GreyNoise + Tenable – A partnership improving data quality for threat intelligence

Tenable partnership improves threat intelligence data quality for the entire cybersecurity industry

Today, Tenable announced its new Research Alliance Program to share vulnerability information prior to public disclosure. GreyNoise is proud to be an inaugural member of this program, which aims to reduce the window of opportunity for threat actors seeking to exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities.

At a high level, cyber threat intelligence is the craft of predicting what villains and miscreants are going to do on the internet—including how, why, and where they will do it. Unfortunately, most threat intelligence solutions have not delivered on this promise. Within the wider cybersecurity community, threat intelligence is often viewed as a commodity that brings unquantifiable business value and uncertain security value. Over time, this dynamic has caused the security community to lose faith in the entire concept. 

Closing a gap in traditional threat intel

Here is the root of the problem: while many threat intelligence providers are great at cybersecurity, they are bad at providing data in a way that is useful for their customers. Generally speaking, the data provided by most threat intelligence solutions is of poor quality, because it is based on inaccurate assumptions. Some solutions even lack the conviction to provide guidance on how to make automated block decisions based on their data. And if a machine can’t use the data, how useful can it be?

As an industry, cybersecurity needs to get better at sharing information about threats–including what organizations are encountering and what they are doing to defend themselves. To compare with the airline industry, plane crash investigations are an enormous collaborative effort involving input from dozens of governmental organizations and industry partners. Their collaboration creates insights that improve flight safety for everyone, long into the future; cybersecurity can learn much from this approach.

Why data-sharing matters 

As the primary source for understanding internet noise, GreyNoise believes that sharing data about threat intelligence with other industry partners will improve data quality for the entire industry. The combination of Tenable vulnerability data with the real-time mass exploit awareness that GreyNoise provides will help our mutual customers and industry partners to respond faster (and more accurately) to newly emerging vulnerabilities.

“Whenever a vulnerability is disclosed, the dinner bell sounds for good and bad actors alike, meaning organizations are already on their back foot,” explains Robert Huber, Tenable Chief Security Officer and Head of Research. “We know threat actors are monitoring disclosure programs in the same way we are, looking for newly announced vulnerabilities, studying all available information such as proof of concepts, but they’re looking to utilize the flaw. By giving our customers the tools to address these weaknesses when they’re publicly announced, we reduce that intelligence gap and hand the advantage back to the good guys.”

For more information about how to partner with GreyNoise, please visit https://www.greynoise.io/partners.