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Information vs Intelligence
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What is the difference between Information and Intelligence?
- Cyber Threat Intelligence
Posted on: August 22, 2018
In today's data-driven world, understanding the difference between information and intelligence is crucial. While information bombards us daily in raw facts and figures, intelligence shines a light on its true meaning, revealing actionable insight and helping us make informed decisions.
Cybercriminals are increasingly launching high-profile attacks with greater complexity and magnitude. More sophisticated malware are being developed to circumvent security solutions and evade detection, and attacks are increasingly focusing on thwarting business operations.
Hence, with each passing day, organizations need to concentrate more on staying a step ahead of the cybercriminal community that can be achieved through information and intelligence sharing.
At Cyware, we understand the growing need for actionable intelligence, as well as the daunting task that is threat intelligence management. That's why we simplify the entire threat intelligence lifecycle for organizations through our automated threat intelligence platform.
In cyberspace, there is a stark difference between the terms information and intelligence. Both terms pertain to how data relating to past, current and emerging threats are incorporated and used. However, what most people consider intelligence turns out to be merely information.
Information vs Intelligence
In the simplest terms, information relates to raw, unverified, and unevaluated data gathered from numerous sources, while, intelligence refers to processed, evaluated, and perspective-driven data that is gathered from trusted sources.
Threat intelligence is evidence-based knowledge about an existing or emerging cyber risk. It includes knowledge about mechanisms, indicators of compromise (IoCs), impact, implications, and actionable advice about the risk, collected through extensive analysis--giving cybersecurity teams enough information about how hackers might attack an organization.
When raw information is collected and aggregated at a higher level--including the collective experience of businesses, industries, and governments--it creates a rich tapestry of intelligence analysis, allowing organizations to design proactive defense mechanisms against anticipated threats and become intelligence.
Considering a security example, information is how many threat actors are targeting the US cyberspace. Intelligence is knowing about active threat actors along with their motivation, targets, attack methods, and mitigation. Information is crucial for gathering threat intelligence. Using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Cyber Fusion solutions information can be processed, analyzed, and co-related at strategic, tactical, and operational levels to gather actionable threat intelligence that provides a clear-cut direction in which SecOps and incident response teams must look for proactive containment of cyber risks. This way, major security incidents can be avoided from recurring. Hence, sharing intelligence is vital to ensure cybersecurity.
While information is a broader domain that encompasses intelligence, there is also a contextual difference that separates the two. Intelligence for the financial sector can be considered mere information for the retail sector because of its lack of applicability. However, this might not hold true for all circumstances such as those involving common processes, technologies, and assets under a similar type of attack.
In cybersecurity, both information and intelligence are valuable but incorporating automation, orchestration, and integration is crucial to provide context and applicability and prevent analyst fatigue. Collaboration between industry peers can improve the quality of information and intelligence sharing -- as hackers generally tend to develop malware that affects organizations in multiple sectors. Sharing information and intelligence within organizations and outside organizations creates exposure to insights and resources. For instance, if your company doesn’t have the transactional lines of business to combat the complexity of the problem, collaborating with other companies can give more visibility into emerging technologies and prevention measures. Processes supported by critical information sharing allow organizations to better detect and stop emerging threats along the kill chain.
Not just security analysts, employees of a company can also form valuable assets for information and intelligence sharing. In the times when BEC (Business Email Compromise) scams and spear phishing attacks are becoming popular, employees must use special platforms to share information and intelligence on suspicious incidents that are targeting their team/organization. When conducted securely with effective collaboration, information and intelligence sharing helps organizations predict potential cyberattacks, assess the damage, and take proactive measures.
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