What are the 4 types of CTI?

Introduction to CTI in the age of ai

Ever wonder if your ai agent is actually talking to who it says it is? In a world where bot-to-bot traffic is exploding, Cyber Threat Intelligence (cti) isn't just for humans anymore. (WAIT, SO HUMANS ARE NOW THE MINORITY ON THE INTERNET ...)

Security used to be about locking doors for people, but now we got autonomous agents with their own identities. If we don't track what these "machine identities" are doing, we're basically leaving the keys in the ignition.

• Machine-centric security: We gotta move past just watching logins. cti now needs to map out how ai agents interact across different platforms like healthcare records or retail supply chains.
• Preventing Identity Takeover: Bad actors use specialized scripts to hijack agent permissions. (Research shows AI agents are highly vulnerable to hijacking attacks) According to the 2024 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, stealing credentials is the top way in for attackers, and that includes api keys for your ai.
• Cost optimization: Good intel stops "denial of pocketbook" attacks where bots spam your ai to rack up huge compute bills. Specifically, cti identifies known botnets or high-velocity attack patterns, which allows WAFs or api gateways to drop traffic before it ever hits those expensive llm inference engines.

Watching an agent get tricked into leaking pii in a finance app is a total nightmare. Moving from broad strategy to specific execution, let's look at how we actually categorize these threats.

1. Strategic Intelligence: The Big Picture

Ever wonder what keeps a ciso up at night? It usually ain't the small stuff, it's the high-level shifts that could sink the whole ship—that’s where strategic intelligence comes in.

Strategic cti is about the "why" and "who" rather than just the "how." It’s for the folks making big budget calls, helping them see if a new geopolitical mess in Eastern Europe might actually mean more ransomware for their retail supply chain.

• Geopolitical fallout: If two countries start bickering over trade, your enterprise software might suddenly be a target for state-sponsored groups. It’s about mapping those big world events to your specific digital footprint.
• ai exploitation trends: We're seeing a shift where attackers use machine learning to automate social engineering at scale. A 2024 report by pwc suggests that many executives are worried about how generative ai might expand their attack surface, making legacy identity tools look like toys.
• Identity Governance Budgeting: You can't just throw money at every firewall. Strategic intel tells you which iam (identity and access management) gaps are actually being exploited in your industry, so you spend on what matters.

I've seen companies ignore these broad trends and get blindsided by "automated" fraud that their old rules couldn't catch. It's a mess if you don't plan ahead. While the big picture is great, we gotta look at the technical methods too.

2. Tactical Intelligence: The Technical 'How'

Ever wonder how a hacker actually gets past those shiny new ai security layers you just installed? Tactical intelligence is the "boots on the ground" view, focusing on the "Technical How"—the specific exploits, tools, and TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) that bad actors use to mess with your systems right now.

While strategic intel looks at the horizon, tactical intel is staring at your log files. It’s about knowing that a specific group is currently using a weird saml assertion trick to bypass mfa in enterprise apps.

• Bypassing Identity Standards: Attackers are getting really good at exploiting how ai agents use scim for provisioning. They might inject a "shadow" agent into your workforce directory that looks like a harmless meeting bot but actually has admin rights.
• Agent-to-Agent Hijacking: In complex workflows, one compromised agent can trick another. If your finance bot trusts a compromised data scraper, you’re looking at unauthorized wire transfers before you can even finish your coffee.
• ML-Powered Anomalies: We use tactical feeds to train models that spot when an api key is behaving "too fast" or coming from a weird ip. According to a 2024 report by CrowdStrike, identity-based attacks continue to rise, with many adversaries leveraging legitimate credentials to move laterally.

You can't just set and forget your iam policies anymore. Tools like AuthFyre help by aligning your identity lifecycle with this tactical data, so if a new exploit for a specific ai framework drops, your permissions tighten up automatically.

I've seen teams get wrecked because they thought their api keys were enough protection. Without tactical cti, you're just waiting for a breach notification. While technical tools are key, we also need to understand the human element.

3. Operational Intelligence: The Human 'How'

Ever wonder who’s actually behind that weird spike in your api traffic at 3 AM? Operational intelligence focuses on the "Human How"—the intent, the planning, and the specific actor groups involved. It’s like the "private investigator" of cti—it’s about finding out who's knocking on your door before they even try the handle.

While tactical intel looks at the tools, operational intel looks at the people. It’s about monitoring the dark web or hacker forums where someone might be bragging about a new way to exploit ai agent service accounts in healthcare or retail.

• Forum Lurking: Analysts watch for mentions of specific enterprise software vulnerabilities. If a group is talking about a weakness in how your specific iam provider handles bot tokens, that's operational gold.
• Intent vs. Action: It helps you figure out if you're being targeted by a "script kiddie" or a state-sponsored group. A 2024 report by Mandiant notes that attackers are increasingly using social engineering to gain initial access, often discussing these plans in closed communities long before the first packet is sent.
• Agent Identity Risks: We gotta watch for people selling "golden tokens" for ai agents. If an attacker gets a persistent token for a finance bot, they don't need to hack you—they just walk in.

It takes a human touch to sift through all the noise on these forums. You can't just automate "vibe checks" on a hacker's intent yet. Once you know who's coming, you need the technical bits to stop them—which leads us to Technical Intelligence.

4. Technical Intelligence: The Indicators

So, we finally got to the "bits and bytes" part. Technical intelligence is basically the raw data—the digital fingerprints like IP addresses, file hashes, or weird api strings—that tell your system "hey, this thing is definitely bad."

While the other types of cti focus on the "who" or "why," this is the "what." It’s the list of known-bad indicators you plug into your firewall or iam suite to block attacks in real-time.

• IoCs for AI: In the old days, an IoC (Indicator of Compromise) was just a virus signature. Now, it might be a specific sequence of json payloads used to trick a healthcare bot into dumping patient data.
• Automated Blocking: You can't manually block every bad request. According to a 2024 report by SANS Institute - which tracks how teams actually use this stuff - automating the ingest of these technical feeds is the only way to keep up with high-velocity attacks.
• Signature-based Defense: If a retail bot sees a login attempt from a known "bulletproof" hosting provider used by hackers, technical intel drops that connection before the bot even processes the request.

I've seen teams drown in these "feeds" because they don't filter them. You gotta make sure your technical intel actually talks to your identity layer, or you're just collecting digital trash.

While having all these technical indicators is great, the real magic happens when you integrate them.

Integrating the 4 types into your identity ecosystem

Tying all this together isn't just a "nice to have"—it's how you actually stop your ai from becoming a liability. You gotta blend the big-picture strategic stuff with those raw technical feeds. Here is how a single threat, like a new ai exploit, moves through the system:

• Full-stack defense: Use tactical intel to harden iam against specific agent hijacks.
• Continuous monitoring: As noted earlier, identity-based threats are spiking, so your api security needs to be as fast as the bots.
• Better oversight: Stop "shadow agents" before they access pii in your healthcare or retail apps.

If you aren't watching how these four types overlap, you're just playing whack-a-mole. Keep it messy, keep it fast. Stay safe out there.