Threat intelligence: from Threats to Tactics

This tech and meet session at HoWest was presented by Niels Desloover and Sandro Manzo, who are working at the CCB but also give lectures at HoWest for the course Cyber Threat intelligence. Their lecture the following week had fragments of this tech and meet session worked into them, meaning that if you attended their session you could focus better on the new stuff they were teaching in the class rather than hearing all of it for the first time.

Starting from the basic concepts of threat intelligence, they explained the need for threat intelligence in the private sector. Using an example of a threat they had investigated not long ago they were able to provide the audience with not only the theoretical part of threat intelligence, but also showing it to us first-hand how to work their way from threat to tactic. By looking at the fuzzy hash of the threat they can find a previous version of this threat and create better rules for their eventual tactic and share it with the appropriate stakeholders or threat intelligence platform.

My personal interest has never been focused on the theoretical side of cyber security but this session made me more appreciative to the work they perform on a daily basis because it is actually more practical in work than I had assumed going in. And even though I wasn’t interested in the topic beforehand I went into the session with an open mind thinking that I could be persuaded into getting more involved in the field.

I don’t think I would pursue a career in cyber threat intelligence, however I do think it is an interesting resource for many companies to have a look at and use the updated sources to protect themselves and their clients from potential threats.

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