In today’s tech landscape, headlines are rife with tales of cyber breaches, data leaks, and business disruptions, underscoring the escalating operational risk faced by organisations. Operational risk encompasses potential losses from technical glitches, human errors, internal processes, system failures, and uncontrollable external events. The consequences range from business disruption and system downtime to fraud.
According to Splunk’s “State of Security 2023” report, a staggering 49% of respondents encountered ransomware attacks, and 46% faced brand impersonation in the past two years alone. These statistics emphasise the inevitability of adversaries targeting vulnerabilities in cyber, supply chain, or physical attack surfaces.
Cybercrime’s profitability is soaring, projected to cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. Attackers are increasingly leveraging automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, making cyber threats more sophisticated. The rise of “as-a-service” offerings for phishing, ransomware, and malware further lowers entry barriers for less skilled cybercriminals, endangering business operations.
Addressing operational risk is no easy feat. Challenges include the limitations of detection tools, lack of control over third-party supply chain elements, and incomplete defence strategies against ransomware. The growing importance of automation introduces its own set of questions, from how to implement it to what tasks to automate.
Amid these challenges, a strategic advantage is crucial, and threat intelligence emerges as a solution. Threat intelligence offers insights and indicators to protect against internal failures and external threats that could disrupt business. It acts as a connecting layer, transforming data into actionable information and distinguishing signal from noise.
Threat intelligence plays a pivotal role in reducing operational risk across four key areas:
Protecting Digital Attack Surfaces: As organisations undergo digital transformation, threat intelligence enhances visibility into potential attack vectors, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations across the expanding digital attack surface.
Mitigating Third-Party Risks: In a hyperconnected ecosystem, threat intelligence provides insight into third-party vulnerabilities, threats, and attacks, ensuring the implementation of appropriate mitigation controls.
Defending Against Ransomware: Threat intelligence on ransomware threat actors, tactics, and targets empowers organizations to proactively defend against attacks, offering visibility into compromised credentials for better safeguarding.
Automating Security Workflows: Threat intelligence integrates into daily security workflows, minimizing manual investigation and research of security threats, reducing human errors, and allowing analysts to focus on high-impact activities.
At Brookcourt Solutions, we partner with some of the most comprehensive technological solutions in and around threat intelligence, helping organisations identify and mitigate threats across cyber, supply-chain, physical, and fraud domains. Their real-time, unbiased, and actionable intelligence is trusted to enhance security defences and reduce operational risk. To explore how we can help your business to access the right security solution for you, get in touch with one of our account director’s today and we can help organise a demonstration of the solutions available for you.
