Whether regional or national, business leaders face the impact of globalization. In today’s world, it is not a question of if a crisis will affect an enterprise, but when. Events, such as a terror attack, data breach, pandemic or travel ban, that happen on the other side of the world can affect business resilience and valuation just as much as those down the street or on premise.
Threat Intelligence—delivered to key decision makers in a timely manner—is crucial for the safety of everyone. And businesses want the ability to garner relevant threat intelligence from cyber chatter most critical to the organization and report it to internal stakeholders, who can quickly act upon it. A variety of sophisticated technology tools are gaining popularity for their ability to easily integrate with security programs. Such tools aggregate, analyze and report threat intelligence in real time—for proactive security response.
Via open source data channels, social media, the dark web and other publishing platforms, customers use these types of technologies to form common operating pictures to:
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Act on real-time alerts of threats such as protest activity, suspicious package, or impending disaster within a radius of interest to facilities or assets.
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Monitor personalized keywords or locations across multiple social media platforms.
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Share a common operating picture dashboard of an incident across their organization for collaboration and response as was the case during Hurricane Harvey.
For example, during the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, TX360, a situational awareness and threat intelligence platform, helped customers stay current with relevant information such as:
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Official alerts and notices of events that could potentially affect transportation
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Protest and boycott information and social media content
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Emergency contact and Olympic information for local law enforcement, U.S. Government departments (Embassy, Department of State) and tourism links
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Mapping of the locations, and photos and videos and games schedules
In another example of situational awareness, PlanetRisk ramped up its alerting and reporting dashboards during recent bombings in Austin, Texas, to support timely updates to local organizations the company serves. The platform:
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Provided location accuracy, timeliness, and context to the threats that developed over a three-week period and
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Consistently delivered incident notifications of each explosion faster than larger news conglomerates.
Combined with experienced analysts, these types of services provide relevant data required to identify and understand threats to properties and implement core situational awareness programs that reduce risk and improve ROI for any organization.
By integrating platforms like TX360 and ThreatMinder into their security operation centers, or through Allied Universal’s Global Security Operating Center as a Service (GSOCaaS), customers can leverage threat intelligence in a profound way. Learn more about these latest threat intelligence platforms at www.aus.com/gsocaas.
About the Author
Sherman Brawner is Senior Director – Integrated Security Solutions for Allied Universal Security Systems.