Cyber Threat Intelligence

Aaron Roberts is an intelligence professional specializing in Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). He is focused on building intelligence-led cyber capabilities in large enterprises and conducting online investigations and research. He has worked within several the public and private sectors as well as the British Military. As such he understands how intelligence can and should be utilized within a range of environments and the fundamental approach that businesses must take to get the maximum value out of their cyber threat intelligence program.

Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter is designed to introduce the reader to me, why Im knowledgeable on the subject and to set the expectations of what theyll learn throughout the book. Chapter 2: The Cybersecurity Wild West This chapter discusses the wide-range of cybersecurity products and understanding the risks and pitfalls aligned with blindly working with a vendor. How to understand what you get for your money and how to get the most out of any commercial partnerships you enter into. Chapter 3: Cyber Threat Intelligence What does it even mean? This chapter discusses critical intelligence concepts such as the intelligence cycle, setting intelligence requirements, the diamond model and how we apply intelligence to existing security information (by way of Mitre ATT&CK). Chapter 4: Structured Intelligence Whats The Point? This chapter builds on chapter 3, and discusses the benefits of adding structure to intelligence data. Well discuss STIX and why its important, aligning STIX to ATT&CK and how structured intelligence helps improve final intelligence reporting. Chapter 5: Determining what your business needs This chapter will look at how to approach CTI depending on your budget, the business itself (and its underlying sector/industry), what already exists within the organization and how you could expand and automate some aspects of the collection. Chapter 6: How Can I Implement This? (No matter what budget you have) This chapter will look at the main factors of CTI, accepting what gaps might exist (if you have no budget), and how you could potentially consider trying to fill them. Well discuss how to priorities areas when it comes to funding and the best approaches to incident response, requests for information or ad-hoc reporting. Chapter 7: Things to consider when implementing CTI This chapter will look at an organizations footprint and understanding the risks associated with your organizationthe gaps left by funding or vendor/IT black holes in your estate and staffing and resourcing. Chapter 8: The importance of OSINT Open-Source Intelligence is a significant part of a successful CTI practice. This chapter will look at what OSINT is (and can be), what an analyst or investigator needs in terms of necessary tooling to succeed, how to create and maintain accounts for research purposes and what to do if you cant immediately employ Human Intelligence (HUMINT) into your collection. Chapter 9: I already pay for vendor X. Should I bother? This chapter is designed to assist the reader in critically evaluating the service they receive from their existing vendors. This includes what they do well, what they dont do well (or at all), how you can improve on this, what things you should consider moving in-house rather than outsourcing, and the benefits of finding and maintaining relationships with excellent vendors. Chapter 10: Summary This chapter will summaries the main themes discussed in each chapter. The next steps that should be imperative to any organization, how the reader could follow up with me for any questions or comments, and if they cant do anything today, what they should take away from the book to try and improve their CTI practice. Chapter 11: Useful Resources This chapter will list several useful resources the reader could investigate to help them on their way to set up a successful CTI team, broken down into sub-headings.