What is Threat Intelligence?
Very simply put, threat intelligence is the ways and means of finding out about new cyber threats globally and working out whether they are relevant to your organisation. We all know that cyber attackers are continually growing new ways to threaten businesses and gain an advantage whether that is through access to data or financial information. All organisations should have methods in place to support their threat intelligence framework. 
This can be something as simple as signing up for newsletters from respected companies and institutions such as the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/) who regularly send out threat notifications. Or you may pay a subscription to a cyber security or awareness company to ensure you stay up to date with the threat information. You can also search the internet for threat reports and see what the latest trends in cyber attacks are.
Here’s the bit lots of organisations then miss, it’s not good enough just to get the information about threats, you then need to do something with it. You need to raise awareness in the staff team about the potential threats that are out there and then bring that reality into your organisation. You want staff to be aware of and report potential threats.
For example, the most common cyber attack is phishing and any staff member could get a phishing email, so do they know what a phishing` email looks like and what they should do if they think they have received a phishing email? If not then there is an education opportunity to raise awareness.
For clarity, there are three steps to threat intelligence.
- Be aware of the changing threat landscape
- Act of that awareness and see how those threats would become a problem in your organisation
- Make staff aware of the potential threats and ensure they know what to do in the event a threat is identified.