Is threat intelligence needful?

Cyber threat intelligence (CTI), an area of cybersecurity that focuses on the collection and analysis of information about current and potential attacks that threaten the safety of organizations and the assets, has proven to be an expensive affair to many if not all institutions.

During the second regional East African Fintech Summit held at the Villa Rosa Hotel in Nairobi on the 22^nd May 2018, Dr. Bright Gameli, the Head of Cyber security IS Kenya contended on the benefits of threat intelligence (TI).

He averred that threat Intelligence is what becomes of the information once it has been collected, evaluated in the context of its source and reliability, and analyzed through rigorous and structured tradecraft techniques by those with substantive expertise and access to all-source information.

“TI reduces uncertainty for the consumer while aiding the consumer in identifying threats and opportunities,” says Dr. Gameli.

He mentions the benefits of TI as providing value for other experts such as security officers, accountants, and terrorism and criminal analysts. It further provides greater insight into cyber threats, allowing for a faster, more targeted response as well as resource development and allocation.

It can assist with decision making to determine acceptable business risks and advance the use of indicators by validating, prioritizing, specifying the length of time an indicator is valid -tactical intelligence.

Dr. Gameli differentiates Intelligence from information saying that the former is all about finding out the latter and determining what it means then using it to take action. He tactfully encourages all organisations to secure their APIs and to determine post threat stimulation and automation.

He concludes that the strategy for a proper TI process incorporates the identification of the threat, protection from it, a reaction or response to it then eventually recovery from the potential thtreat.