6 Effective Ways to Block Sophisticated Malware with Threat Intelligence

IBM X-Force is one of the largest and most popular platforms for threat intelligence sharing. This was evident from the sudden spike in traffic it received when WannaCry ransomware struck. The team at X-Force updated their WCry2 Ransomware Outbreak collection and it attracted people’s attention, becoming the most followed and highest rated collection on the platform.

If you are a business that has been affected by WannaCry or any other ransomware or malware in the past, you must be familiar with the aftermath. Apart from financial losses, your business reputation also takes a hit. Research has shown that sophisticated cyberattacks can put startups out of business after a few months as they are unable to fully recover from the disaster.

In this article, you will learn about six tried and tested ways to defeat advanced malware with threat intelligence sharing.

1.      Stay Abreast with the Latest Trends and Tactics

The pace at which cybersecurity is evolving makes it tough for businesses to keep pace with it. Due to this, most businesses are unaware of the latest cybersecurity threats that are lurking in the shadows. This lack of knowledge puts them at far greater risk and makes them an easy target for hackers. That is why we constantly hear news of data breaches and malware infections negatively impacting businesses.

Stay abreast of the ever-evolving cybersecurity trends and the latest tactics hackers are using to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals. Businesses need to stay vigilant and invest in training to increase cybersecurity awareness. This will go a long way towards protecting your network from malware infections and enhancing your endpoint security as well.

2.      Share Threat Intelligence with Your Network

The WannaCry ransomware attack impacted thousands of companies around the globe. It succeeded in making a huge impact due to a lack of threat intelligence sharing mechanism. Sharing threat intelligence quickly outside your company is as important, if not more, as internal collaboration. You can use social networks to spread the word out quickly and prevent other businesses from falling victim to cyberattacks. The faster the message spreads, the better-prepared organizations are to deal with advanced cyberattacks.

3.      Create a Watchlist

Just like creating an access control list for your network, you should also create a watchlist of vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit to wreak havoc on your critical IT infrastructure. You need to have robust DDoS protection in place so that cyber-attacks won’t disrupt your business continuity. Also, list down the course of action you would take if suspicious activity is detected so you know exactly what you should do in case you come under a cyberattack. Try to plug all the holes before hackers can exploit them to gain access to your systems. Learn about different tactics hackers use to launch a cybersecurity attack.

4.      Prioritize Intelligence

Businesses deal with a large amount of threat data, which comes from both internal and external sources. The biggest challenge is to ensure that the threat intelligence data you are receiving is accurate, relevant and timely so you can take the right action. For that, you will have to define certain parameters and make threat intelligence a priority. Use a combi nation of automated processes and expert human analysis to unearth useful insights from large amounts of threat intelligence data.

5.      Validate the Source

In order to evaluate the accuracy and timeliness of threat intelligence data, it is important that you validate the source it is coming from. Threat intelligence sharing platforms allow users to check the source of threat intelligence data. For instance, IBM X-Force sources threat intelligence data from billions of web pages, thousands of IP addresses and vulnerabilities, making it one of the most comprehensive threat intelligence sharing platforms in the world.

6.      Set up alerts for What’s Important

Most businesses turn on the alerts for vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, that is not enough to protect you from cyberattacks. As cyberattacks come in different shapes and sizes, they can affect you in many ways. Let’s say, you have protected your network, they might target your database. Similarly, if you have protected your database, it can target your servers. You need to set up alerts for all the critical IT infrastructure so that you will get notified if a suspicious activity takes place.

Conclusion

Threat intelligence can be a useful weapon in your arsenal and will help you defeat complex malware, provided it is used correctly. The authenticity of the threat intelligence data is still an issue that can easily be resolved by validating the source. Keep an eye on the emerging threats that are impacting enterprises and tactics hackers are using to attack critical infrastructure and it will put you in a much better position to defend against such attacks.

How do you protect your business against dangerous malware? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.