BT Launches Expanded Intelligence Product to Fight Cyber Attacks

The new offering is a global monitoring and assessment service that encourages firms to take a more proactive approach to their cyber security, by sending regular customizable intelligence reports to customers to help them prepare against potential attacks.

"Assure Threat Intelligence was born out of the work we've done at BT to protect our own enterprise, but also our work during the 2012 Olympic Games in London where we were the main communication and information security provider for that event," Luke Beeson, vice president, security UK and global banking and financial markets at BT, tells Sell-Side Technology. "It's not just machine-based searching of internet sources or other commercially available intelligence sources; it is a group of analysts performing analysis of what we are discovering and putting this into a format usable by our customers."

Actionable Information
The new BT product also provides a face-to-face workshop to identify risk assets, additional intelligence requirements, and advises clients on how to efficiently use this information to pre-empt or fight an attack. It also provides advice on how to deploy new technologies to meet current and developing threats, as well as defining the processes around how the intelligence is used and shared internally.

"One of the problems we've seen with a number of similar services is that very often the whole stream of data that is provided is not being interpreted and put into context for the organization that is going to use it. This service is very much about providing contextualized intelligence that organizations can use and actually take action on," says Beeson.

According to a survey led by BT last year, two-in-five organizations, or 41 percent, were targeted by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in 2013, with 78 percent of them being targeted twice or more in the year. Since two-thirds of those attacks were multi-vector attacks, the sharing of information and intelligence on cyber threats has become of paramount importance.

According to the survey, when it comes to having the adequate resources in place to ward off an attack, 69 percent of organizations are ahead of the curve, stating that they have a response plan in place should a DDoS attack occur.

Raising Awareness
The workshop gives BT analysts an idea of the security resources and structure in place within the organization so they can give clients a report that is tailored to their needs.

"We want to raise the awareness among our customers by looking at the threat landscape, from headline news to much less visible information, such as the dark web and a plethora of other sources," says Beeson.

By bringing all this information together, BT is able to understand whether a group of people may be gearing up for an attack against a particular organization.

BT Assure has a wide range of strategic partnerships with organizations already in place, including nearly 2,000 security practitioners and professional service consultants worldwide that help the firm build a full picture of the threat landscape.