Building a cyber intelligence plan that delivers: How to take a requirements-driven approach to threat intelligence

In today’s cybersecurity arms race, knowledge is power – but only if you know how to find the intelligence that truly matters. With the costs of cybercrime soaring – over half of the businesses worldwide reported losing at least $300,000 due to cyberattacks as of February 2024, organizations need more than just raw intelligence. 

Yet, many organizations approach threat intelligence without a clear strategy, collecting data without a plan to turn it into meaningful insights that drive real security outcomes. A well-structured, requirements-driven intelligence plan ensures that cybersecurity efforts align with business needs, providing actionable insights that enhance security posture and risk management. 

This article explores best practices for building an intelligence plan that is informed by organizational requirements and effectively supports decision-making.

Also Read: How CIOs Can Take Control of Cloud Costs

Steps to building a requirements-driven intelligence plan

Step one: Identify intelligence needs

The first step in building an intelligence plan is understanding what information is necessary for effective decision-making. This involves engaging stakeholders across the organization, including security teams, risk management, business development, and executive leadership. 

It is important to determine the primary threats facing the organization, identify the assets that are most critical to business operations, and assess any existing intelligence gaps. Additionally, intelligence efforts should be aligned with business objectives to ensure that they support the overall strategic direction of the organization.

Step two: Engage key stakeholders

Intelligence planning should not be an isolated process. Engaging a diverse range of stakeholders ensures that intelligence efforts address real-world risks and provide value across the organization. 

Security operations teams require intelligence to detect, investigate, and respond to threats. Risk management teams need insights to quantify and mitigate business risks. Executive leadership seeks intelligence to inform strategic decision-making, while business development teams use it to assess risks associated with partners, vendors, and competitors. By fostering relationships with these stakeholders, intelligence teams can ensure that their outputs are useful and aligned with business priorities.

Step three: Structure intelligence requirements in the right framework

Once intelligence needs are identified, they should be structured into a formal framework. A collection plan framework categorizes intelligence requirements from strategic to tactical, ensuring a clear link between high-level risks and the specific intelligence needed. Each requirement is broken down into detailed use cases and mapped to relevant data sources and methodologies. 

Alternatively, a stakeholder-driven matrix maps intelligence needs to different stakeholders, prioritizing requirements based on their importance to various departments. 

By tracking who needs what information, intelligence teams can efficiently and effectively allocate resources and streamline reporting. Both approaches ensure that intelligence efforts remain focused and relevant to organizational objectives.

Also Read: CIO Influence Interview with Stuart Strickland, Wireless Chief Technology Officer, HPE Aruba Networking

Step four: Balance structure with flexibility

While formalizing intelligence planning is crucial, excessive rigidity can be counterproductive. Intelligence requirements should be treated as living documents that evolve based on new threats, business priorities, and all-important stakeholder feedback, creating a continuous improvement cycle. 

Regularly revisiting intelligence plans helps organizations identify outdated requirements that no longer serve a purpose. Additionally, adapting to new security challenges, such as emerging threat actors or geopolitical risks, ensures that intelligence efforts remain relevant. Continuous collaboration with stakeholders also helps improve communication and keeps intelligence efforts aligned with business needs.

Step five: Leverage the right tools and technologies

A well-structured intelligence plan is only as effective as the tools used to execute it. Security intelligence platforms play a key role in collecting, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence. 

When selecting an intelligence platform organizations should ensure that it provides visibility into relevant sources, including open-source intelligence (OSINT), dark web monitoring, and threat intelligence feeds. Additionally, data sources should not be limited solely to technical data: the threat of a geopolitical conflict impacting your silicon chip supply chain is just as important to ensuring availability as monitoring initial access brokers on the dark web. The platform should have analytical capabilities that allow it to correlate data, track changes over time, and provide insights into evolving threats. Integration with existing security tools such as EDR and SIEM, as well as automation of intelligence workflows, further enhances efficiency. 

Lastly, dissemination features should allow intelligence to be delivered in a format suited to different stakeholders, such as reports for executives, real-time alerts for security teams, and JSON for automation.

Intelligence planning pitfalls to avoid

Failing to adapt to organizational changes

Intelligence planning should be people-driven, not just process-driven. If a team experiences turnover or key stakeholder change, intelligence requirements must be revisited to ensure relevance. Without continuous stakeholder engagement, intelligence efforts risk becoming obsolete or misaligned with organizational needs.

Overcommitting to too many requirements

While it is tempting to build an extensive intelligence framework, attempting to track too many requirements can lead to inefficiencies. Intelligence teams should prioritize high-impact areas and focus on delivering actionable insights rather than gathering excessive, low-value data.

Lacking clear communication

One of the biggest challenges in intelligence planning is demonstrating value to stakeholders. To improve engagement, intelligence teams should avoid using overly technical jargon when communicating with non-security teams. 

Instead of starting conversations with broad, open-ended questions, it is more effective to use specific, close-ended questions that help guide discussions. Intelligence deliverables should also be tailored to the needs of each stakeholder to ensure that they provide relevant and actionable insights.

Failing to measure success 

Security teams should track key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the effectiveness of an intelligence plan. KPIs not only help determine whether the intelligence plan meets its objectives but also demonstrate to stakeholders that the resources allocated are yielding positive results and justify continued investment.

The timeliness of intelligence gathering and dissemination should be evaluated to ensure that information is provided when it is needed most. The relevance of intelligence should be assessed by determining whether stakeholders are actively using the intelligence provided. Additionally, the impact of intelligence efforts should be measured by examining whether the intelligence has led to tangible security improvements, such as preventing incidents or improving response times. Establishing regular feedback loops and engaging stakeholders in ongoing discussions will help refine intelligence planning and ensure continuous improvement.

Turning intelligence plans into actionable intelligence

Building a requirements-driven intelligence plan is essential for organizations looking to enhance their security posture and decision-making capabilities. By clearly defining intelligence needs, engaging key stakeholders, structuring intelligence requirements effectively, and leveraging the right tools, businesses can create an intelligence program that is both strategic and actionable.

It’s also vital to remember that an effective intelligence plan isn’t a one-and-done effort. It should be dynamic and continuously evolving to meet the challenges of a constantly shifting threat landscape. By focusing on relevance, communication, and adaptability, organizations can maximize the value of their threat intelligence efforts and better protect their assets, employees, and customers.

[To share your insights with us as part of editorial or sponsored content, please write to psen@itechseries.com]