Discover the Top 5 XDR Use Cases for Today’s Cyber Threat Landscape
Explore the complexities of advanced persistent threats in threat intelligence for government
In this fast-moving world where businesses operate completely through IT infrastructure, waiting for a threat to happen and finding a solution isn’t enough. There should be a proactive approach, where you spot and remove a threat even before it touches your systems.
It’s like staying a step ahead by using data to:
In this blog, we will explore proactive threat intelligence and 5 powerful use cases that show how it can enhance detection, speed up response, and support stronger, smarter security decisions.
Proactive threat intelligence implies spotting and preventing cyber threats before they intrude, instead of responding once they happen.
Look at the four main types of threat intelligence to understand how they work:
| Type of Intelligence | Focus | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Strategic Intelligence | Big-picture view of long-term risks, trends, and external factors (e.g. geopolitics, regulations) | Helps leaders make informed security decisions |
| Tactical Intelligence | Current attacker methods (tools, techniques, procedures) | Helps security teams adjust defenses quickly |
| Operational Intelligence | Specific threat campaigns or incidents | Helps understand targeting, methods, and how to respond effectively |
| Technical Intelligence | Concrete data (e.g. malware signatures, malicious IPs, file hashes) | Supports threat hunting and fast detection of known threats |
Together, these intelligence types form the foundation for a proactive approach to cybersecurity.
As businesses rely more heavily on digital tools, cloud services, and remote work, proactive threat hunting is more important than ever. It helps organizations to:
Now let’s check the use cases of proactive threat intelligence.
Discover how advanced threat intelligence powers proactive defense.
Security teams get a lot of alerts, but many don’t have enough information to be useful. They can get alerts about suspicious IPs or domains but without any context. This leads analysts to have to look into each one, one by one, to understand the issue. This takes a lot of time and puts even more workload on teams.
Adding threat intelligence to security tools helps teams get clearer, more useful alerts. The extra information can include things like malware behavior, attacker tactics, and the history of suspicious IPs or domains.
Solutions like threat intelligence management platforms help automate this process—pulling from trusted intelligence sources to give each alert more clarity and relevance.
Imagine your system flags a suspicious domain. On its own, it’s just a name. But when enriched with threat intelligence, you learn it’s tied to a known malware campaign, has a bad reputation score, and has been involved in phishing attacks. With this information, your team can take confident, immediate action—without second-guessing or delay.
In many companies, there is a time delay between threat detection and updating their security tools to block it. Security analysts often gather indicators like bad IPs or file hashes from multiple sources, but pushing data to SIEMs, firewalls, or other tools often takes time. During that delay, attackers can already be at work.
To solve this, organizations are using a proactive strategy—feeding their security tools with both atomic indicators (like known bad IP addresses or domains) and behavioral indicators (such as suspicious activity patterns) in real–time. This allows systems to recognize and block emerging threats as soon as they’re detected, even before an attack fully takes shape.
Fidelis Endpoint® uses constantly updated feeds—even when the device isn’t connected to the internet—to compare threat data against ongoing activity. Combined with cyber threat intelligence platform integrations and playbooks, organizations can build automated workflows that identify, score, and block dangerous indicators right away. This prevents threats from slipping through the cracks and reduces the time attackers have to cause damage.
To defend effectively, organizations need to know who might come after them, why, and how. External threat landscape modeling helps security teams understand the tactics and tools that threat actors are using—and whether those methods could impact their organization.
This use case is all about building a detailed picture of your threat environment. It involves:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Profiling likely attackers | Based on your industry, location, and digital assets, identify which cybercriminal groups or nation-state actors might target you. |
| Mapping their methods | By analyzing the techniques, tools, and procedures used by attackers, security teams can better predict how an attack might unfold. |
| Sharing with stakeholders | Share insights with leadership, compliance, and other departments to help them understand risks and adjust strategies. |
One of the most valuable resources for this work is the MITRE ATT&CK framework. It provides a structured way to match real-world threats to known attacker behaviors. This allows teams to simulate potential attacks, spot coverage gaps, and fine-tune defenses accordingly.
With a holistic and in-depth view of the external threat landscape, leaders can make the right decisions around their defenses. They will also be able to carry out realistic risk assessments, enhance current detection methods, and prepare for the advanced attacks they might face in the future.
Many security systems still rely heavily on signatures to catch threats. But modern attacks—especially fileless malware or advanced persistent threats—often don’t leave behind traditional indicators. This makes them hard to detect using signature-based tools alone.
Instead of waiting for known threats to appear, security teams are taking a proactive approach by tracking behavior patterns. This means looking for signs of suspicious activity, not just known bad files.
With behavior-based detection, tools monitor how users, applications, and systems behave over time. If something deviates from the norm—like an unusual script running or unexpected access to sensitive data—it gets flagged for investigation.
This kind of correlation is powerful—it helps surface stealthy threats that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Behavior-based threat hunting allows teams to detect attacks that don’t follow traditional patterns. Whether it’s a brand-new exploit or an insider doing something suspicious, these techniques can help spot trouble early—before real damage is done.
Threat intelligence can be overwhelming, especially for companies and leadership teams who need clear, actionable insights. Without a well-organized process to access and interpret the data, it can be shared in fragmented formats, making it hard for decision-makers to get the full picture.
To solve this, organizations need a more efficient way to centralize threat intelligence and automate reporting. This involves:
To make proactive threat intelligence more effective, using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK offers a clear and practical way to detect and respond to threats.
MITRE ATT&CK provides a common framework that helps:
| Use Case | Description |
|---|---|
| Understand alerts faster | Map alerts to specific tactics and techniques to quickly identify the attack and respond effectively. |
| Find security gaps | Spot weak or missing defenses so teams can improve protection. |
| Support training | Use ATT&CK to train staff, helping both new and experienced team members recognize common attacks. |
Fidelis Elevate® is a comprehensive Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform designed to integrate critical elements, including:
It provides deep, actionable insights into adversaries’ activities, offering a proactive approach that goes beyond traditional security tools.
Responding to an attack once it occurs is not an effective remedy for resilience in the current IT landscape of businesses. A proactive approach to block threats before they enter the systems is necessary. Tools like Fidelis XDR help companies leverage threat intelligence, stay two steps ahead of attackers, improve the productivity of the security team, and more!
Proactive threat intelligence involves identifying and preventing cyber threats before they affect your system. It uses data to predict, detect, and prevent attacks in real time.
By integrating threat intelligence into security alerts, incident enrichment provides more context, such as attacker tactics and malware behavior. This helps security teams respond faster and more effectively.
See Fidelis in action. Learn how our fast and scalable platforms provide full visibility, deep insights, and rapid response to help security teams across the World protect, detect, respond, and neutralize advanced cyber adversaries.