Organisations are under siege from cyber criminals, cyber attacks and data breaches have become a common occurrence in the news, with organisations regardless of size, type and industry succumbing to ransomware, phishing attacks, data breaches and all manner of cyber threats. The importance and need for a robust cybersecurity strategy cannot be overstated, as criminals get smarter and more creative with their methods of attack, organisations need to match their efforts with an equally strong approach to information security.
A large factor that informs the creation of a strong defence against cyber threats is understanding the tactics, techniques and procedures of malicious actors, this is where threat intelligence comes into play. So what is threat intelligence? Why is it important? Who does it benefit? This article aims to answer these questions and more.
The amount organisations have evolved in their methods of operation has increased rapidly, this is mainly due to our new digitised world. Digital technologies have revolutionised so many facets of an organisation's operations, making them more effective and efficient, however with these positives, the chance of falling prey to a cyber criminal has also heightened. Threat intelligence gives organisations a way to push back against these threats: it is the practice of gathering, processing and analysing data to understand who a threat actor is, what motivates them, what they target and how they behave. Threat intelligence helps inform an organisation’s cybersecurity strategy.
NIST defines cyber threat intelligence as cyber threat information that has been “aggregated, transformed, analyzed, interpreted, or enriched to provide the necessary context for decision-making processes.”
Threat intelligence is important in today’s cybersecurity landscape as it provides organisations with a more proactive approach to defending against threats, versus a reactive approach. Advanced persistent threats or APTs and cybersecurity professionals are constantly trying to outmanoeuvre each other, data collected during threat intelligence exercises can give defenders an upper hand, enabling them to pre-empt attacks and tailor an organisation’s defences to combat them.
With how rapidly the cyber landscape is evolving, insight into where the next attack might come from plays a crucial role in improving information security practices. Threat intelligence is actionable — it’s timely, provides context, and is able to be understood by the people in charge of making decisions, making it an important part of an organisation’s cybersecurity strategy.
Australia’s national cyber security agency works this way too. According to ASD’s Annual Cyber Threat Report 2025–26, ASD’s ACSC notified entities of potential malicious cyber activity more than 4,400 times in 2025–26, up almost 80% on the previous year, and 362 incidents were identified following those proactive notifications. Its Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing (CTIS) platform grew by 22% to over 550 partners and shared over 1 million indicators of compromise.
Threat intelligence needs to be a part of every organisation’s cybersecurity strategy. Here are four reasons why organisations should be utilising threat intelligence:
Threat intelligence can assist an organisation’s security operations team in identifying and prioritising threats based on risk. Without threat intelligence, security teams may have a hard time deciding which threats pose more risk to their organisation and may end up wasting time dealing with threats that have little to no risk of having a negative impact on an organisation. By dealing with threats that have a higher risk, the overall response time of security teams can be reduced, hence improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your organisation’s security operations.
Digital technologies have made organisations more effective and efficient, but they have also widened the openings available to cyber criminals. Threat intelligence helps organisations fight back by revealing which threat actors are likely to target them, what those actors are after and how they tend to operate, so defences can be built around real attacker behaviour rather than guesswork.
By participating in threat intelligence exercises you can strengthen your organisation’s security against cyber attacks. Instead of a reactive approach your organisation by collecting threat intelligence can remain one step ahead of attackers. Data breaches can cost organisations a lot more than just money, with huge losses in brand image and reputation. If a data breach were to occur and a customer was to learn about it, he or she may not trust your organisation to safeguard their precious data.
Threat intelligence helps your organisation combine internal intelligence such as patch and vulnerability management with external intelligence on attacker tactics, techniques and procedures. This helps with overall resource allocation and allows for smarter investment decisions, for example; If a threat intelligence team identifies that an attacker is likely to target a specific department in your organisation, your company can choose to focus its investments on that department rather than spending resources blindly.
The short and easy answer is everyone! Hackers don’t discriminate when picking their targets, therefore threat intelligence is an essential part of enhancing cybersecurity regardless of your organisation’s size, its type or the industry it is a part of. Simply put it adds value across security functions for all organisations, below are a few examples of how certain roles can benefit from threat intelligence:
| Function | Benefit |
| Security/IT Analyst | Improve prevention and detection technology in the effort to strengthen defences |
| Security Operations Centre | Evaluate which incidents need to be prioritised based on risk and impact to the organisation |
| Incident Response Team | Accelerate incident investigations, management, and prioritisation |
| Executive Management | Provides context to the risks the organisation faces and what the options are to address their impact |
Threat intelligence is often broken up into the following three categories:
Tactical intelligence is aimed at understanding the near future, is technical in nature, and identifies simple indicators of compromise (IOCs). A few examples of IOCs are malicious IP addresses, URLs or domain names. Tactical intelligence is readable by machines so security products can easily collect it via their feeds. The collection of tactical intelligence is the easiest when compared to the other two types of threat intelligence, its collection can almost always be automated. An important factor about tactical intelligence is that it is only actionable for a short time frame and can become obsolete in a few hours to a few days, this is because an attacker's tools can change rapidly.
Operational intelligence refers to the collection of knowledge about cyber attacks, events, or campaigns. It provides incident response teams with help in understanding the nature, intent, and timing of specific attacks. Unlike tactical intelligence, machines alone cannot collect operational intelligence, human personnel are required to analyse raw data and convert it into a format that is easy to understand and use.
Strategic intelligence shows how events on a global scale, foreign policies, and other long-term movements can potentially impact the cyber security of an organisation. Strategic intelligence provides clarity to an organisation’s threat landscape, it is intended to inform high-level decisions made by executives and other decision makers at an organisation. For this reason the content is generally less technical and is presented through reports or briefings.
In our related blogs, we look at understanding the threat intelligence lifecycle, the value of sharing threat intelligence between companies, and more.
Is threat intelligence feeding into your organisation’s security operations today? If it is, great. If not, StickmanCyber can help: our threat intelligence service delivers real-time IOC feeds and threat actor tracking straight into a 24/7 SOC, and our team can review your systems and processes to put the right intelligence mechanisms in place. Book a free consultation to get started.
An indicator of compromise is a piece of technical evidence suggesting that an attack is imminent, under way or may already have happened. NIST describes indicators as technical artefacts or observables of this kind. Typical examples are malicious IP addresses, domain names, URLs and file hashes, which security tools can automatically block or alert on.
Threat intelligence is information about threat actors and how they operate, while threat hunting is the proactive search of your own environment for threats that have slipped past existing defences. The two work together: hunters often base their hypotheses on threat intelligence, and what they find can feed new intelligence back into detection. Learn more about threat hunting tools and techniques.
The threat intelligence lifecycle is usually described in six stages: planning, collection, processing, analysis, dissemination and feedback. It is a continuous loop, so feedback from the people who use the intelligence shapes the next round of planning. Our guide to the threat intelligence lifecycle explains each stage.
The main route is ASD’s Cyber Security Partnership Program. Australian businesses with an ABN can join as business partners to receive alerts, a newsletter every two months and event invitations, while organisations responsible for network security can apply to become Network Partners and receive alerts, advisories, indicators of compromise and machine-readable threat intelligence. ASD also shares intelligence with partners through its Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing (CTIS) platform.
MITRE ATT&CK is a globally accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations. Threat intelligence teams use it as a common language to describe how attackers operate, map their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) and check whether existing defences would detect them. ASD’s ACSC also uses ATT&CK TTPs to analyse the incidents it responds to.
Yes, but it doesn’t have to mean building a dedicated team. Small businesses can start by signing up to ASD’s Alert Service, which provides real-time information on current cyber threats, and acting promptly on alerts, such as patching critical vulnerabilities. For continuous coverage, a managed security provider can apply threat intelligence on their behalf through 24/7 monitoring and response.