{"id":36192,"date":"2020-07-21T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/threat-intelligence\/leading-through-uncertainty-be-proactive-in-your-dark-web-intelligence-strategy\/a\/d-id\/1338359"},"modified":"2020-07-21T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T14:00:00","slug":"leading-through-uncertainty-be-proactive-in-your-dark-web-intelligence-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/leading-through-uncertainty-be-proactive-in-your-dark-web-intelligence-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading Through Uncertainty: Be Proactive in Your Dark Web Intelligence Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Having a strong Dark Web intelligence posture helps security teams understand emerging vulnerability trends.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the onset of COVID-19, there has been a startling surge in the number of organizations enforcing a remote work culture overnight.<\/p>\n

However, there remains a big question mark: How secure is<\/em> working from home? This scenario presents an ideal opportunity for cyber criminals \u2014 also infamous for their remote work lifestyle \u2014 to execute more sophisticated attacks against global enterprises. Breached information can end up on the Dark Web, actively contributing to the collective wealth of information cybercriminals use to extort hefty amounts of money from data breach victims.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the Dark Web is often neglected in enterprise security strategies. As a result, it has become a haven for cybercriminals to hone their craft.<\/p>\n

Navigating the Post COVID-19 Threat Landscape
<\/strong>The rising number of remote connections associated with the new normal of remote work has led to mass remote logins, carrying the exchange of business-sensitive communications that were likely not adequately secured with trustworthy VPN and encryptions in place.<\/p>\n

As a result, we’ve seen a growing number of attacks and incidents over the last few months, including the recent Maze ransomware attack on a popular IT service provider, Cognizant, security flaws in Zoom, the popular video conferencing software; phishing and extortion scams; compromised business email; and other malicious attacks by cybercriminals. Government agencies and industry experts have repeatedly stressed the importance of staying on top of security incidents.<\/p>\n

That goes to say that criminals do not have a set pattern for attacks; rather, they constantly change their strategies and targets to make themselves invincible. While it is prudent for organizations to identify and mitigate security risks using methods that can blacklist threats in real time, those are simply reactive measures. Now is the time to adopt a proactive approach and prevent attacks using strong knowledge of evolving attack patterns and attacker profiles.<\/p>\n

Unraveling the Unknown: Steering Through the Dark Web
<\/strong>Understandably, the criminals using the Dark Web are insular and anonymous (even to each other), making it even easier for them to trade with complete anonymity and decentralized resources. In addition, data floating on the Dark Web is not indexed by common search engines, making it difficult to determine the source of niche and sophisticated threats, such as ransomware, remote access Trojans, and commoditized botnet malware. Interestingly, according to a research<\/a> report by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, 75% of emerging vulnerabilities appear on the Dark Web before<\/em> they are included in the National Vulnerability Database.<\/p>\n

This means cybercriminals often have time to execute attacks before these vulnerabilities become common knowledge. Therefore, organizations will have to think beyond the known sources of threats and vulnerabilities and delve into emerging and lesser-known sources of risk to build proactive security strategies to outsmart criminals.<\/p>\n

Be Proactive
<\/strong>To create a Dark Web intelligence strategy, organizations should do the following:<\/p>\n