The Power of Many: Crowdsourcing as A Game-Changer for Modern Cyber Defense

With the rapid technological advancement and the world entering the AI era, the cyber threat landscape has significantly evolved in its complexity and sophistication. The frequency of data breaches has surged alarmingly compared to previous years, amplifying already significant concerns. This uptick is fueled by the escalating severity of cyber attacks—ranging from social engineering and ransomware to DDoS —largely driven by the use of AI tools by hackers. Additionally, according to SecurityVulnerability stats, 25,000+ vulnerabilities have already been identified in 2024, marking an increase of nearly 50% compared to this time last year. With the sheer number of malicious actors and entry points for attacks constantly growing, effective containment and mitigation remain daunting challenges, making it hardly possible for standalone teams to cope with the avalanche of existing cyber threats.

Why Is Knowledge Sharing a Must to Outrun Adversaries?

To support the advancement of the threat landscape, adversaries continuously share their malicious approaches and techniques within underground networks and among affiliates, enabling them to refine and coordinate their attacks more effectively. They utilize forums, encrypted communications, and dark web marketplaces to disseminate new exploit methods, malware, and attack strategies, which enhances their operational efficiency and reach.

Adopting a collaborative approach is highly beneficial for bolstering the effectiveness of cyber defense and helping the cybersecurity industry scale down the challenges. Seeing that knowledge sharing is currently a must to outrun and outsmart adversaries, the proliferation of digital platforms and collaborative tools allows security professionals and enthusiasts worldwide to get instant access to collective expertise. This immediate dissemination of information allows organizations to deploy countermeasures and updates in real time, creating a unified defense that quickly adapts to new threats.

Evolution of Crowdsourcing in Cybersecurity

Initially, crowdsourcing in cyberspace began with basic community-driven efforts, such as forums and informal collaboration among professionals and enthusiasts, which advanced into the concept of collective cyber defense.

Early Collaboration: When the world went online, crowdsourcing activities related to what we now call a cyber threat primarily involved networking through community-driven forums and mailing lists where individuals shared information about cyber attacks. This informal sharing helped to raise awareness and facilitated initial responses to emerging security issues.

Bug Bounty Programs: The introduction of formal bug bounty programs marked a significant evolution. Vendors incentivized independent researchers and ethical hackers to identify and report vulnerabilities in their products. This approach harnessed the expertise of a global pool of security experts and led to more comprehensive threat discovery and mitigation.

Threat Intelligence Sharing: As the cybersecurity landscape became more complex, the focus shifted to organized threat intelligence sharing. Platforms and consortiums like Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs) were established to enable real-time sharing of threat data and analysis among organizations, enhancing collective defense mechanisms. Also, the introduction of the MITRE ATT&CK framework was a huge milestone, standardizing the way adversary tactics and techniques are described, further improving the effectiveness of modern cyber defense strategies.

Collaborative Security Platforms: Advancements in technology have facilitated the creation of collaborative security platforms and programs. Such initiatives aggregate industry expertise, enabling security professionals to gain instant access to the latest insights, patterns, and detection rules for faster and more efficient threat detection.

Challenges on the Way to Collective Cyber Defense

Although shared expertise significantly boosts threat detection & hunting efficiency while simultaneously empowering cybersecurity education, there are several stumbling blocks to address on the way to building global crowdsourcing initiatives.

While working towards a safer future, contributors to crowdsourced efforts often face issues related to intellectual property rights and the recognition of the significance of individual contributions within the professional network. Ensuring proper recognition for discoveries and contributions to global cyber defense at all levels, from the support of author attribution in the code of a detection rule to sharable digital credentials issued by organizations to recognize exceptional individual involvement and contributions to the crowdsourcing initiatives, is essential to maintaining motivation and fairness. Another challenge is adherence to privacy imperative and compliance with security regulations, including TLP protocol, while sharing information with a wide audience, since disclosure of sensitive information about vulnerabilities or cyber attacks can pose significant risks both to crowdsourcing program contributors and beneficiaries.

Different organizations utilize a variety of technologies and tools, leading to compatibility issues when attempting to integrate the crowdsourced contribution. Mastering a broad tech stack to ensure that individual input from security researchers is applicable to a wide audience further complicates this challenge. To overcome technological barriers, cyber enthusiasts have introduced generic and open language formats like Sigma, Yara, and Roota. These standards foster community collaboration and enable more efficient global cyber defense providing the way to make threat detection, incident response, and actor attribution simple. In fact, by mastering just a single language format, security professionals might easily contribute threat detection algorithms compatible with any SIEM, EDR, or Data Lake solutions backed by generic language and dedicated translation engines, like Uncoder.IO. Moreover, detections written using Sigma or Roota incorporate ATT&CK tagging and provide CTI information, being a source of valuable insights for end users. This provides an opportunity for both experienced cyber defenders and beginners to contribute to the collective good, while continuously advancing their practical skills and adopting professional expertise.

How Crowdsourcing Shapes Future Defense Strategies

Incentivizing creativity and innovation globally, crowdsourcing initiatives optimize resources, ensure real-time information sharing, and foster continuous improvement through an iterative feedback loop. Crowdsourcing builds a resilient and scalable defense network, driving effective, community-driven cybersecurity practices to combat sophisticated and evolving cyber threats.

With thousands of eyes monitoring for cyber-attacks and malicious activity, the collective cyber defense approach enables swift identification of new attack patterns resulting in quick response and mitigation efforts. Simultaneously, CTI sharing streamlines threat research and hunting operations. And crowdsourced detection engineering programs, like Threat Bounty by SOC Prime, allow the cybersecurity community access to verified behavior-based detections in the shortest time possible. This collaborative approach empowers the transition from reactive measures to proactive cybersecurity, equipping every SOC team globally with the actionable tools and data to stay one step ahead of attackers.

By creating an environment where knowledge flows freely, crowdsourcing aids in tackling yet another prominent challenge in the cyber defense industry. According to ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, in 2023, the global workforce gap almost reached 4 million people, with 78% of organizations reporting they do not have the in-house skills to fully achieve their cybersecurity objectives, as per World Economic Forum research. The numbers are troubling, highlighting the crucial demand for innovative ways to scale cybersecurity education and training. Crowdsourcing programs cultivate a friendly yet competitive and challenging environment for cybersecurity enthusiasts, where students and specialists who are at the start of their careers can learn from collaboration with seasoned experts. The new knowledge and skills can be immediately enhanced on practice backed by community feedback for continuous self-improvement. Also, crowdsourcing is an effective way to promote individual expertise in various cybersecurity areas, becoming an actual pool of talents to empower cybersecurity hiring.

The dynamic nature of crowdsourcing ensures a continuous influx of new information and insights. Simultaneously, contributors find themselves in a competitive environment, where comprehensive and bright ideas set the standard for new input through community feedback, thus fostering creativity and innovation. By harnessing the collective power of the global cybersecurity community, crowdsourcing can significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of security efforts, leading to a more robust defense against cyber threats.

About the Author

Alla Yurchenko is the Lead Coordinator of SOC Prime’s Threat Bounty Program for cyber defenders initiated in 2019. She heads SOC Prime’s crowdsourcing initiative for detection engineering, driving innovation and collaboration among security researchers to enhance collective cyber defense since the Program’s inception. Alla can be reached online at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alla-y-92519213a/ or https://socprime.com/