Marcum 2021 Year-End Tax Guide

of severe weather forecasts as a form of threat intelligence. When you know your adversary’s capabilities and which adversaries are interested in you, you can prioritize your defenses accordingly. For cyber threat actors, this information is often available as a paid subscription. One very useful tool is the MITRE ATT&CK® framework, which provides a repository of adversary tactics and techniques. By analyzing the tactics and techniques used by each threat actor, commonalities may emerge that suggest where countermeasures could have the most impact. For example, if threat intelligence suggests three advanced persistent threat (APT) teams are targeting you, and each uses phishing to establish a foothold, then defending against this common technique reduces the risk across all of these threats. Threat assessment is an essential element of risk assessment. By providing knowledge of what is most likely to occur, threat assessment helps you avoid allocating resources for lower probability, lower impact threats. This is not limited to cybersecurity: in football, defenses expect a pass play on third-and-long; you would respond differently to being chased by a puppy than you would a gorilla; if police reports show burglars all come in through the bedroom window, you’d lock that window first. The result of effective cybersecurity threat assessment is better risk management. Because all risk is about probabilities, focusing your defenses on the most likely threats decreases the overall probability of an incident or breach. If you’re interested in learning more about the monsters that may be hiding under your organization’s bed, Marcum Technology is here to help. Marcum Technology provides a full cybersecurity service offering. If you need any help, from beginning a review of your security posture to investigating a cybersecurity incident, or even if you just want to ask for advice on a situation you are facing, please contact us at hello@marcumtechnology.com #AskMarumTechnology

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