New threat intelligence solution launched by Google Cloud  

With the threat landscape growing more complex and security teams’ environments slowly sprawling to keep up, more and more organizations are looking to do more with less. 

Threat intelligence is one of the key technologies making this possible by providing insights into the most commonly used tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of cybercriminals. 

In response to this shift, today, Google Cloud announced the general availability of a new threat intelligence solution in the Chronicle secops suite: Curated Detections.  

The solution will provide security teams with detections created by the Google Cloud Threat Intelligence (GCTI) team, providing greater insights into Windows-based threats, GCP cloud-attacks and misconfigurations, with less manual administration. 

For enterprises, Curated Detections will stand as another cybersecurity offering backed by the Google product ecosystem, which has the potential to rival Microsoft’s new intelligence offering. 

A deeper look at curated detections 

Outside of Google’s product, “curated detections” are segments of threat intelligence prepared by a third-party provider that are designed to filter out some of the noise, and to help security teams identify the most high-value information. 

“Threat intelligence using curated detections gives practitioners more confidence in the information, allowing them to be more decisive. This type of threat intelligence feels more ‘real.’ It is easier for non-cybersecurity audiences to understand,” said Brian Wrozek, Forrester principal analyst. 

Wrozek says that this information can be used to identify whether an organization’s been compromised, whether security controls work, which vulnerabilities should be fixed first, and how to adjust their overall security strategy. 

While the launch of Curated Detections will add a new solution in the threat intelligence market, Forrester senior analyst, Erik Most, says that Google could move further in the market by opening up its intelligence offering. 

“I think an impact to the market could come if they make this information available for non-Chronicle customers, along with the potential that more threat intelligence from their ongoing acquisition of Mandiant is made available,” Most said. 

The threat intelligence market 

The announcement comes as the threat intelligence market remains in a state of growth, with Future Market Insights estimating that the overall demand for intelligence will grow from $8.8 billion in 2021 to reach $39.7 billion by 2031. 

Google Cloud is competing against a range of providers in the market, including Microsoft, which recently unveiled a new intelligence offering, Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence.

Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence provides a solution designed to detect cyberthreats in real time, while providing access to Microsoft’s security data signals, with the organization tracking 35 ransomware families, 250 nation-states and 43 trillion security signals daily. 

Another key player in the market is Recorded Future, which offers a platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to analyze and map associations across billions of threat intelligence entities in real time. 

Insight Partners acquired Recorded Future for $780 million in 2019, and the latter last year announced the launch of a $20 million intelligence fund for early-stage startups. 

While it’s early days for Curated Detections, its ties to the Google Cloud ecosystem and the Chronicle secops suite differentiate it from other offerings on the market.