Information Security Expert Kevin Beaver

The real problem with threat intelligence isn’t volume

Most enterprise threat intelligence programs didn’t end up where they are by accident. They evolved that way over time. One feed, one tool, one integration at a time. The thought was: more data, more visibility, better security. But then complexity grows until the moving parts are no longer serving the mission. I’ve seen this happen across organizations of all sizes, and on the surface, it looks like progress is happening. But when you see how these threat intelligence programs operate under pressure, it becomes clear that something is missing.

When a real security issue hits, i.e. a critical vulnerability and/or an active exploit, the sheer volume of intelligence doesn’t simplify decisions. It complicates them. IT and security teams start pulling from multiple sources, trying to reconcile what they’re seeing with what they think they know about their environment. Asset inventories are often outdated. Control coverage is assumed more than it’s verified. And a lot depends on who happens to be available and what they remember. That’s not a problem with technology but rather context.

I’ve found that threat intelligence is very good at telling you what’s happening in the world. It’s far less effective at telling you what actually matters inside your own environment. That gap is where time gets lost. It’s also where risk sits unaddressed while everyone is busy trying to determine whether something even applies to them. Meanwhile, the adversaries carrying out these exploits aren’t dealing with uncertainty. They have time on their side. They’re automated, coordinated, and moving at machine speed. They know that IT and security staff and still piecing together answers – if they even know about the nefarious behavior at all.

This is where I come back to something I’ve said for years: you cannot secure what you do not acknowledge. Most organizations believe they’re acknowledging risk because they’re simply consuming threat intelligence. It’s there, good money was spent on it, but it’s not working the way it was intended (or assumed). Awareness and high-level insight are not the same as truly understanding your actual exposures. If you don’t have a clear, current view of your assets, configurations, and control gaps, then more data doesn’t help. It just creates more noise – and that noise is the enemy of what needs to be accomplished.

Adding another feed or dashboard doesn’t fix this. It often reinforces the illusion that more information equals better security. What actually changes things is closing the gap between external threat activity and internal reality. In other words, connecting what’s happening “out there” to what’s exploitable “in here” without relying on manual effort and assumptions.

That’s where newer approaches leveraging AI are starting to make more sense. Not because of the AI label, but because they reduce friction and time in decision-making. Instead of another list of indicators, they help answer what’s relevant and actionable based on your unique environment, without you having to chase down and evaluate what counts and what doesn’t.

Platforms like Mallory are built around that idea. They monitor global threat activity, correlate it with your assets and controls, and surface prioritized cases based on what matters to you and your business needs. When a new vulnerability emerges, the focus isn’t fixed on awareness but whether it applies to your environment and what needs to be done about it.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a data problem. It’s more about clarity and a lack thereof. I think it’s safe to say that practically all IT/security teams already have more information than they can effectively use. What they’re missing is the ability to quickly and confidently determine what specifically matters and what’s going to make a difference when acting on it. If you’re looking to take your security program to the next level, this is certainly something worth focusing on.