Proactive cybersecurity has become a best practice for organizations, with more and more firms adopting it. This is because the conventional approach to cybersecurity, where you just set up cyber defenses and wait, has not been effective in stopping motivated and highly-capable threat actors.
In addition to standard cybersecurity measures, it has become necessary to acquire threat intelligence from multiple levels of the web to help inform preventive measures against the actions of threat actors.
A web monitoring tool, otherwise known as a threat intelligence platform, is the best way to maintain situational awareness through the internet and have a high likelihood of thwarting cyberattacks before they happen.
This article will explore the benefits of an advanced threat intelligence solution.
Helps Maintain Situational Awareness for Proactive Security
A comprehensive threat intelligence solution will monitor the surface, deep, and dark web, including online discussion forums, websites, and apps.
Additionally, it will use artificial intelligence to analyze the data from all these sources and draw actionable insights from it. Machine learning and natural language processing are common capabilities in such software.
With such capabilities, investigators can define parameters and get real-time alerts when relevant events occur.
For example, if there’s an important conference that an organization is planning to host, news and commentary surrounding the conference can be monitored so that the security team receives an alert when a potential threat is detected.
In another example, an organization could get notified when sensitive data acquired through a breach is put up for sale on the dark web.
Maintaining such situational awareness allows organizations to be in a position to take action to mitigate potential security risks.
Simplifies and Makes Cyber Forensic Investigations More Productive
A fully-fledged web monitoring tool makes cyber forensic investigation easier and more fruitful.
For example, in case a data breach occurs and sensitive data is placed on the black market in the dark web, the organization will instantly get an alert, assuming they have set the necessary parameters.
Apart from allowing the organization to mitigate the effects of the breach, for example by buying the data to prevent it from getting into the hands of other malicious actors, this alerts the organization of a security vulnerability that they otherwise might not have discovered.
Additionally, web investigation tools provide access to the dark web, which can be a rich source of information on the activities of cybercriminals.
Analyzing such information can provide valuable insights into the motivations and tactics of threat actors, which can be instrumental.
Saves on Time and Labor for Cybersecurity Investigations
A proper threat intelligence platform significantly eases the workload of cyber investigators in an organization. More than that, it enables them to focus on high-level cyberdefense tasks such as policy and leave the low-level tasks such as sifting through dozens of websites to artificial intelligence.
Without automated web investigation, investigators would take days and weeks to get any useful or actionable information from the internet. On the other hand, automated web investigation software might be able to achieve the same goal in less than a day.
For the organization, this means that less personnel are required. It also means that the personnel that are there are put to much better use and are significantly more productive.
Helps Document Forensic Evidence Against Threat Actors
Cybercrime continues to thrive because most threat actors get away with their actions, usually because of the lack of evidence to facilitate prosecution. The use of the dark web, as well as means like cryptocurrency to make payments, helps threat actors conceal their identities and activities from the authorities.
However, with a web investigation platform, activities on the dark web are made available for analysis. Moreover, with techniques like AI-powered blockchain analysis, the anonymity that cryptocurrency provides becomes less reliable.
Blockchain analysis can help tie threat actors to financial transactions. At the same time, having access to the dark web can help determine the communication that such actors make.
Combined with information from the open web, including from public directories and other sources of open source intelligence, threat actors can be de-anonymized and their activities documented – which can boost the chances of successful prosecution.
Conclusion
A robust, automated, AI-powered web investigation platform comes with a wide range of advantages, including more successful cyber forensics investigations, more productive security personnel, easier documentation of forensic evidence, and heightened situational awareness that boosts the security of both digital and physical assets.
