New Threat Intelligence Solution Launched by Google Cloud

With the threat landscape becoming more complex and security team environments slowly growing to keep up, more organizations are looking to do more with less.

Threat intelligence is one of the key technologies that makes this possible by providing insight into the most commonly used tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of cybercriminals.

In response to this shift, today we have Google Cloud announced the general availability of a new threat intelligence solution in the Chronicle secops suite: Curated Detections.

The solution provides security teams with detections created by the Google Cloud Threat Intelligence (GCTI) team, providing greater visibility into Windows-based threats, GCP cloud attacks, and misconfigurations, with less manual management.

For enterprises, Curated Detections will be another cybersecurity offering backed by the Google product ecosystem, which has the potential to rival Microsoft’s new intelligence offering.

A Deeper Look at Composite Detections

Outside of Google’s product, “managed detections” are segments of threat intelligence compiled by a third-party provider that are designed to filter out some of the noise and help security teams identify the most valuable information.

“Threat intelligence using composite detections gives practitioners greater confidence in the information, allowing them to be more responsive. This kind of threat intelligence feels more ‘real’. It’s easier for non-cybersecurity audiences to understand,” said Brian Wrozek, chief analyst at Forrester.

Wrozek says this information can be used to identify whether an organization has been compromised, whether security controls are working, which vulnerabilities should be fixed first, and how to adjust the overall security strategy.

While the launch of Curated Detections will add a new solution to the threat intelligence market, Erik Most, senior analyst at Forrester, says Google can go further in the market by opening up its intelligence offerings.

“I think there could be a market impact as they make this information available to non-Chronicle customers, along with the potential for more threat intelligence from their ongoing acquisition of Mandiant,” Most said.

The Threat Intelligence Market

The announcement comes as the threat intelligence market continues to grow, with: Future Market Insights estimates that aggregate intelligence demand will grow from $8.8 billion in 2021 to $39.7 billion in 2031.

Google Cloud competes with a range of providers in the market, including: Microsoftwho recently unveiled a new intelligence offering, Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence.

Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence provides a solution designed to detect cyber threats in real time while providing access to Microsoft’s security data signals, with the organization tracking 35 ransomware families, 250 nation-states, and 43 trillion security signals on a daily basis.

Another important player in the market is: Recorded futurewhich provides a platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze and map associations between billions of threat intelligence entities in real time.

Insight Partners acquired Recorded Future for $780 million in 2019, and the latter announced its $20 million launch last year intelligence fund for start-up entrepreneurs.

While it’s still in its infancy for Curated Detections, its ties to the Google Cloud ecosystem and Chronicle secops suite set it apart from other offerings on the market.