Why Threat Intelligence Companies Need To Evolve

In the past, threat intelligence was rather basic.

Individuals would spend their time searching the web for anything they believed to be a threat and report it to their clients. It was a slow and laborious process, but it worked. However, threat intelligence can only work differently.

It has had to evolve, and there are several reasons why.

Threats Are Harder To Find

They weren’t difficult to find when potential threats surfaced on the internet. Communities were less spread out. Everything was done in the open.

Threat intelligence companies could just learn where most potential threats were likely to be discussed, and they would catch almost all of them. 

Now all of the discussion is hidden. Most of it can be found on the deep and dark web. Since this is not accessible similarly, intelligence-gathering techniques have had to change. 

Most quality threat intelligence companies can scan the dark web for threats. It takes a skilled company to know where they should look, though. 

There Are a Lot of Threats Out There

The internet used to be very small. Granted, finding information was still incredibly tough, but only some things were as spread out as it is now. If threat intelligence service agents were knowledgeable and knew where to look, they would be able to catch the vast majority of threats.

This is no longer possible. You wouldn’t catch a thing if you ran a company and sent people to gather information manually. This is why threat intelligence companies, including Acid Technologies, have had to develop tools that will scan the web automatically.

Nowadays, most threats will be picked up by sophisticated software programmed to search the vast expanses of the internet. They will typically have been tuned with a list of specific keywords for which the software will need to look.

This information will then be fed back in much the same way that the intelligence gathering teams would have in the past, but instead of hundreds of pages being scanned a day, hundreds and thousands can be scanned. It likely comes in at a much cheaper cost too. 

People Are Becoming Wise To Threat Intelligence Gathering Techniques

Potential bad actors know that people are looking for them. They know that threat intelligence is constantly on the lookout for potential threats to businesses that they represent.

These people do have to discuss their plans in the open, though. Even if they do so on the deep web, it allows people to learn of potential ‘plots’ or data being sold. It can never be done entirely privately. Somebody has to know at some point.

Of course, bad actors will always be looking for ways to beat threat intelligence-gathering companies. The companies will constantly be evolving their techniques to stay one step ahead of these bad actors, and they have been able to do it incredibly well.

Using old intelligence-gathering systems in the current internet would have been tough. 

The Threats Are More Severe

In the past, threats may have been hacking here or there. It may have brought a company’s servers down for a short while, but there wouldn’t have been much maliciousness. This has changed. 

Countless companies have been brought down by bad actors discussing their plans out in the open. Data theft. Hacking attempts to delete information, DDOS attacks, and more.

Threat intelligence companies have needed to evolve from picking up these threats far more quickly. If they didn’t, the companies they represent would suffer massively. 

Final Thoughts

Threat intelligence companies are now more advanced than ever before. They have been in a constant state of evolution ever since threats started to present themselves online. They are still evolving. They have to.

If they don’t evolve, then that is when the companies that they represent start to suffer.

Threat intelligence needs to stay ahead of the bad actors. This is why you will see a constant refinement of intelligence-gathering techniques over the years.

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