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posting level to building automated machine-readable threat intelligence sharing of threat
indicators and trends. Having the ability to explicitly set granular parameters on specific
indicators of compromise (IOCs), when and with whom to share this information, will build
the foundation to grow communities faster, and enhance everyone’s ability to identify and
detect cyber threat patterns. One of the biggest concerns from executives is identifying third-
party risk. Don’t just consider communities a gathering of those in your industry or your
partners and affiliate organizations. Change the model of managing business risk by
including your vendors, suppliers and service providers into a segmented community for the
purposes of sharing threat information. Security is only as strong as its weakest link.
Community threat sharing will help to improve everyone’s capabilities to detect, react, and
remediate more effectively.

6) Permission to glimpse behind virtual perimeters. We have to adopt the philosophy that
cyber threats are like the weather, they affect everyone and have cyclical patterns. Being
able to get a glimpse behind the virtual perimeters of those in our threat sharing and trusted
communities can provide invaluable insight. Security analysts who can see the velocity of an
IOC moving across organizations that have a contextual relationship with their business will
be able to have access to early warning indicators. They will be able to prepare and get
ahead of these threats because of this advanced insight. Today most threat intelligence
signals provide information about the most frequently seen threats based on popularity
across a broad scope of organizations. This macro forecast is helpful but not always
relevant to your organization. Getting visibility into the predictive micro threat climates
across your trusted communities will require adopting all of the preceding habits. This moves
your organization into the most developed security maturity level, delivering the best visibility
into threats and the most actionable insights to assess your true level of risk for proactive
remediation.

Whether you chose to take in all of these habits or only a few, you will improve how well your
organization will protect, detect and respond to cyber adversaries. Remember, intelligent action
always beats reaction.

About the Author

Ajay Nigam is the Senior Vice President of products at BrightPoint Security.
Ajay has served in executive roles at CipherCloud, Marble Security, Symantec,
and VeriSign. Ajay earned a BS Tech in Telecommunication from University of
Jabalpur, and is a Fellow of Indian Institute of Telecom Engineers (FIETE) and
the founding Co-Chair of O-Auth

7 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – February 2016 Edition
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