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Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring

Keeping you alerted so you can proactively prevent and detect malicious activities.

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Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring Overview

Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring refers to the process of monitoring and analysing the activities of individuals or groups that pose a threat to an organisation’s security or assets. These individuals or groups, often referred to as threat actors may include hackers, cybercriminals, or other malicious entities seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in an organisation’s systems or infrastructure.

Why Conduct Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring?

The primary goal of Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring is to identify potential threats and mitigate them before they can cause harm. This may involve monitoring social media, online forums, and other sources of information to identify potential threats and patterns of behaviour associated with malicious actors.

Some of the key activities involved in Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring include:

  1. Intelligence Gathering: Collecting and analysing information on known threat actors, their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and their motivations.

  2. Threat Detection: Identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities in the organisation’s systems, networks, and infrastructure, and monitoring for suspicious activity.

  3. Incident Response: Responding to security incidents and breaches, and taking appropriate steps to contain and mitigate the impact of the incident.

  4. Threat Mitigation: Implementing security controls and processes to mitigate the risk of future security incidents and breaches, including patching vulnerabilities, implementing access controls, and providing security awareness training to employees.

Through automated data collection, classification and AI-powered analysis of hundreds of sources across web surface, deep and dark web, OTIFYD keeps you alerted on APT groups’ activities, helping you define use cases to more effectively detect and prevent malicious activities.

Overall, Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring is a critical component of any comprehensive security program, helping organisations to stay one step ahead of potential threats and protect their assets from malicious actors.

Key Benefits of Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring

Valuable Threat Intelligence: Cybercriminals use the dark web to exchange tools, share information, buy and sell data, and for other activities. This makes it a rich source of threat intelligence that organisations can use to predict, identify, and protect themselves against cyber threats. Some types of threat information that analysts can find on the dark web include:

  • Vulnerabilities;
  • Data Access;
  • Exposed Credentials.

These and other types of information exposed on the dark web can enable your organisation’s analysts to assess both impact and probability of attacks, and then defend appropriately.

Deliverables from our Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring Service

The deliverables of our Malevolent Threat Actor Monitoring Service typically include:

  1. Threat Intelligence Reports: Reports that provide detailed information on known threat actors, their TTPs, and their motivations, helping organisations to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities in their systems and infrastructure.

  2. Threat Detection Alerts: Alerts generated by security monitoring tools that signal potential security incidents or breaches, providing early warning of potential threats.

  3. Incident Response Plans: Plans that outline the steps to be taken in the event of a security incident or breach, including how to detect, contain, and mitigate the impact of the incident.

  4. Security Recommendations: Recommendations for improving the organisation’s security posture, such as patching vulnerabilities, implementing access controls, and providing security awareness training to employees.

  5. Threat Mitigation Plans: Plans that outline the steps to be taken to mitigate the risk of future security incidents and breaches, including implementing security controls and processes to prevent similar incidents from occurring.

  6. Risk Assessment Reports: Reports that assess the risks and vulnerabilities associated with the organisation’s systems and infrastructure, and provide recommendations for improving security controls and processes.

This service offering is tailored to your organisation’s specific needs. Get in touch to discuss further.

Dark web actors vary in sophistication from complete novices to nation-state-sponsored hackers. Some of the main categories of hackers on the dark web include:

  • Script Kiddies;
  • Proficient Hackers;
  • Crime Syndicates;
  • APTs.

The various levels of hackers also seek out different types of malware on the dark web. For example, script kiddies are more likely to have or be looking for a password cracker, while APTs are generally the only ones with access to many zero-day exploits. In most cases, high-reward malware, such as ransomware, is in the hands of organised crime or APTs.

Surface Web: The surface web is the part of the Internet that is indexed by search engines like Google. This content is designed to be easily discoverable and accessible to the general public.

Dark Web: The dark web is a section of the internet that can only be accessed using the Tor browser, and that is certainly intentional. The purpose of Tor is to make it difficult or impossible to link an internet user with the dark web content that they are viewing. This focus on privacy means that the dark web is a popular forum for criminal content.

Deep Web: The deep web includes content that is accessible via normal web browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.) but is not designed for unlimited public distribution. This includes any content that is protected by an authentication portal such as university libraries and corporate networks. The deep web also includes personal content accessible via the internet such as personal email, messages on platforms such as WhatsApp or Signal, and social media private messages. Cybercriminals commonly use deep web messaging platforms for collaboration, making them an important potential source of threat intelligence data.