In anticipation of Black Hat next week in Las Vegas, the results from the 2016 Black Hat Attendee Survey are in. Being in the threat intelligence business, I found two areas particularly interesting. First, according to the survey 72% of the 250 respondents expect to experience a major data breach in the next year. Second, lack of skills and training are a major concern when it comes to dealing with threats. Specifically, two-thirds feel they don’t have the training to do all the tasks they are responsible for, and a shortage of qualified people and skills is cited as the top reason why security initiatives fail.

These findings highlight two areas where a Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) can help: 1) focusing on threats relevant to your organization and, 2) applying threat intelligence quickly and effectively to mitigate data breaches.

Most organizations are investing in lots of different threat intelligence feeds but they are struggling to make sense of them.

That’s because in addition to data you also need context which comes from correlating across external data feeds as well as with internal data sources, historical threat information, data from detection solutions, and insights into attackers’ profiles. This contextual understanding not only takes time and expertise to garner (two things which are in short supply as evident by the survey results) but, given the surge in attacks, is impossible to achieve if you’re relying strictly on manual methods.

A TIP like ThreatQ correlates vast amounts of data and millions of IOCs from all of your intelligence sources and detection solutions within minutes so you can focus on what matters. A workbench allows your analysts to work together, combining their expertise and enabling intelligence enrichment to more quickly hone in on and address advanced threats. Closing the loop, ThreatQ automatically turns that intelligence into protection by integrating with your security technologies so your detection systems are up to date.

The good news about the results from the Black Hat Attendee Survey is that they are addressable; a TIP can go a long way toward allaying concerns about an expected increase in breaches and what to do despite a lack of security personnel and expertise. If you’re planning to attend Black Hat and want to learn how to make better use of the resources you already have to block and detect more attacks faster, we’d love to show you how. Contact us to setup a meeting at Black Hat or register to attend our co-sponsored party with ZeroFox!