Integrating threat intelligence into SOC operations

Explore the different benefits acquired from integrating threat data into SOC operations.

Cyberattacks are evolving quickly requiring SOC teams to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals, who continuously leverage new attack techniques and methods to infiltrate target computing networks.

Cyber threat intelligence (CTI) data can help the SOC team in various ways to transform raw threat data into actionable insights, enabling them to stop modern cyberattacks before they cause harm to an organization's IT environment.

Define SOC Threat Intelligence

SOC threat intelligence can be defined as the process of collecting, analyzing and converting threat data into actionable insights that the SOC team can use to mitigate cyberattacks.

SOC threat intelligence enables SOC teams to add context to their alert process, specifically alert triage, which in turn allows them to understand cyberattacks better and respond to them effectively.

The SOC Threat Intelligence involves executing several steps:

• Data gathering – The first step is to collect threat data from various sources, such as open source intelligence (OSINT), commercial threat intelligence, internal threat intelligence sources (e.g., system logs, incident response reports and User Behavior Analytics (UBA/UEBA)), dark web monitoring and malware analysis reports.
• Data analysis – The collected data is then analyzed to identify attackers' tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs).
• Gaining actionable insight – After analyzing the collected data, raw security data is transformed into something that benefits the SOC team in their work. For example, an EDR agent on a user's workstation triggers an alert: PROCESS_NAME: powershell.exe, PARENT_PROCESS: winword.exe, COMMAND_LINE: powershell.exe -WindowStyle Hidden -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -EncodedCommand [base64_string]. The EDR system would recognize that winword.exe (Microsoft Word) is launching powershell.exe using suspicious parameters, which is considered unusual and is commonly pointed to as malicious behavior. It is worth noting that this combination of parent-child processes and command-line arguments is usually flagged by automated rules or machine learning-powered SIEM solutions as highly suspicious. The final outcome is that the SOC team will terminate the process to prevent it from downloading new malware to the compromised device.

How can threat intelligence enhance SOC capabilities?

Threat intelligence can greatly enhance the capabilities of a SOC in various ways. Here are some key use cases with examples:

Proactive threat detection

Threat intelligence data provides SOC teams with current information on emerging threats, vulnerabilities and attack vectors. This allows them to mitigate and detect various cyberattacks before they cause harm to the organization's IT environment. For example, by integrating threat intelligence feeds, a SOC can identify indicators of compromise (IOCs) related to different emerging threats. For instance, if a new ransomware strain is identified, the SOC can proactively search for its signatures across the IT environment to detect its presence.

Boost incident response

When having access to detailed threat intelligence data, SOC analysts can gain important insights into attackers' TTPs. This knowledge allows the streamlining of incident response efforts in different ways:

• Faster threat detection – By understanding attackers' TTPs, SOC can identify malicious activities of cyber attackers more quickly, whether through SIEM alerts, endpoint detection or user behavioral analytics.
• Allow more effective response – SOC analysts can prioritize and contain incidents more quickly based on attack patterns, which facilitates a more effective response by reducing guesswork.
• Reduce Dwell Time – When an attack is detected and mitigated quickly, it causes less damage to impacted systems, as it prevents adversaries from escalating privileges or moving laterally across the IT environment to exfiltrate sensitive data.

Reduce false positive alerts

By integrating high-quality threat intelligence data into their work, SOC teams can reduce false-positive alerts by fine-tuning detection alert rules and calibrating monitoring tools, such as SIEM and SOAR. This optimization allows achieving different operational advantages:

• Receive more accurate alerting – Threat intelligence data provides context about real-world attacks, including malicious IP addresses and domains and malware signatures. This enables the SOC team to obtain accurate information about real attacks while filtering out benign activity, thereby reducing the number of unnecessary alerts.
• Boost SOC analysts' efficiency – By focusing on handling only real alerts, SOC can dedicate its precious time to investigating legitimate alerts. This will result in an accelerated response time and reduced alert fatigue.
• Improve the performance of security tools – Tools like SIEM, IPS/IDS and EDR/XDR will become more efficient in detecting real attacks after integrating IOCs information into their workflows.
• Resource savings – Reducing the number of false positive alerts will result in lowering the operational overhead of the SOC and allow it to dedicate more time to proactive threat hunting, thereby improving the overall security of the IT environment. 

Automated threat mitigation

Threat intelligence data, such as malicious IP addresses, domains, URLs and file hashes, can be integrated with security solutions like SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR and firewalls to enable automated threat detection and response. Here are some examples of how automated threat detection works:

• Malicious IPs and domains from threat intelligence feeds can be blocked automatically in firewalls, IPS/IDS and secure web gateways. For example, suppose an IP address appears in a threat intelligence feed to be associated with a ransomware command and control server. In that case, the firewall can instantly block it before any communication occurs.
• EDR solutions and email security tools can automatically quarantine or delete files that match known malware hashes.
• SIEMs and SOAR platforms can correlate external threat intelligence data with internal logs from servers and other security solutions to trigger automated investigations or containment workflows. For example, if a user's device contacts a domain linked to a botnet or a ransomware control server, the SIEM can alert the SOC. At the same time, the EDR solution isolates the compromised device for further analysis.

Threat hunting

SOC teams can boost their defensive posture by using threat intelligence to fuel proactive threat hunting. Unlike reactive alert monitoring, threat hunting assumes adversaries are already present within the organization's IT environment, and the threat hunter's role is to find and eliminate them. 

There are different methods that SOC can use threat intelligence to aid threat hunters:

• IOC-based hunting – SOC uses signs of intrusion, like known bad IPs, suspicious domain names, file hashes, registry entries or unusual processes running on systems, to find and stop threats.. For example, SOC searches internal communications logs, such as firewall logs, to identify connections to IP addresses listed on a new botnet or ransomware command and control server list.
• TTP-Focused Hunting – Gathering intelligence on adversary TTP allows threat hunters to find: Lateral movement patterns (e.g., RDP brute-forcing), data exfiltration methods (e.g., DNS tunneling) and persistence mechanisms (e.g., scheduled tasks on endpoint devices).
• Contextual investigation – A threat report reveals important information about potential attackers and their methods. For example, "threat actor X targets the financial sector with a specific malware type".

Improve collaboration

Since security risks transcend organizational borders, exchanging threat intelligence data is essential to any comprehensive cybersecurity defense plan. SOC teams can contribute to larger community defense initiatives and gain access to shared knowledge by joining cooperative networks.

Organizations can participate in threat intelligence sharing via:

• Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) – For example, after a successful ransomware attack on a bank, all members of ISACs receive detailed information about IOCs to block the threat proactively.
• Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs) – These are centralized platforms that work to collect and distribute threat data—for example, an MDR provider shares newly discovered malware signatures across all client environments.
• Open Source Threat Feeds – These are community projects like OpenCTI or AlienVault OTX
• Vendor-Specific Sharing Programs – These programs are powered by specific vendors, such as CrowdStrike OverWatch

Bringing threat intelligence into SOC work turns security teams from just reacting to problems into actively preventing them. Using CTI helps find threats sooner, respond faster to incidents, automate some fixes and work better with other external parties to mitigate cyberattacks.

Quick, secure intelligence gathering with Silo

Collecting threat intelligence requires investigators to move fluidly through systems and stay undetected. Advanced SOCs depend on Silo for airtight isolation, global masking, accelerated insights and easy-to-audit oversight. Learn more about how Silo can rapidly increase results of an investigation without tipping off the target.

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