Threat intelligence turns data on adversaries into decisions. Levels, life cycle, official sources and frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and STIX/TAXII.
Cyber threat intelligence is information about adversaries, their intentions and their methods, collected and analysed so that an organisation can make better security decisions. It is useful only when it answers questions the organisation actually has: which actors target our sector, which techniques they use, which vulnerabilities we must fix first. Understood this way, threat intelligence connects the external threat landscape to daily work in the SOC, in vulnerability management and at management level.
Threat feeds often deliver long lists of IP addresses, domains and file hashes. These indicators are data. They become intelligence only after analysis places them in context: who uses them, against whom, for what purpose and with what level of confidence. NIST SP 800-150, the guide to cyber threat information sharing, describes threat information broadly, from indicators of compromise to adversary tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), detection signatures and lessons from incident analysis.
Indicators change quickly: an attacker can replace a domain or a server in minutes. Techniques and behaviours change much more slowly, which is why mature programmes put more effort into understanding how adversaries operate.
Threat intelligence is usually organised by audience:
Each level has different sources, formats and update frequencies. A report written for the board should not look like a feed consumed by a SIEM.
Public reports from official bodies are a good starting point for strategic intelligence. ENISA's Threat Landscape 2025, covering July 2024 to June 2025, described ransomware as the most impactful threat in the EU, identified phishing as the main initial intrusion vector, followed by vulnerability exploitation, and noted that attackers increasingly exploit dependencies in digital supply chains. ENISA published its Threat Landscape 2026, covering calendar year 2025, in September 2026 and again stressed that interconnected digital ecosystems widen the attack surface.
Other official sources are directly actionable:
A threat intelligence programme follows a cycle that keeps it aligned with needs:
Without clear requirements, collection grows without limit and analysts drown in data that nobody uses.
Several shared languages make intelligence easier to exchange and apply:
Integrating intelligence into a threat intelligence platform, a SIEM or a SOAR tool allows indicators to be matched against logs automatically, while analysts focus on hunting for techniques and adapting detections.
Threat intelligence requires analytical method as much as technical knowledge. The C|TIA Certified Threat Intelligence Analyst training covers requirements, collection, analysis and dissemination. SOC teams that consume intelligence in daily detection work can follow the Certified SOC Analyst (C|SA) training, and analysts using Splunk to hunt and investigate can prepare with the Splunk Certified Cybersecurity Defense Analyst certification preparation.
Threat intelligence turns information about adversaries into decisions: which vulnerabilities to patch first, which detections to build, which risks to present to management. Start with clear requirements, use official and trusted sources, rely on shared frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK and STIX, and review the value of the output regularly. A small programme with focused questions is more useful than a large collection of unused feeds.