Yuraisha Mari, Enterprise Group Manager for Africa, Kaspersky
By Kaspersky for https://businesstech.co.za/news/industry-news/814297/why-threat-intelligence-is-critical-for-businesses-in-2025/
As cyber threats become more sophisticated and pervasive, businesses can no longer afford a reactive approach to security.
The need for comprehensive, real-time visibility into cyber risks specific to a company’s industry, geography, and attack surface has never been greater.
To this end, Threat Intelligence has emerged as a critical tool in modern cybersecurity strategies. Having this in place provides businesses with actionable insights to predict, prevent, and mitigate cyber threats before they cause harm.
Cyber threats in South Africa and across Africa are evolving all the time. Attacks on critical sectors – such as government, telecommunications, and energy – are on the rise, with cybercriminals exploiting vulnerabilities in outdated systems, unsecured supply chains, and targeting organisations with a large remote workforce.
The Kaspersky Security Bulletin has also highlighted alarming global trends, including the increasing use of AI by threat actors to generate phishing campaigns and automate vulnerability exploitation.
Companies are no longer just dealing with generalised malware and crimeware. Instead, they are often facing targeted, persistent attacks that lead to the compromise of sensitive data, disruption of operations, and financial and reputational damage.
Unfortunately, many companies struggle with threat detection and response, due to the overwhelming volume of alerts and a lack of contextual intelligence to prioritise threats effectively.
Taking a broader view
The ‘XDR and SOC Modernization’ report from Enterprise Strategy Group found that 24% of companies cannot respond rapidly to new cyber threats.
Without a clear understanding of how cyber threats relate to their business, organisations risk making uninformed security decisions, leaving them vulnerable to breaches.
Threat Intelligence provides a crucial advantage by offering real-time insights into active cyber threats, threat actor behaviours, and emerging attack trends. It helps security teams to identify and analyse potential threats before they escalate into full-blown attacks.
Additionally, businesses can prioritise threats based on their risk level, which enables effective resource allocation.
This intelligence also enhances incident response with actionable data. Through this, companies can shorten detection and containment times, and create efficiencies within their security teams’ processes.
Businesses that integrate intelligence-driven security strategies are better equipped to safeguard their digital assets and maintain business continuity.
Bringing Threat Intelligence to life
When choosing Threat Intelligence services, organisations should look into the global reach of the threat data being provided coupled with the capability to filter the applicable data to its own industry, geography, and software profile.
Decision-makers need to consider Threat Intelligence solutions that incorporate access to AI-driven insights on threat actors, affected regions, and attack techniques.
The most effective solutions can conduct advanced open-source intelligence (OSINT) searches with automated summaries to accelerate research and decision-making.
It ultimately involves providing businesses with the tools to harness real-time threat visibility, enabling them to correlate Indicators of Compromise with active attacks.
As an example Kaspersky Threat Intelligence delivers global visibility of cyber threats, providing security teams with the information they need with thorough threat analysis, threat lookup, data feeds, APT reports, Crimeware and ICS reports, threat infrastructure tracking and digital footprint intelligence.
After applying a variety of filters, Kaspersky Threat Intelligence Portal users can view their unique threat landscape and obtain AI-driven insights and a heat map based on the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
All the information about cyber threats, actors and their tactics, techniques and procedures are being collected in real time. With this, companies can build a proactive cybersecurity approach tailored to their unique risk environment.
The role of Threat Intelligence
Threat Intelligence is not just about collecting data, but about using data to make informed security decisions that protect businesses from costly breaches.
Companies leveraging Threat Intelligence services have seen significant improvements in their ability to detect, respond to, and prevent cyber threats.
Intelligence-driven security has become an essential component in a company’s cybersecurity defences.
By Kaspersky for https://businesstech.co.za/news/industry-news/814297/why-threat-intelligence-is-critical-for-businesses-in-2025/