The Synergy of TI and AI: Redefining Cybersecurity Operations

Cybersecurity solutions like firewalls and anti-malware were once seen as adequate to protect enterprises. While these continue to raise the bar against basic mundane cybersecurity threats, they struggle against more advanced cyber attackers.

The core issue is how a preventive-only approach often leaves systems vulnerable to zero-day exploits and APT attacks that slip past traditional defences. The challenge is further complicated by rapidly evolving attack methods and the increasing complexity of IT environments.
 

When Prevention is Not Enough

So, what can organisations do to enhance their cybersecurity and defend themselves against modern threats? Recognising that cyber breaches are inevitable, today’s cybersecurity landscape has largely moved to emphasise detection and response.

Many organisations now operate under an “assume breach” mindset, focusing on preparing for incidents rather than just working to prevent them. This shift mirrors healthcare strategies, where both preventive measures and treatment are critical. For instance, tests are run to proactively detect illnesses and medication used to treat illnesses in healthcare, much like how SecOps teams need the ability to both detect and respond to cyber-attacks.

Adopting such proactive approaches requires a change in mindset, however. Enterprises must accept that cybersecurity breaches will eventually happen and make the necessary preparations to minimise damage and recovery time. This might entail deploying advanced threat detection systems, hiring skilled security analysts, and setting up strong incident response protocols. In addition, continuous monitoring and real-time network analysis are crucial for quickly spotting anomalies and threats.
 

Growing Importance of Threat Intelligence

With the ability to give organisations the insights they need to anticipate and counter threats, it is no wonder that threat intelligence has become an integral component of cybersecurity strategies today. With access to vast amounts of data and alerts, threat intelligence is instrumental in prioritising alerts and cutting through the noise, allowing SecOps teams to focus on real threats.

According to Gartner, threat intelligence improves an organisation’s prevention, detection and response capabilities by improving alert quality, reducing investigation time, and adding coverage for the latest attacks and adversaries.

The growing importance of threat intelligence also comes from its ability to provide the context and accuracy for actionable security operations. Organisations are no longer willing to act on opaque instructions but demand clear evidence and context to make informed decisions, making a context-driven approach essential for distinguishing genuine threats from false alarms.
 

Better Threat Intelligence

Despite its benefits, not every organisation is positioned to fully leverage threat intelligence. While large enterprises often have dedicated teams here, many businesses lack the resources to effectively process and act on threat data. This resource gap makes modern, user-friendly threat intelligence solutions increasingly vital for cybersecurity operations.

When it comes to choosing the right solution, it is worth noting that threats have also surged dramatically, with AI-based attacks on the rise and malicious emails jumping by 4,151% since 2022. The key is not in collecting more data, but the ability to effectively tune out unhelpful data and provide actionable context to relevant intelligence.

Another major advancement in modern threat intelligence is the growing use of open-source data and metadata without needing customer data uploads. This approach is particularly valuable as it meets strict compliance requirements while delivering high-quality, actionable intelligence through security cloud infrastructure.
 

Actionable Insights

In today's cybersecurity landscape, accurate detection and actionable insights are essential for effective security operations. With security teams handling over 10,000 alerts daily and up to 90% false positives, the ability to precisely identify genuine threats and understand them from an attacker's viewpoint is vital. The challenge is intensified by the fact that analysts are spending over 10 minutes investigating each alert, making rapid and accurate threat detection crucial.

Thankfully, threat intelligence implementations have evolved significantly through the integration of artificial intelligence. With access to relevant threat intelligence by specialist providers powered by advanced AI capabilities, organisations can cut through the noise, identify real threats, and take swift action based on comprehensive visibility and analysis.

SecAI tackles these challenges with its innovative blend of cutting-edge AI and a global threat intelligence repository. Gen-AI Model for cybersecurity, aggregates data and analysis automatically, traverse the CTI graph automatically, boost productivity of threat investigation. Organisations can access a wealth of actionable insights without extensive in-house expertise or complex system integration, allowing them to precisely identify compromised hosts and emerging threats, including zero-day exploits and APT attacks, that will increase their MTTI by 70%.

To explore SecAI’s cybersecurity solutions and experience its AI security analytics assistants, click here.