Organizations defend against thousands of cyber attacks per day, some known and some novel. As these adversaries evolve over time, it can be challenging to track and learn about their unique behavior. The MITRE ATT&CK® framework provides a comprehensive list of adversary behaviors.
What Is MITRE ATT&CK?
MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge, or MITRE ATT&CK, is a public knowledge base of adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) based on real-world observations. It’s a globally accessible repository used as the basis for developing many specific threat models and methodologies in cybersecurity, government, and the private sector.
MITRE ATT&CK was designed to foster collaboration among communities for enhanced cybersecurity measures. It is freely accessible to any organization or individual. It provides valuable information on some of the most common real-world adversary behaviors, such as:
- Initial access: Gaining access to a network through phishing and exploiting unpatched software
- Privilege escalation: Credential theft and exploiting misconfigurations
- Lateral movement: Using stolen credentials and exploiting internal vulnerabilities
- Data exfiltration: Transferring sensitive data using legitimate accounts and hiding data in covert channels
- Command and control: Maintaining control of the targeted network via remote communication protocols
The Role of MITRE ATT&CK in Threat Intelligence
In today’s digital landscape, where organizations are predominantly internet-based, there is a constant threat of cyber attacks and vulnerabilities. Delayed detection, slow response, and incorrect remediation can lead to the exploitation of these incidents. The MITRE ATT&CK framework serves as a crucial tool in threat intelligence. It provides:
- Shared language and structure: As a global database, it offers a universal language and structure that normalizes intel into tactics, techniques, and sub-techniques, allowing users to interpret threats the same way.
- Laser focus on behavior: ATT&CK focuses on analyzing actual behaviors and methodologies that attackers use rather than static indicators. It provides important context and proves to be more effective against sophisticated or unknown threats.
- Quantifiable progress: ATT&CK enables quantifiable progress by mapping security environments to recognized TTPs, identifying gaps, and conducting automated testing — such as MITRE’s Caldera — to assess security controls in place.
- Informed defensive strategy: It educates you on the “hows” and the “whys” of certain adversaries. This capability is helpful in improving your security policies because it enables you to identify areas where your defenses may be weak against specific attacks.
- Data-driven prioritization: ATT&CK correlates external threat intelligence with the standardized framework, providing the taxonomy and knowledge base for external tools to rank TTPs based on several factors, including prevalence, exploitability, and potential organizational impact. You can then allocate resources toward mitigating threats that could have a significant effect on operations.
How ThreatConnect Integrates MITRE ATT&CK in Our Solutions
ThreatConnect was designed with the premise of helping users gain a better understanding of adversaries. Our goal is to help organizations mitigate threats more quickly by leveraging reliable threat intelligence and automated workflows. By fully integrating MITRE ATT&CK into the ThreatConnect platform, users can classify threats and prioritize responses accordingly.
ThreatConnect supports the MITRE ATT&CK framework by enabling specific applications that align with different solutions, such as:
- Continuous Control Monitoring (CCM): Our CCM solution maps your security controls in accordance with ATT&CK techniques to determine where gaps exist. It validates the effectiveness of your security controls using live telemetry for real-time or near-real-time insights.
- Risk Quantifier (RQ 9.0): Our Risk Quantifier evaluates financial exposure at the ATT&CK technique level, allowing you to prioritize fixes that reduce the most risk per dollar. The dashboard view aligns technique coverage, control posture, and business impact to help you strategize a solid mitigation plan.
- Threat Intelligence Operations Platform: Our Threat Intelligence Operations Platform normalizes threat intel based on the ATT&CK framework, tagging known and novel adversaries, campaigns, and indicators. It enables detection engineering to target high-relevance techniques and address coverage gaps.
- Analyst workflows and security operations: Our ThreatConnect TI Ops Platform and Polarity by ThreatConnect bring ATT&CK context into investigations. This combination accelerates triage and improves response consistency across teams.
Why Trust Us?
ThreatConnect offers an innovative approach to threat intelligence and cybersecurity by developing scalable products and solutions that enhance security and operational efficiency. We specialize in handling complex security operations for large enterprises, utilizing our flexible architecture to support growing user needs.
At ThreatConnect, we recognize the importance of adaptability in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. We integrate advanced technologies into our platform to maximize the effectiveness of our products for threat detection. Backed by dozens of awards and recognitions, we leverage our expertise in providing customers with solutions they can trust. Read our customer stories to learn more about the real-world applications of our capabilities.
Transform Your Security Protocols With ThreatConnect
Enhance your organization’s security protocols with ThreatConnect’s advanced solutions that align with the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Identify gaps in your security controls and quickly deploy the correct risk mitigation strategies. Request a demo today to learn how you can benefit from our solutions.