On May 22, 2019, a team from Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) led by Jared Ettinger, an IWP alumnus, published a report on a study on cyber intelligence practices. The SEI had previously published a study in 2013 regarding cyber intelligence, upon which the recent publication built.
Cyber intelligence and cybersecurity are oft confused, and the team’s report found that confusion adversely affects organizational and labor practices. Cyber intelligence entails processing and analyzing information about threats to the “cyber ecosystem.”
The aim of Mr. Ettinger’s team was aggregating existing cyber intelligence practices, noting which were most effective, and identifying the largest challenges to such practices. To that end, they detailed and categorized over 2,000 different practices employed by 32 organizations from a variety of fields.
The report concluded that while there exist strong practices, there is a profusion of ways to improve cyber intelligence operations. The report listed several challenges faced by organizations of all sizes and guidelines to mitigating those risks. For example, it proposed a framework for conducting cyber intelligence efforts involving environmental context, data gathering, threat analysis, strategic analysis, reporting and feedback, and human-machine teaming.
Since the amount of data throughout the world is constantly increasing, the importance of the field of cyber intelligence can only expand. Mr. Ettinger’s work at the forefront of this field is significant.