Threat intelligence

27th June 2025

The more knowledge you have about cyber-attacks, the better your chance of avoiding them.

You can’t predict exactly when a cyber attack will occur, or exactly what type of attack it will be, but, using all the information at your disposal, you can prepare yourself for probable outcomes. Think of it like a weather forecast: not 100% accurate, but better than nothing!

Threat intelligence can be used to estimate what kind of attacks are happening, who the perpetrators might be, what methods they may use and what the best cause of action in response is. There are different kinds of threat intelligence:

Strategic – these are high-level insights for key decision makers within a business. By learning about industry trends, motivations and risks, attacks can be better predicted.

Tactical – this includes information about attack techniques and tools. By informing defenders about how the attacks work, they can be prepared to counter these measures.

Operational – this is real time intelligence about specific attacks. This could be vital for an incident response team: if they’re suffering an attack that another organisation faced a month ago, they would know exactly how to defend against it.

Technical – this includes indicators, like IP addresses, URLs, files hashes and malware signatures. These distinct features can be identified and matched to other attacks.

Depending on the type of intelligence, these can come from internal logs – like firewalls or SIEM systems –, threat feeds from open-source platforms, dark web monitoring or information sharing groups. At Interfuture Security, we get a lot of information directly from the National Cyber Security Centre, assuring we keep up with the latest details.

The importance of threat intelligence can’t be undersold: it helps to prevent attacks from happening, it makes it easier to spot suspicious activity, it improves response times and strengthens resilience.

If you would like to know more about cyber security threat intelligence, talk to Interfuture Security.