The dangerous environment of today is harsh. In 2021, there will be 1,862 publicly reported data breaches, thus security teams are looking for innovative strategies to work more intelligently rather than harder.
Security professionals are gradually turning to threat intelligence to gain insights into Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) and exploits they can use to proactively harden their organization’s defenses against cybercriminals in light of the ever-increasing number of vulnerabilities and sophisticated threat vectors.
In fact, studies suggest that from 41.1 percent in 2019 to 47.0 percent in 2022, more firms have specialized threat intelligence teams.
One of the leading companies profiting from this trend is Microsoft. It purchased cyber risk information vendor RiskIQ just over a year ago. Microsoft today announced the launch of two new products: Microsoft External Attack Surface Management and Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (MDTI).
Making use of threat intelligence to understand the security environment
Organizations are forced to rely on third-party apps and services that they have limited control over as a result of living in a data-driven age. It is particularly challenging to manage this new attack surface when combined with the flaws in the established on-site network.
Threat intelligence gives organizations a head’s up on the TTPs and exploits that threat actors employ to get into enterprise systems, enabling them to respond to attacks in this context.
Threat intelligence solutions are designed to “give or aid in the curation of information regarding the identities, motivations, features, and methods of threats, generally referred to as tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)”), according to Gartner.
Insights from threat intelligence can be used by security teams to improve their prevention and detection capabilities, boosting the efficacy of procedures like incident response, threat hunting, and vulnerability management.
In summary, the organization’s goal is to provide security teams with the knowledge they need to improve their security plans and guard against malware and ransomware threats across the Microsoft product ecosystem.
Assessing the market for threat intelligence
The revelation comes as the market for threat intelligence is expected to climb from $11.6 billion in 2021 to a total of $15.8 billion by 2026, according to experts.
IBM, one of Microsoft’s primary rivals in the market, offers X-Force Exchange, a platform for exchanging threat data where security experts may search for threats, upload files for scanning, and access threat intelligence provided by other users. IBM just reported a $16.7 billion increase in revenue.
Another rival is Anomaly, which offers Threat Stream, a threat intelligence management platform driven by AI that is intended to automatically gather and evaluate information from hundreds of threat sources. The most recent $40 million in funding for Anomaly was received as part of a series D funding round in 2018.
The Wild Fire product line from Palo Alto Networks, the ZeroFOX platform, and Mandiant Advantage Threat Intelligence are further market rivals.
The introduction of a new threat intelligence service could aid security teams in fending off the greatest dangers to the provider’s product ecosystem given the extensive usage of Microsoft devices among business users.
