CF20: 2024's 20 Top Threat Intelligence Providers

Threat intelligence is in higher demand than ever as cyberattacks are relentless and security professionals need all the help they can get to give them an edge in this fight.

Threat intelligence platforms consolidate and deduplicate intelligence information, and help analysts act on findings. Services may integrate threat intelligence with other aspects of security services. Those include managed security services or managed IT infrastructure.

Our latest CF20 for the third time focuses on threat intelligence providers. Analysts with Omdia, Forrester and Frost & Sullivan weighed in on threat intelligence market trends and what it takes to be a successful threat intelligence provider.

According to Verified Market Research, the global threat intelligence market totals nearly $11 billion and should reach nearly $39 billion by 2031, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.95%

Threat Intelligence Improves Decision Making

Brian Wrozek, principal analyst of security and risk at Forrester, said the appetite for threat intelligence continues to grow for many reasons.

Forrester's Brian Wrozek

“Threat actors constantly change their infrastructure, malware and attack approaches, forcing organizations to keep up,” he said. “Threat intelligence greatly improves decision making. This is especially important with time-sensitive tasks like incident response and threat hunting to minimize the impact. Insights into the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of threat actors and malware campaigns allows organizations to pinpoint their efforts. Threat intelligence facilitates more accurate vulnerability prioritization, so the most critical gaps are addressed first. Threat intelligence allows organizations to be more proactive by pursuing disruption actions like taking down a rogue domain before it can send phishing attacks or forcing a password change after discovering compromised credentials on the dark web.”

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Threat actors are employing more counterintelligence measures, which is why experienced threat intelligence analysts are needed to discover and maintain access to sources, Wrozek said.

“Consuming threat intelligence data is a simple task compared to deploying and maintaining other cybersecurity technologies or trying to gather all the information personally,” he said. “APIs allow incident of compromise (IOC) feeds to be ingested automatically, and threat intelligence service providers can send targeted alerts to reduce the analysis burden.”

Huge Amounts of Protected Data Isn’t Enough

Elvia Finalle, senior analyst of security operations at Omdia, which shares a parent company with Channel Futures (Informa), said organizations have come to realize that having access to huge amounts of data that is protected is not enough. They need to make sense of the data they are protecting and how it is being protected, find the weak links and what stories the data can tell them. That’s why a large and varied corpus of threat intelligence is so important.

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Omdia's Elvia Finalle

“New threat actors are emerging constantly, some with very specific objectives,” she said. “Threat intelligence allows organizations to get knowledge about the latest threats very rapidly. Also, with advancing systems and growing AI-based capabilities, it’s getting easier to take in and get value from a large volume of threat intelligence data.”

The most effective threat intelligence solutions collect and analyze data from multiple sources and solutions to concisely deliver a strategy that will be fitted to a particular environment, Finalle said.

“Also very important is the ability to funnel that threat intelligence data directly into your threat detection, investigation and response (TDIR) solution architecture so it can be utilized to detect threats quickly and with as little friction as possible,” she said.

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Threat Intelligence Enhances Security Solutions

Martin Naydenov, senior industry analyst of cybersecurity at Frost & Sullivan, said enterprise digitalization, such as cloud migration, remote work and IoT, has exponentially expanded organizations’ attack vectors. Traditional perimeter-based security is no longer adequate, demanding proactive measures and comprehensive visibility into the threat landscape and digital footprint to effectively mitigate attacks.

“Threat intelligence enhances security solutions by providing insights into emerging threats and attacker tactics,” he said. “Simultaneously, data from various security tools fuels threat intelligence, enhancing overall effectiveness. This mutual exchange strengthens security ecosystems, making threat intelligence a crucial component, particularly in key solutions such as firewalls, security information and event management (SIEMs), threat intelligence platforms (TIPs), and extended detection and response (XDR) platforms. With improvements in connectivity and data analytics, these synergistic relationships grow stronger. In addition, the rise of AI enables organizations to collect, correlate, summarize and operationalize unprecedented volumes of TI data.”

We’ve compiled a list above of 20 top threat intelligence providers based on analysts’ feedback and recent news reports. It’s in no particular order. The list, in the slideshow above, is by no means complete. It includes well-known providers as well as lesser-known suppliers making strides in threat intelligence.