Cyber Threat Library: Basic Minimum or Luxurious Maximum?

Cyber Threat Library: Basic Minimum or Luxurious Maximum? 🔍

In the world of information security, the term “cyber threat library” periodically appears in various forms. It is generally understood as a structured knowledge base containing high-level information security entities, such as hacker groups, malware families, vulnerabilities, malicious techniques, etc. These elements are linked together, forming a complex knowledge network. For example, you can understand which hacker group uses which malware and tools, which vulnerabilities it exploits and for what purposes, and so on.

Given the abundance of classes in the field of information protection, it is useful to understand whether you need such a knowledge base. First, let’s look at how it can be useful in principle.

1️⃣ Risk assessment for a specific industry and business processes. A cyber threat library allows you to filter threats by relevance. For example, a retail bank does not need to spend resources tracking groups that only attack the energy sector. It can focus on groups targeting the financial sector, families of banking Trojans, and vulnerabilities in payment systems that they use. In other words, the library can serve as a basis for forming an organization’s threat landscape.

2️⃣ Improving the skills of SOC analysts and optimizing processes. The library serves as a centralized source of knowledge for the information security team. Understanding how a particular group will carry out its attacks will allow for much more effective countermeasures. Such knowledge is useful in implementing many information security processes: from responding to cyberattacks and investigating incidents to Threat Hunting.

3️⃣ Supporting vulnerability management processes. Information about vulnerabilities in the library is enriched with context: whether it is being exploited, whether it is linked to specific active groups, etc. Based on this information, you can assess how relevant it is to your technology stack, allowing you to move from prioritization based on general CVSS scores to a risk-oriented approach: first patching those vulnerabilities that are actually being used against similar organizations, even if their formal criticality is lower.

4️⃣ Simplifying communication with organization management. A cyber threat library translates technical details into the language of business risks. Instead of complex terms, you can provide a report: “Group A is actively attacking our industry. The probability of an attack on us is medium, but if it occurs, there is a high chance of production stoppage. Funding for information security project X is required for protection.” This justifies budget requests and strategic decisions in the field of information security.

If any of the points described above seemed useful to you, and you have decided to use a cyber threat library, you need to figure out whether to build it yourself or use a commercial solution. With the second option, everything is obvious: such libraries have support from experienced specialists, are well-populated, often include unique knowledge, and may also have built-in capabilities for integration with other classes of information security tools. However, they cost money.

On the other hand, you can build a knowledge base yourself, but be prepared for many difficulties. Without proper configuration, the library turns into a “dump” of irrelevant information that distracts analysts, and keeping it up to date requires constant effort, which is not feasible for all organizations.

🧐 Thus, the question in the post title can be answered as follows: a cyber threat library is a basic minimum, but its scale and complexity should be determined by the organization’s actual needs. For small and, in some cases, medium-sized organizations, regular monitoring of several reputable open-source cyber threat intelligence feeds will suffice. Large players, however, need a structured knowledge base with the ability to form the foundation for building their cyber threat landscape.

#TI #tip
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