CTEM
The Evolution of Threat Intelligence: Why Continuous Threat Exposure Management is Essential
Published on:
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Flawatch
In a rapidly shifting landscape, traditional cyber threat intelligence (CTI)—once centered on tracking major cybercrime groups and state-backed Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)—is no longer meeting the needs of most organizations. While APTs get the headlines, they are not the primary cause of today’s breaches.
Instead, most organizations are breached by low-sophistication actors, often lurking on social media sites and dark web forums. As a result, the conventional focus on elite actors has led to CTI’s “low actionability” reputation. Focusing solely on high-level threats ignores the real risks facing companies: attackers using low-cost tools and tactics, such as infostealer malware, which accounts for a significant number of breaches each year.
Breached Identities: The New Threat Landscape
Currently, more than 70 million breached identities are circulating in the cybercriminal ecosystem. Much of this data is harvested by infostealer malware that collects credentials, session cookies, browser history, and even crypto wallet information—all from a single user in minutes.
Once seen as minor, breached identities are now a leading source of data breaches. A single download of infostealer malware can expose employee credentials across third-party applications, internal systems, and networks, offering cybercriminals easy access for as little as a few dollars. Alarmingly, we estimate that roughly 10% of these breached identities contain credentials to corporate IT systems, exposing millions of sensitive access points.
Why Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) is the Future
Legacy CTI providers often fail to address these evolving threats. Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) fills this gap by providing intelligence that directly enhances actionable security.
CTEM prioritizes two core objectives:
Identifying High-Risk Exposure
CTEM zeroes in on specific high-risk exposures, whether they are breached identities, unprotected databases, or misconfigured cloud storage buckets. This proactive identification is essential to mitigate breaches before they happen.Highlighting Key Trends for Strategic Action
Effective CTEM tools deliver insights into the latest trends in data breaches and cyberattacks in a clear, actionable format, empowering organizations to make informed security decisions and prioritize their defenses.
Conclusion
By transitioning to Continuous Threat Exposure Management, organizations can significantly reduce their exposure to data breaches and ransomware, redirecting their cybersecurity investments toward intelligence that enhances prevention and response. This shift offers a practical, effective strategy to stay ahead in a landscape where risk can emerge from a single misclick.
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