From Awareness to Action: Operationalizing Threat Intelligence Improves Security Posture

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we are here to celebrate. But this year, we want to move beyond slogans alone. 

For over two decades, National Cybersecurity Awareness Month has existed to spotlight the importance of everyday decisions that underpin safety both online and on connected devices. Over the years, it has transformed from a largely consumer-centric event to one encompassing the broader actions of business and critical infrastructure. 

In this context, threat intelligence has been widely discussed. And while most realize that a robust program is essential to cybersecurity, this October we want to drive home one important point: that operationalizing threat intelligence—at scale and powered by AI and automation—is the real security gap to close in 2025.  

Summary: Cybersecurity Awareness Month exists to boost awareness about strong cybersecurity practices. This year, awareness can turn to action. Left in a passive mode, threat intelligence can lead to more tasks on the backlog. But if companies embraced a unified threat intelligence management approach that transformed that data directly into action, their efforts coming out of  October would not be wasted. 

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Context and Progress 

Cybersecurity Awareness Month was launched in the United States in 2024 as a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA). Themes have evolved through the years, moving from basic password hygiene and phishing awareness to more cyber-mature topics like resilience, supply chain security, and zero trust.  

As we arrive at the 2025 cyber threat landscape (and look beyond), one thing is clear: awareness is necessary but not sufficient. Enterprises need to operationalize threat intelligence across detection and response measures if they want to truly keep up with threats at scale. To illustrate that “more intelligence” alone won’t solve the problem: the average SOC gets between 500 and 3,000 alerts per day, and 62% of them get ignored. 

The Shift: From Talking About Threat Intelligence to Making It Actionable 

Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) provides visibility into adversaries, tactics, and indicators. Today, many organizations collect it, but struggle to turn it into operational defense. This leads to questioning the investment and disappointment in the outcome.

Key challenges include data siloes, a lack of automation, limited integrations, and skill shortages. This leads to too much data going nowhere. If this trend is to stop, security teams need more than just additional information.  

They need additional capabilities to put that information into action. 

Operationalizing Threat Intelligence: What It Really Means 

When we talk about operationalizing threat intelligence, what do we mean? It means creating a seamless, end-to-end flow across the entire threat lifecycle: from data collection to contextual enrichment to prioritization to automated action. This is what “unified threat intelligence” is all about - streamlining workflows and moving from passive data to an active flow of security posture improvements.

Critical aspects include:  

• Integrations: Seamlessly connecting TI platforms with SIEM, SOAR, EDR, firewalls, and cloud-native tools. 
• AI and Automation: Leveraging machine learning and AI agents for faster enrichment, correlation, and decision-making. 
• Scalability: Moving from ad-hoc manual actions to enterprise-wide, consistent workflows. 
• Detection to Response: Accelerating the journey from identifying an IOC/IOB to mitigating threats with orchestrated responses. 
• Collaboration: Sharing intelligence across sectors, ISACs/ISAOs, and supply chain partners for collective defense. 

The Role of AI in Driving the Next Phase 

The secret to achieving end-to-end threat management success is leveraging AI. AI is a force multiplier, reducing analyst fatigue, surfacing relevant intelligence, and automating repetitive tasks. All with a speed, accuracy, and scalability that is unmatched. Most threat intelligence platforms only deliver the data. End-to-end TIPs like those found in the Cyware Intelligence Suite cover the entire process, from detection to remediation—and everything in between. 

In a threat management context, teams can expect the following of artificial intelligence: 

• AI-powered enrichment of IOCs 
• AI agents handling playbook actions 
• Adaptive prioritization of threats. 

AI bridges awareness with real-time action, enabling SOCs to respond to threats as the intelligence comes in. No more having to wait, correlate, and deliberate. With over 400 technology integrations, Cyware’s Unified Threat Intelligence Management Platform bridges the gap between data and decisions.  

The synergy and integration capabilities of Cyware Intel Exchange, Cyware Orchestrate, and Cyware Collaborate complete this virtuous loop.  

• Cyware Intel Exchange collects, normalizes, and enriches threat data. 
• Cyware Orchestrate is a SOAR platform that automates responses to security alerts. 
• Cyware Collaborate facilitates human-readable threat intelligence sharing across industry and community lines.  

Working together, these Cyware solutions take threat data from raw form to actionable intelligence that can not only be used for immediate threat remediation but also to benefit other agencies in building collective defense.  

Closing Thoughts 

There is an urgent need for businesses to move beyond knowing to doing. AI-enabled operationalization is critical to achieving that aim. 

Companies should use Cybersecurity Awareness Month as an inflection point. Now might be the time to invest in platforms, AI, and processes that make intelligence operational and actionable.  

This can be done as organizations adopt a mindset of continuous, intelligence-driven defense. Which, in turn, serves as the basis for threat sharing and a posture of collective defense. And that’s where Cyware Collaborate comes in. But that’s the subject of our next blog. 

Begin your transition from awareness to action. Check out Cyware’s Unified Threat Intelligence Management Platform today.