Cyber espionage and nation-state activity
Nation-state cyber actors aggressively target networks in order to conduct espionage and compromise, steal, alter, or destroy information. They may be part of a state apparatus or receive guidance, financing, or technical assistance from an adversarial government. While the terms "nation-state" and "advanced persistent threat (APT)" have been used interchangeably, APT typically refers to a type of activity carried out by a wide range of cyber actors, not just nation-state actors.
Bring nation-state cyber actors out of the shadows
Understand the adversary’s operations and tactics with intelligence.
Threat analysts are often already working on known threats or suspicious activity and are not able to focus solely on detecting and responding to an unknown nation-state threat which might already be present in their environment. They need to be able to anticipate attacks by gathering intelligence about the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) being used by nation-state actors and other hacking groups who are targeting their organizations. In order to do this effectively, analysts need real-time intelligence across the entire adversarial operating environment of a nation state including insights on the adversary’s intent and capabilities, technical details on the infrastructure they leverage, and profiles of the organizations they target.
Take action before the adversary is able to.
Most security programs are reactive in nature, meaning they rely on alerts before taking action. To combat the delay from detection to response, organizations who can are creating threat hunting teams which look proactively for indicators of threats before an alert is even generated and ideally before the attack has begun or been able to progress very far. Threat intelligence provides a proactive approach to nation state activity as it has actionable details on the threat actors who are currently attacking similar organizations as well as the techniques and tools they are using. Intelligence enables threat hunters to avoid spending precious time on dead ends or having to try to capture and analyze vast amounts of data. Instead, they are able to prioritize searches for the most dangerous threats to their organization and focus on finding specific indicators and artifacts related to those attacks and take action using SIGMA and YARA detection rulesets specific to the malware used or actors from a nation state.
Your team + Recorded Future intelligence experts = a force multiplier.
While many security analysts would like to solely focus on investigating the latest nation-state threat actors, attack methods, and trends, it takes time and time is something in short supply for security teams. Luckily, Recorded Future has a dedicated team of analysts whose sole job is to act as an extension of your security team by uncovering and producing intelligence on relevant cyber and geopolitical trends across the globe. In order to stay ahead of nation state adversaries, leverage Recorded Future’s technical analysis division, the Insikt Group, for ad-hoc and on-demand analyst generated reports including actionable hunting packages with detection rules, in-depth threat actor and malware profiles, and more.