Threat Feeds Alone Are Not Threat Intelligence, And Why That Matters

It’s easy to assume that more threat feeds means better threat intelligence. However, that's not always the case.  

There is a clear distinction between incoming threat feeds and operationalized threat intelligence, and anyone who’s ever sat in front of a screen full of intel trying to figure out what to do next knows the difference.  

Acknowledging this means understanding the gap in cyber threat intelligence programs today and how to improve them.  

What Are Threat Feeds? 

Threat feeds are structured, machine-readable pieces of data that typically include IOCs like IP addresses, domains, and file hashes. Think along the lines of: 

• Open-source feeds (OSINT) 
• Commercial threat feeds 
• Industry-specific and ISAC/ISAO feeds 
• Internal threat telemetry 

While these intelligence streams offer speed, scalability, and early warning on incoming attacks, they also produce a lot of noise, false positives, duplications, and can leave analysts lacking context. These downsides result in threat feeds fatigue, or too much data with not enough clarity. 

During an exploitation or a threat actor attack, every second is invaluable. Highly relevant and high-fidelity intelligence is of paramount importance to reduce time spent sifting through noise and focusing only on the relevant intelligence. 

The Role of Threat Intelligence Platforms 

Threat Intelligence Platforms play a critical role in the entire threat intelligence lifecycle. They normalize, deduplicate, enrich, contextualize, and score feeds & other intelligence data streams to deliver meaningful threat intelligence data.  

TIPs perform the vital tasks (typically performed by humans) of correlating and scoring threats, adding context to alerts, and prioritizing so SOCs know how and what to prioritize and address accordingly. TIPs perform these functions at scale using automation, including AI. 

The takeaway here is that threat data doesn't equal threat intelligence; a transformation is required. Advanced TIPs create this transformation, and not all TIPs can do that.  

Ingesting threat intelligence is the right start, and most TIPs have that down. However, it is just a start.  

Unfortunately, many TIPs drop the ball at the all-important "ingest" stage, which is where disparate parts of threat data become one, cohesive whole. Or can, with the right solution.  

Leveraging TIP to Operationalize Threat Intelligence  

The best TIPs do more than ingest threat feeds. They make sense of that ingested data, increasing the fidelity and efficacy of the data instead of inundating the analysts with low-fidelity intelligence. Organizations invest in threat intelligence solutions to reduce TCO and reduce analyst fatigue, but without a centralized platform to pull it all together, those investments will never deliver their full ROI. 

Cyware Intel Exchange turns threat feeds into operationalized threat intelligence, solving the problems of decentralized threat intelligence, inefficient manual ingestion, and time-consuming correlation. In addition, Cyware Intel Exchange leverages AI to drive innovation and enable CTI and security teams to be ahead of attackers. It also facilitates easy bidirectional threat intel sharing (a mandatory requirement of more and more compliance standards).  

Cyware Intel Exchange performs the following in a completely automated manner: 

• Threat intel ingestion 
• Correlation 
• Enrichment 
• Analysis 
• Sharing 

In addition, it helps CTI and SOC analysts with native and out-of-the-box actioning. In delivering these benefits, Cyware Intel Exchange implements the following best practices for using threat feeds effectively: 

• Prioritizing quality over quantity 
• Contextualizing  feeds and intelligence to your environment 
• Regularly evaluating feed relevance and performance 
• Integrating with SIEM, SOAR, and TIP for actionability 

Cyware Intel Exchange is the leading platform that operationalizes threat feeds to actionable threat intelligence and orchestrated response; it should be the ultimate goal of every TIP. And what only the best can do. 

The Future of Threat Intelligence Beyond Feeds and the Role of AI in Threat Feeds 

As the industry continues to progress, we see more movement toward curated, contextual, agent-assisted intelligence. Agentic AI is leading the way, acting intelligently and autonomously within a predefined scope to perform analysis, investigation, and even basic remediation without human intervention.  

This movement toward curated, contextual, agent-assisted intelligence shows a developing capacity to “do more together.” As humans and technology continue to do what each is best at - machines at tying together data and humans at seeing the big picture – threat analysis continues to move forward.  

Conclusion 

The main lesson for today’s organizations to internalize is that threat feeds are not enough; while they introduce you to threat intelligence, they are the raw materials, not the finished product. If you currently use threat feeds, good. But this is only a halfway stop in becoming fully competitive against today’s attackers.  

To maximize the value of your intel investments and stand a chance against fast-moving threats, organizations must invest in outcomes, not single steps. Organizations need to empower  SOC and CTI teams to act on high-fidelity and contextually relevant intelligence, not another riddle for them to solve. 

TIPs like Cyware Intel Exchange make this process easier, faster, and at scale. They not only collect and assimilate threat data, but also help operationalize it. They work in collaboration with existing and new SOC and CTI processes to deliver a holistic view of threat-driven risk. 

Download our threat intelligence Buyer’s Guide to see how AI-powered platforms transform raw threat data into actionable intelligence.