Threat intelligence a key part of risk management strategy
Threat intelligence solutions were a primary motivator of AT&T’s acquisition of AlienVault, which is expected to close in Q3 this year. To get a better understanding of the operator’s goals with the acquisition, RCR Wireless News posed a few questions to Vice President of Cybersecurity Danessa Lambdin.
Lambdin defined threat intelligence “as the analysis of data, information and insights on both internal and external threats to provide targeted detection and actionable guidance to effectively respond to cyber threats. Our collective vision is to democratize threat intelligence for the masses—to gather and share relevant, timely and accurate information about new or ongoing cyber attacks as quickly as possible. Threat intelligence is [a] key component of an organization’s risk management strategy to help improve enterprise defenses holistically and systematically.”
This idea of democratization of threat intelligence is AlienVault’s sweet spot. The company established what it calls the Open Threat Exchange (OTX), which is an open community of around 80,000 users in 140 countries. AlienVault said OTX users flag more than 19 million “threat indicators” everyday.
Lambdin described the OTX as providing “community-powered threat data. AT&T sees value in the Open Threat Exchange and the ability to provide actionable threat insights to customers.”
AT&T will incorporate AlienVault’s open-source software into its own end-to-end enterprise security solutions. The operator has wholly embraced open-source software with its efforts to use the Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP) to drive virtualization across its network.
“We’re focused on driving leadership in open source and it’s critical to our business,” Lambdin said. “In addition to strengthening our network, it also enable us to, together as a community, innovate and deploy faster.” As related to AlienVault, “Collaboration and global insights are critical in providing ongoing intelligence about new and existing threats.”
She said once the acquisition is complete, all AlienVault employees, including senior leadership, “will remain employed.”
