Know
What is Cyber Threat Intelligence?
Threat intelligence turns collected information into assessed knowledge that is relevant to a decision. It may describe threat actors, campaigns, behaviors, infrastructure, vulnerabilities, malware, targeting, or trends and should communicate context, confidence, relevance, and timeliness.
Why it matters
Raw indicators age quickly. Intelligence helps defenders decide what matters to their organization, what to look for, and what action is justified.
Evidence, not hype
Validated in the real world
Every record is labeled by evidence type and source strength so an incident, a standard, and emerging research are never presented as if they are the same thing.
Invisible Unicode characters appear in phishing keyword evasion
Microsoft describes invisible Unicode characters inserted into phishing text to obstruct keyword parsing. Signature activity increased from February 9 and remained elevated on weekdays for roughly three months. Layered protections flagged most of the messages.
This illustrates the difference between visible text and machine-processed content. It is newly published analysis of older activity, not evidence that all email protections are defeated or that every invisible character is malicious.
Scattered Spider targeted enterprise help desks and identity controls
A joint advisory describes Scattered Spider tactics obtained through investigations, including targeting IT help desks, social engineering, identity abuse, and the need for phishing-resistant MFA.
The advisory validates how modern intrusions can begin with human and identity-control failures and maps observed behavior to MITRE ATT&CK techniques.
ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware activity documented through FBI investigations
A joint advisory publishes indicators and tactics associated with ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware based on FBI investigations and notes that healthcare was the most commonly victimized sector among recent leaked victims.
The advisory connects ransomware terminology to observed campaigns, indicators, tactics, victim impact, and recommended defensive actions.
SolarWinds confirmed malicious code was inserted into Orion software builds
SolarWinds disclosed to the SEC that a compromise of its software build system inserted a vulnerability into Orion product updates released between March and June 2020.
This primary-source disclosure is direct evidence of software supply-chain compromise and the downstream risk created by trusted updates.
ATT&CK connects techniques to documented adversary procedures
MITRE ATT&CK is a public knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques that includes procedure examples showing how real threat groups and software have used those behaviors.
It gives the encyclopedia a neutral behavioral language for connecting definitions to observed adversary activity without relying on one vendor's taxonomy.
Understand the mechanics
How it works
- 1
Define intelligence requirements.
- 2
Collect relevant information from appropriate sources.
- 3
Process and normalize the data.
- 4
Analyze it against the requirement and organizational context.
- 5
Disseminate an assessment to the people or systems that can act.
- 6
Use feedback to improve future collection and analysis.
Practice
What to watch for
- Threat activity targeting the organization’s sector or technology
- Infrastructure or behaviors matching current incidents
- New exploitation affecting exposed assets
- Intelligence feeds with little relevance or context
Perform
What to do
- 1
Assess source reliability and confidence.
- 2
Determine relevance to your environment.
- 3
Translate intelligence into detection, hunting, hardening, or executive decisions.
- 4
Avoid treating an indicator match as proof without investigation.
How to reduce the risk
- Intelligence requirements
- Asset/context enrichment
- Threat-informed defense
- Detection engineering
- Feedback loops
Business impact
- Better prioritization
- Earlier awareness of relevant threats
- More focused hunting and detection
- Noise and cost if collection lacks requirements
What different roles should do
Threat Intelligence
- Tie collection to explicit decisions and requirements
SOC
- Use intelligence as context and detection input, not unquestioned truth
Framework & standards context
- MITRE ATT&CK
- STIX/TAXII where applicable
Source transparency
Authoritative sources
Last reviewed: 2026-09-02