Symantec Offers Tailored Threat Intelligence For Businesses

Businesses will now be able to gain direct access to threat intelligence data to help assess their cyber risks and bolster their own security defences.

It comes after Symantec revealed the ‘Directed Threat Research Service’ that allows enterprises to get answers to specific questions about their cyber adversaries.

Tailored Intelligence

The service comes as many businesses nowadays accept it no longer a question of if, but when, they will be attacked and are therefore rushing to get their cyber defences in order.

But acquiring cyber security skills is not easy and many businesses struggle to obtain answers to certain security questions, and acquire the appropriate personnel.

But Symantec revealed in a blog posting that its DeepSight Intelligence services will help businesses with specific security questions by providing access to its team of security specialists.

“In today’s evolving cyber threat landscape, security intelligence is extremely critical in establishing an effective security program. Having threat intelligence allows organisations to ‘know the enemy’, to assess their risks, and implement effective countermeasures,” wrote Al Cooley, DeepSight Product Management.

He explained how businesses can sometimes struggle to deploy the resources needed to collect and analyse the massive amounts of data required to generate threat insights. Other businesses opt for a commercial intelligence service, but they can struggle to “extract insights from a source that may contain useful sector insight, but lack information specific to the organisation’s unique environment.”

“Our DeepSight Intelligence services provide the context you need by combining our telemetry from Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network with a rigorous analysis by our DeepSight Intelligence team,” wrote Cooley. “We show the full picture of the threat – from the adversary, to their tactics, to the victimology.”

Analyst Access

Directed Threat Research therefore provides an on-demand service to answer companies’ specific intelligence questions. Customers will receive tailored reports to address the specific questions and needs of a business.

Access is also provided to a highly experienced Symantec team of intelligence analysts, and businesses can also tap into insights gathered from the Symantec Global Intelligence Network.

This should provide businesses with the ability to predict the lifecycle of threats (early warnings) based on monitoring, as well as provide strategic and tactical intelligence to support executives, threat analysts, and network defenders.

“Not all threat intelligence is equal,” wrote Cooley. “Context is critical in allowing organisations to apply threat intelligence towards risks in their network. More important, however, is that your intelligence vendor is able to provide context on the threats you care about to help answer specific questions. For example: Was your organisation the only target? Who is behind the attacks? What are the attackers’ motivations and intent? Is this part of a larger campaign?”

“Organisations who know their adversaries, while being aware of their own strengths and vulnerabilities, stand a better chance in the ongoing cybersecurity war,” he added. “As the threat landscape evolves, Symantec DeepSight Intelligence also evolves and adapts to give customers the edge over their adversaries.”

Symantec of late has been refocusing its efforts to compete with rivals such as Kaspersky and Intel. It August it sold its Veritas data storage business to Carlyle Group for $8 billion (£5.1bn) in cash.

And the vendor recently revealed it is securing more than one billion connected devices worldwide, protecting everything from cars, medical devices, industrial control systems, and countless consumer electronics from becoming hacked, tracked and electronically hijacked.

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