Majority of Security Managers Lack Threat Intelligence Skills

Seventy-three percent of IT security managers have said they lack necessary threat intelligence (TI) skills, and 55% believe their threat intelligence data is not predictive enough.

The data comes from a new Vulcan Cyber report published earlier today.

According to the new data, the figures above are particularly striking when considering that threat intelligence is a crucial piece of risk management programs today, with 75% of companies having dedicated TI teams and 66% having dedicated threat intelligence budgets.

The primary use cases for threat intelligence, as outlined in the report, include blocking bad IPs/URLs (64%) and integration with other security products for a comprehensive view of cyber-hygiene (63%).

At the same time, the Vulcan Cyber report suggests threat intelligence is a crucial source for ongoing vulnerability detection and prioritization.

In fact, 87% of decision-makers rely on threat intelligence “often or very often” for vulnerability prioritization, and more than 90% of organizations rate their ability to respond based on threat intelligence as average or better.

“It is good that we’re seeing such extensive adoption of threat intelligence feeds by so many different types of cyber teams,” said Yaniv Bar-Dayan, Vulcan Cyber CEO and co-founder.

“It’s even more encouraging to see the share of organizations that have dedicated teams and budgets to act upon those findings.”

At the same time, the executive said he believes that a concerted effort to scale the industry’s ability to respond with precision will now be just as significant as cloud-native environments become more complex.

“Teams don’t just need tools and people; they need skills and the ability to use the tools at their disposal to improve the security posture of their organizations.”

The latest Vulcan Cyber report was conducted by Gartner Pulse and compiled based on data collected by 100 managers and directors in information security, vulnerability management and threat intelligence.

Its publication comes days after Dtex published a report suggesting 12% of all employees take sensitive intellectual property (IP) with them when they leave an organization.