Leveraging Modern Threat Intelligence Platforms to Inform Red Team Operations
By: Rick Froggatt - February 2025
CIO ToriiGate Security Consulting, LLC
In today's rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape, organizations must adopt proactive measures to safeguard their sensitive data and critical infrastructure. Modern threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) have emerged as powerful tools designed to identify, understand, and mitigate risks by providing real-time data, actionable insights, and in-depth analysis. These platforms consolidate threat information from diverse sources, empowering security teams to prioritize threats, make informed decisions, and prevent potential attacks before they occur.
Understanding Threat Intelligence Platforms
Threat intelligence platforms play a pivotal role in enhancing an organization's ability to defend against cyber threats. These platforms equip security teams with the tools needed to proactively identify, analyze, and respond to emerging risks in a dynamic threat landscape. By automating the aggregation and management of threat data, TIPs allow analysts to focus on deeper investigations and strategic response planning rather than manual data collection. Additionally, TIPs facilitate seamless collaboration between threat intelligence teams, stakeholders, and other security systems by simplifying the sharing of threat intelligence.
Key Features of Modern Threat Intelligence Platforms
Threat Data Aggregation and Enrichment: TIPs aggregate threat data from multiple sources, including open-source, commercial, and proprietary feeds. This comprehensive approach ensures that security teams have access to the most relevant and up-to-date information.
Real-Time Threat Scoring and Prioritization: TIPs use contextual analysis and risk assessment to score and prioritize threats in real-time, enabling security teams to focus on the most critical risks.
Integration with Security Systems: TIPs integrate with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platforms, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems, firewalls, and other security tools to automate threat detection and response.
Collaborative Features: TIPs provide collaborative features that allow teams to share threat intelligence and coordinate responses across departments, enhancing overall security posture.
Leveraging Threat Intelligence for Red Team Operations
Red team operations simulate real-world cyber attacks to identify security vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems, networks, and processes. By leveraging threat intelligence, red teams can enhance their operations and provide invaluable insights into an organization's vulnerabilities.
Reconnaissance and Intelligence Gathering: Red teams use threat intelligence to gather information about target systems, networks, and potential attack vectors. This information helps them develop realistic attack scenarios based on real threat actor techniques.
Social Engineering Attacks: Threat intelligence provides insights into the latest social engineering tactics used by threat actors. Red teams can use this information to craft convincing phishing emails and other social engineering attacks to test an organization's
