Threat Intelligence: Safeguarding Your Business in the Digital Age

According to a survey conducted by Statista in 2023, 74 percent of companies in North, Central, and South America perceive cyberattacks as a significant threat [1]. During the same year, data breaches caused an all-time high of $12.5 billion in monetary damages for the United States [2]. These statistics call for proactive defense against cyberattacks. Embracing threat intelligence is one pathway to strengthening your company's cybersecurity readiness.

Read on to learn more about threat intelligence, including its lifecycle, business benefits, challenges, and best implementation practices. 

What is threat intelligence? 

Threat intelligence equips an organization with the necessary insights to prevent or combat cyber threats targeting its infrastructure. Also known as cyber threat intelligence (CTI), threat intelligence can facilitate your firm’s detection and response capabilities by improving threat alert precision and minimizing attack investigation time. 

Additionally, by accommodating emerging threats within its scope, threat intelligence can assist your security teams in identifying, prioritizing, and examining potential threats. 

Some of the many threats threat intelligence can help you counter include:

• Malware: Malicious software or malware lets hackers gain unauthorized access to systems, which may result in data theft or incapacitation of infected systems. Worms, spyware, Trojan horses, and ransomware are all common types of malware. 

• Phishing: A prevalent form of social engineering, phishing involves the deceptive use of emails, SMS, or phone calls to obtain login credentials or sensitive data. Phishing can also help perpetrators distribute malware.

• Zero-day exploit: Cybercriminals execute zero-day exploits by capitalizing on zero-day vulnerabilities, which may include undisclosed or unpatched security flaws within firms’ computer software, firmware, or hardware. 

The threat intelligence lifecycle

The threat intelligence lifecycle is a framework with multiple steps, all aimed at converting raw data on anticipated risks into actionable intelligence. Below is a breakdown of each step in the cycle.

1. Planning 

The first step involves establishing intelligence requirements. This requires identifying company assets in need of protection and understanding the threats associated with each asset. Note that threat intelligence can be strategic (covering broad trends and motives of known attackers), operational (detailing attackers' tactics and attack origins), or tactical (offering specific threat details, including indicators of compromise (IoC). 

2. Data collection

In this step, security teams work toward gathering raw threat data from various channels, including the dark web, open source intelligence (OSINT), social media, internal system and network logs, threat intelligence feeds, and more. 

3. Processing 

Following data collection, data undergoes processing to make it suitable for analysis. 

Processing may involve tasks like cleansing, translating data, discarding irrelevant or redundant information, or decrypting encrypted data. Threat intelligence tools typically automate this step using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Read more: Data Literacy for Business: Your 2025 Guide

4. Analysis 

Analysis marks a crucial stage. In this step, analysts make use of processed data to identify patterns and anomalies that may point to potential threats. Techniques such as data mining and machine learning may be leveraged to interpret the data and extract insights. Essentially, the analysis turns raw threat data into actionable intelligence. 

5. Dissemination

The analyzed intelligence is subsequently communicated to the appropriate stakeholders and decision-makers using threat intelligence reports, briefings, or dashboards. Numerous threat intelligence tools seamlessly merge data with extended detection and response (XDR) software to automatically assign risk scores for prioritizing threats and generate alerts for ongoing attacks. 

6. Feedback 

In the final step, analysts and stakeholders offer feedback on the relevance and effectiveness of accumulated threat intelligence in addressing the organization's security needs. In addition to fine-tuning intelligence requirements, the feedback also helps steer the direction for future or upcoming intelligence-gathering endeavors. 

Benchmark your talent with global skill insights

See how millions of learners in 100 countries are strengthening critical skills.

Global Skills Report

Business benefits of embracing threat intelligence 

Besides enhancing your organization’s security stance, threat intelligence can offer your business the following benefits:

• Streamlines regulatory compliance: From the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), cyber threat intelligence can help your firm adhere to various industry regulations and compliance policies.

• Minimizes unanticipated costs: Threat intelligence lowers the likelihood of data breaches, which otherwise result in significant direct costs, such as legal fees and settlements with affected customers, as well as indirect costs like reputational harm.

• Reduces strain on security teams: Cyber threat intelligence tools reduce security team burnout by automating manual tasks associated with threat intelligence.

Overcoming barriers to implementing threat intelligence

While threat intelligence has its perks, it’s not without challenges. Here are some barriers you may confront, including tips to overcome them: 

• Data complexity: Threat data, when handled in large volumes, may be perplexing or difficult to comprehend. However, adequate training and the use of automated tools for data processing and analysis can ease this challenge.

• Data privacy: At times, gathered threat data may include sensitive information, which can raise concerns about privacy and security. To address this, consider developing internal policies that ensure compliance with relevant data laws.

• Setup costs: If you are a small business, sourcing and obtaining threat data can be a costly affair. That said, open-source intelligence and publicly available threat intelligence feeds are excellent avenues for building your threat intelligence base. 

Choosing the right threat intelligence tool 

Should you wish to invest in a threat intelligence tool, you can use the following pointers as a checklist.

1. Live data

Cyberattacks often unfold swiftly, lasting mere hours or minutes. To stay ahead of threats, opt for a robust threat intelligence platform that delivers insights based on real-time data analysis.

2. Easy to integrate

Choosing a platform that seamlessly integrates with your current systems and provides multi-platform and multi-cloud support is advantageous. This ensures holistic protection for your entire IT infrastructure.

3. Scans for external data

Your threat intelligence tool must integrate with internal systems and scan external data feeds to provide comprehensive protection against unforeseen threats. 

Learn more with Coursera

By utilizing data gathered from threat intelligence, you can enhance your organization's ability to defend against cyberattacks both before and during a security incident.

Enable your employees to analyze and interpret data to drive faster, better business decisions with the Data & Analytics Academy from Coursera. Offering hands-on learning and expert instruction from leading organizations like Stanford, Google, Microsoft, Meta, the University of Michigan, and more, Coursera’s Data & Analytics Academy empowers employees at every level to build foundational data literacy while also equipping existing data teams with expert-level training in machine learning, AI, and other emergent fields.

Explore Coursera for Business to learn how we can work together to build data proficiency across your organization.