What is Cyber Threat Intelligence CTI Lifecycle?
Cyber Threat Intelligence CTI Lifecycle Definition: Processes like planning, collection, analysis, and dissemination used to turn raw threat data into actionable intelligence.
Understanding Cyber Threat Intelligence CTI Lifecycle
The Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) Lifecycle transforms raw data into actionable intelligence through a structured process that ensures resources focus on threats relevant to your specific organization. The cycle typically begins with planning and direction—defining intelligence requirements based on the organization's threat landscape and security priorities. Next comes collection, gathering data from diverse sources like open-source feeds, commercial providers, information sharing communities, and internal security tools. Processing and exploitation follows, converting raw data into a usable format through normalization, deduplication, and enrichment. Analysis is where human expertise becomes crucial, finding patterns, establishing adversary capabilities and motivations, and determining relevance to the organization. The dissemination phase delivers finished intelligence to stakeholders in formats appropriate to their roles—technical indicators for security operations, strategic insights for executives, or tactical guidance for defenders. Finally, feedback drives refinement of the entire process. Mature CTI programs continuously evolve based on changing threats and organizational needs.