Louis Zezeran
15. jaan. 2026
Most organizations understand the idea of “cybersecurity” as tools, controls, and response plans. But Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) often sits in a strange place: it’s widely advertised, frequently misunderstood, and sometimes dismissed as buzzword fuel. In this NeverHack CyberCast episode, host Louis Zezeran sits down with Britta Sillaots, a Cyber Threat Intelligence analyst, to unpack what CTI actually is—what it looks like in the real world, how it supports security teams, and why it’s not reserved for “big enterprise only.”
Britta’s definition is simple, and that simplicity is the point: CTI is about making information useful. Not just collecting data, not just “watching the dark web,” and not just generating reports. CTI is the process of taking scattered signals—news, indicators, chatter, leaks, vulnerabilities—and adding enough context that a security team can act.
CTI is proactive by design
A core theme of the conversation is the mindset shift CTI encourages: assume breach. Not as paranoia, but as realism. If you only strengthen your defenses after discovering an incident, you’re reacting late in the timeline. CTI aims to move you earlier—helping you understand what threats are trending, what attackers are doing right now, and what your organization should do before an alert turns into downtime.
Louis frames it as something many companies have never had to do historically. Businesses rarely deal with “active adversaries” the way nation-states do. Yet in cyber, the adversary model is real: attackers probe, iterate, and exploit openings. CTI becomes the bridge between the outside world (where threats evolve) and internal operations (where controls and response happen).
Strategic, operational, and tactical: the three layers
Britta breaks CTI into three categories that help clarify its purpose:
1) Strategic CTI
This is the widest-angle lens—the “why” and “what’s happening in the world” layer. Strategic CTI looks at broad trends: geopolitical tensions, high-level threat activity, and long-running campaigns. It helps leaders understand what kinds of threats are rising, which sectors are being targeted, and what risk themes are emerging over time.
2) Operational CTI
Operational CTI narrows the focus. It asks practical questions about intent and timing:
- Why are attackers doing this?
- When might this happen?
- How are they approaching it?
It’s more actionable than strategic CTI and often connects broader trends to specific risks relevant to an organization.
3) Tactical CTI
This is where CTI becomes “hands-on.” Tactical CTI is the world of IOCs (Indicators of Compromise): hashes, IPs, domains, file names, and detection patterns. It’s designed to plug into the day-to-day workflow of the SOC—powering investigations and threat hunting.
Louis and Britta discuss how this intelligence directly supports security teams. When something happens, the SOC’s goal is to neutralize the threat and remove the intruder. CTI accelerates that by gathering context and indicators quickly—reducing guesswork and speeding up the path to containment.
CTI is not separate from SOC work—it feeds it
A valuable insight from this episode is how closely CTI integrates with security operations in practice. Britta describes providing not only IOCs but also YARA and Sigma rules—detection rules that help security teams identify threats based on behavior and artifacts.
She offers a practical example: credential exposures coming from malware log files. The CTI function helps determine what’s happening, then supplies the SOC with patterns and indicators that can be run across systems to discover related infection traces. In other words, CTI doesn’t replace the SOC—it amplifies it with external awareness and actionable detection inputs.
Louis compares this to the relationship between intelligence services and operational units: the analyst gathers and refines information; the operators use it to act quickly and accurately.
The “boring truth” of cyber attacks: phishing and stolen credentials
One of the most relatable moments in the conversation is Britta’s observation that most cyber attacks are… not glamorous. They usually start with phishing or social engineering, not cinematic hacks. This matters because it highlights how CTI helps organizations focus on what actually drives incidents: credential theft, domain impersonation, and repeated patterns that attackers reuse at scale.
Britta notes that many people underestimate the risk of “small” data loss: “They got my email—so what?” CTI helps answer what happens next: where that email appears, how it’s combined with other leaked data, how it becomes part of access attempts, and how it might be used as a stepping stone into partner organizations.
Tooling, platforms, and why sandboxes matter
The episode also offers a grounded view of CTI tooling. Rather than spending all day manually browsing channels, analysts rely on platforms that collect and correlate intelligence across sources. Recorded Future is mentioned as a major platform used to monitor sources and surface relevant findings.
Britta highlights a critical capability: sandboxing suspicious domains or files so analysts can investigate safely. She shares a personal lesson—clicking a malicious link that resulted in a Trojan installation. The takeaway isn’t fear; it’s realism: even experts can get caught. The goal of mature security isn’t believing nothing will ever go wrong—it’s building the environment and processes that limit blast radius and support fast recovery.
CTI for small and medium businesses: why it matters more than you think
A key misconception tackled in the episode is that CTI only benefits large enterprises. Britta argues the opposite: smaller businesses may benefit immensely because prevention can mean avoiding catastrophic costs that are harder for a smaller organization to absorb.
The conversation explores a crucial idea: you may not be the end game. Attackers often use smaller organizations as leverage—especially in supply chains. If you work with bigger partners, hold privileged documents, or share network connections, your compromise can become the bridge into someone else’s environment. That can damage reputations, disrupt contracts, and trigger legal and operational fallout even if your own systems weren’t the attacker’s ultimate target.
Britta expands this further with a stark but important point: compromised systems can be used as infrastructure—command-and-control nodes, staging areas, and even storage. It underscores how attackers value access beyond ransom demands.
Supply chain risk: CTI as early warning
CTI becomes especially powerful when it provides early signals about partner compromise. If an organization learns quickly that a vendor or partner has been breached, it can:
- reduce or cut trusted connections
- validate shared credentials and access paths
- assess what data was exchanged
- proactively hunt for related indicators internally
This turns CTI into more than “information”—it becomes a practical early-warning system that protects business continuity.
The human side: CTI is communication, not just technology
Britta makes an important point often missed in cybersecurity messaging: CTI isn’t purely technical. A large part is client communication and aligning intelligence to real business questions. She describes shaping intelligence around “requirements”—what the client needs to know, what matters to their risk, and how to deliver the information in a way that leads to action.
The mission isn’t to overwhelm organizations with threat headlines. It’s to translate the threat landscape into decisions and steps: what to monitor, what to fix, what to harden, and what to prepare for.
Listen now: CTI is about being ready
By the end of the episode, the conclusion is clear: CTI is not hype when it’s done correctly. It’s a discipline that turns signals into action—helping organizations stay ahead of phishing campaigns, credential leaks, domain impersonation, and partner compromise. It also helps security teams respond faster when incidents occur by providing better context and better detection inputs.
🎧 Listen now to learn what CTI really is and how it fits into practical security operations.
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