQuotient, a Securonix Company, emphasizes the importance of threat intelligence sharing in the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape: "Collaboration is key to staying ahead of sophisticated adversaries. By sharing threat intelligence, we can strengthen our collective defenses and protect our organizations and customers more effectively."
- Collaboration in the form of threat intelligence sharing communities is valuable for Financial Services and Banking (FS&B) organizations, significantly enhancing their cybersecurity posture against escalating cyber risks.
- FS&B organizations, which experience an average of 114 cyberattacks weekly, can benefit from these communities by receiving actionable insights for real-time preparation against emerging and known attack patterns.
- Sharing intelligence within trusted communities not only extends an organization's visibility but also creates a comprehensive, multi-layered defense network against sophisticated threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
- Secure, sector-specific communities like FS-ISAC facilitate the confidential and secure exchange of threat intelligence, using open standards like STIX and TAXII for automated, anonymized, and standardized data exchange.
- In the insurtech and underwriting sector, advanced threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) can automate threat intelligence report generation and facilitate secure sharing within threat intelligence communities.
- Chris Jacob, VP of Global Field Operations at ThreatQuotient, a Securonix Company, underscores the importance of these communities in the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape, stating that collaboration is key to staying ahead of sophisticated adversaries and protecting organizations and customers more effectively.
