Research | Our Q3 report details what's new in the world of ransomware.
Reduce Alert Noise and False Positives
Boost your team's productivity by cutting down alert noise and false positives.
Automate Security Operations
Boost efficiency, reduce burnout, and better manage risk through automation.
Dark Web Monitoring
Online protection tuned to the need of your business.
Maximize Existing Security Investments
Improve efficiencies from existing investments in security tools.
Beyond MDR
Move your security operations beyond the limitations of MDR.
Secure with Microsoft 365 E5
Boost the power of Microsoft 365 E5 security.
Secure Multi-Cloud Environments
Improve cloud security and overcome complexity across multi-cloud environments.
Secure Mergers and Acquisitions
Control cyber risk for business acquisitions and dispersed business units.
Operational Technology
Solve security operations challenges affecting critical operational technology (OT) infrastructure.
Force-Multiply Your Security Operations
Whether you’re just starting your security journey, need to up your game, or you’re not happy with an existing service, we can help you to achieve your security goals.
Detection Investigation Response
Modernize Detection, Investigation, Response with a Security Operations Platform.
Threat Hunting
Locate and eliminate lurking threats with ReliaQuest GreyMatter
Threat Intelligence
Find cyber threats that have evaded your defenses.
Model Index
Security metrics to manage and improve security operations.
Breach and Attack Simulation
GreyMatter Verify is ReliaQuest’s automated breach and attack simulation capability.
Digital Risk Protection
Continuous monitoring of open, deep, and dark web sources to identify threats.
Phishing Analyzer
GreyMatter Phishing Analyzer removes the abuse mailbox management by automating the DIR process for you.
Integration Partners
The GreyMatter cloud-native Open XDR platform integrates with a fast-growing number of market-leading technologies.
Unify and Optimize Your Security Operations
ReliaQuest GreyMatter is a security operations platform built on an open XDR architecture and designed to help security teams increase visibility, reduce complexity, and manage risk across their security tools, including on-premises, clouds, networks, and endpoints.
Blog
Company Blog
Case Studies
Brands of the world trust ReliaQuest to achieve their security goals.
Data Sheets
Learn how to achieve your security outcomes faster with ReliaQuest GreyMatter.
eBooks
The latest security trends and perspectives to help inform your security operations.
Industry Guides and Reports
The latest security research and industry reports.
Podcasts
Catch up on the latest cybersecurity podcasts, and mindset moments from our very own mental performance coaches.
Solution Briefs
A deep dive on how ReliaQuest GreyMatter addresses security challenges.
Threat Advisories
The latest threat research report from ReliaQuest Threat Research research team.
White Papers
The latest white papers focused on security operations strategy, technology & insight.
Videos
Current and future SOC trends presented by our security experts.
Events & Webinars
Explore all upcoming company events, in-person and on-demand webinars
ReliaQuest ResourceCenter
From prevention techniques to emerging security trends, our comprehensive library can arm you with the tools you need to improve your security posture.
Threat Research
Get the latest threat analysis from the ReliaQuest Threat Research Team. ReliaQuest ShadowTalk Weekly podcast featuring discussions on the latest cybersecurity news and threat research.
Shadow Talk
ReliaQuest's ShadowTalk is a weekly podcast featuring discussions on the latest cybersecurity news and threat research. ShadowTalk's hosts come from threat intelligence, threat hunting, security research, and leadership backgrounds providing practical perspectives on the week's top cybersecurity stories.
November 30, 2023
About ReliaQuest
We bring our best attitude, energy and effort to everything we do, every day, to make security possible.
Leadership
Security is a team sport.
No Show Dogs Podcast
Mental Performance Coaches Derin McMains and Dr. Nicole Detling interview world-class performers across multiple industries.
Make It Possible
Make It Possible reflects our focus on bringing cybersecurity awareness to our communities and enabling the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Careers
Join our world-class team.
Press and Media Coverage
ReliaQuest newsroom covering the latest press release and media coverage.
Become a Channel Partner
When you partner with ReliaQuest, you help deliver world-class cybersecurity solutions.
Contact Us
How can we help you?
A Mindset Like No Other in the Industry
Many companies tout their cultures; at ReliaQuest, we share a mindset. We focus on four values every day to make security possible: being accountable, helpful, adaptable, and focused. These values drive development of our platform, relationships with our customers and partners, and further the ReliaQuest promise of security confidence across our customers and our own teams.
More results...
In my previous blog, “Trump and Intelligence: 6 ways to deal with challenging intelligence consumers,” I focused on six ways to effectively communicate and tailor intelligence to uninformed and/or difficult executive audiences. I want to make this a blog series and expand upon some of my guidance from that blog. I am cheating a bit; I’m using this blog to build out content for my World War II themed SANS Cyber Threat Intelligence Summit presentation, “Inglorious Threat Intelligence.”
Today, I want to dig a bit deeper into aspects of the intelligence consumer. I suggested building briefing dossiers for your intelligence consumers. Dossiers are a long-standing intelligence products for the IC; they are often used by policy makers to better understand foreign leaders. During World War Two, Harvard Professor Henry Murray was commissioned by the The Office of Strategic Services to conduct a personality analysis of Adolf Hitler. The goal of the analysis was to attempt to predict his future behaviors and develop suggestions for dealing with him during and after the war (see image 1.)
Image 1. Analysis of the personality of Adolph Hitler.
There are several ways we can adapt dossiers to our own security programs.
1. Develop threat intelligence consumer personas. Buyer personas come out of the marketing world. Buyer personas are developed to better understand the target customer. Buyer personas can include the individual’s concerns, needs, motivations, skills, and reporting structure. Using personas to better understand prospects and customers ensures that what you produce is beneficial and tailored to that group of individuals. Take a look at this article for additional detail. Buyer personas can be adapted for threat intelligence consumers; by better understanding who you are producing intelligence for, you can improve the overall quality of your production. I think a key point to draw out is that in this scenario you are producing intelligence versus simply consuming intelligence from a 3rd party. This is an important step in the maturation of a threat intelligence capability. Some example intelligence consumer personas include the following roles:
a. Security Operation Center analyst
b. Threat hunter
c. Chief Information Security Officer
d. Other C level executives
e. Business unit / Line of business leader
2. Build briefing dossiers for specific intelligence consumers. For some of your intelligence consumers, you are going to need to have more detail. Personas address a functional area within the organization, whereas dossiers are specific to an individual, a very strategic consumer of your intelligence. When building out dossiers for specific consumers you should include the following:
a. What is the ideal outcome when working with this individual? Are you seeking to influence the policy of your organization? Are you attempting to educate the individual on the threat landscape? Whatever your goal is, and you should have one, you need to have it documented and then make sure any intelligence product you develop aligns with your goals.
b. After each interaction with one of these strategic intelligence consumers, you need to conduct an after-action review. What was effective in the interaction? What was ineffective? Capturing this information is critical to your success. The more positive “touches” you can get with these strategic consumers the better. You can set yourself up for positive interactions.
c. In the event you have never read Dale Carnegie’s best-selling book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” I highly recommend that you do so (see image 2). Carnegie was quite the social engineer; this book remains highly relevant today and can help you to effectively communicate.
Image 2. “How to Win Friends & Influence People”
In future blogs in this series, I’m going to dig deeper into the creation of these intelligence consumer personas as well as a how to establish a framework for constructing dossiers on your strategic intelligence consumers.