01Introduction
Knowing that a vulnerability exists is one thing. Knowing that a ransomware group is exploiting it this week, against companies like yours, changes what you fix first. That context is threat intelligence.
02What is Threat intelligence?
Threat intelligence is evidence-based knowledge about adversaries (who they are, what they target, and the tactics, techniques and indicators they use), collected, analyzed and shared so defenders can make better decisions.
It is usually described at three levels: strategic (trends for leadership), operational (campaigns and actor behavior for defenders) and tactical (indicators of compromise such as IP addresses, domains and file hashes that a SIEM or EDR can match on). Operational intelligence is the usual starting point for threat hunting.
03How Threat intelligence works
Intelligence follows a cycle from question to action.
- 1.
Direction
Decide what you need to know: which actors target your industry and which of your technologies they exploit.
- 2.
Collection
Gather from commercial feeds, open sources, government advisories such as CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, industry groups and your own incidents.
- 3.
Analysis
Filter, deduplicate and add context so a raw indicator becomes a judgement about relevance and confidence.
- 4.
Dissemination and action
Push indicators to detection tools, update risk-based vulnerability management priorities and brief leadership.
04Threats and risks
Intelligence that isn't acted on is only a subscription.
Feed overload
Millions of low-confidence indicators flood detection tools and raise false positives.
Stale indicators
Attacker infrastructure rotates in hours, and old IP addresses end up blocking legitimate traffic.
Generic relevance
Intelligence about threats to other industries or technologies distracts from your own exposure.
No link to your assets
Knowing a CVE is exploited in the wild matters only if you know whether your code can reach it.
05How Parameter helps
Parameter ties external threats to your actual exposure.
Reachability for known CVEs
Supply Chain checks whether your code reaches the vulnerable function, so an exploited CVE is prioritized only where it applies. See software supply chain security.
Proof on your own stack
The pentesting agents show whether a known technique works against your applications.
Severity you can reason about
Findings are scored with CVSS, which you can explore in the CVSS calculator.
