2020 SANS Cyber Threat Intelligence Survey

Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) is analyzed information about the capabilities, opportunities and intent of adversaries that meets a specific requirement determined by a stakeholder. Organizations with CTI programs focus on understanding the threats they face and providing specific information to help defend against those threats. In the past few years, CTI has evolved from small, ad-hoc tasks performed disparately across an organization to, in many cases, robust programs with their own staff, tools and processes that support the entire organization. 2020 was a big year for the SANS CTI Survey, with a record number of respondents and the highest ever reporting of CTI programs within organizations, with 1,006 responding to the survey in 2020 and just 505 responding in 2019. Some areas leveled out after years of growth—such as implementation of threat intelligence platforms and a focus on tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) over just indicators of compromise (IoCs)—and some areas continued to grow both in number and variety, such as the types of data being used to generate intelligence. As the field settles into its new maturity, understanding and improving the effectiveness of CTI programs will become even more critical. With that in mind, SANS asked respondents to weigh in on how their programs measure effectiveness, an area that CTI programs must continue to improve on in the coming years.

This year’s survey response pool represented a wide-ranging group of security professionals from various organizations.