There’s an ancient debate within the intelligence community about whether intelligence analysis should be considered an art or a science. Both sides maintain valid points of view, and I remember having countless discussions with my fellow university colleagues about this specific issue in class and the pub (although I must admit that our chats often […]
It’s been a little over a month since I wrote about how intelligence requirements (IRs) can help plan a cyber response to major incidents. At the end of that blog, I mentioned that the next step in the intelligence cycle, collection, involves creating an intelligence collection plan (ICP) to help guide research. In this blog, […]
When Tolkien first sat down to write Lord of the Rings, he probably never imagined it would go on for over 1,000 pages. The same can also be said for network defenders tackling ransomware attacks. Years ago, I distinctly remember saying that ransomware would never catch on…how wrong I was. As we near the halfway […]
The F3EAD cycle (Find, Fix Finish, Exploit, Analyze and Disseminate) is an alternative intelligence cycle commonly used within Western militaries within the context of operations that typically result in lethal action, such as drone strikes and special forces operations. A basic summary of the phases of the cycle is as follows: Find: essentially ‘picking up […]
We’ve written before about how we like to map our services to the intelligence cycle. Of course, the intelligence cycle has its challenges – you only need to look to the work of Arthur Hulnick to see some of these. What it does do is produce a product that is accurate, well researched, timely and […]
Good intelligence depends in large measure on clear, concise writing. -Fran Moore, Director for Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency (2011) I’m an intelligence optimist. I think intelligence is great. I believe quality intelligence can help empower business, enable operations, and reduce risk. However, poor quality intelligence can have the exact opposite effect. Now I’m not saying […]
It seems that the concept of ‘intelligence’ is a problem. The definition isn’t agreed, and the industry is peppered with vendors and organizations applying a range or meanings and interpretations. For me – and I come from a military intelligence background – the concept of intelligence was always very straight forward, and in its purest […]