In my role at work as a Threat Intel analyst, I track developments using various media feeds, and put together a succinct daily report of several key items that are pertinent to our clients and business lines.  Of course, I share my findings on Twitter and LinkedIn because that’s how the security community flourishes: collaboration. And to say I love what I do would be an understatement.

I don’t pretend to be an expert at what I do, nor will I say I have the definitive definition of what Threat Intel is. There is so much information to capture and analyze, and the learning is continuous. For me, my love of threat intel is in the hunt: looking for trends, patterns, new developments, things that reappear.  If you seek, you will find. There are many ways to search, and I am always trying to learn from people who have been doing this longer. It’s like fine-tuning a guitar, so I’ll always be looking at how to improve what I do.

I have go-to sources I read regularly, people online I follow specifically. My twitter feed is huge and categorized. But if I want to know something right away, it’s usually on there. I also have other sources to check in with directly. I collate information on malware, Advanced Persistent Threats (my most favourite things), specialized systems and their unique vulnerabilities.  This has helped me develop a baseline understanding over the time I’ve been doing this, so that I can understand who the players are when it comes to exploit kits, ransomware or DDoS.  And I try to make sure I know who the experts are, so that when they find something I am paying attention. That’s the head’s up.

When I’ve talked on Blue Teaming with my awesome pal, Haydn Johnson, we refer to the importance of knowing your baseline, watching patterns, so that you can identify anomalies. Those are your threats. That is your head’s up.  I find the same thing here as I track tweets, stories, advisories, reports and blogs.  I look for evolutions in how malware is delivered, so changes in exploit kits, or for kits to disappear from site. That means those kits are going to reappear with a new twist that our standard levels of detection and protection may not recognize, so attackers can access systems. Or, it could mean a larger scale attack, like Carbanak, when a massive crime gang operates on a global level and banks get taken for $1 billion. I play a lot of “what if” because I find I need to think beyond the normal realm to expect the unexpected. After all, the attackers are going where we aren’t looking.

In the weeks to come, I will be trying to bring in more information to widen my search. I’m researching all I can on what experts think best defines Threat Intel and Hunting. Because to really capture what’s out there, we need to broaden our scope.  I want to be looking ahead of the curve in this chase, anticipating their next move based on the wealth of information we have at hand, and factoring in what we know about human behavior. Next gen tech has spawned next gen threats, and as always, the attackers are ahead of us. And here is the thrill of the hunt.