Security Operations Centers (SOCs) face an ever-growing array of threats, from sophisticated malware to targeted phishing campaigns. To stay ahead, SOCs rely on threat intelligence feeds to provide real-time, actionable data for detecting and mitigating threats.
Choosing the right solution can significantly enhance SOC’s ability to protect the organization. Let’s review the key characteristics to consider when selecting a threat data feed on the example of ANY.RUN’s TI Feeds.
Table of contents
1. Accuracy and Relevance of Indicators
False positives can overwhelm security teams, leading to alert fatigue and potentially causing real threats to be overlooked. An effective TI feed should prioritize the accuracy and relevance of Indicators of Compromise (IOCs). High-quality feeds filter out false positives, duplicates, and outdated data, ensuring that the IOCs are actionable.
ANY.RUN’s Approach:
- Utilizes advanced algorithms to minimize false positives.
- Extracts IOCs (URLs, domains, IPs, files) from recent analysis sessions in the Interactive Sandbox used by 15,000 SOC teams worldwide to investigate incidents.
- Retrieves IOCs from malware configurations and memory dumps, providing critical data that threat actors use to run their operations.
2. Volume and Diversity of Threat Data
While accuracy is paramount, the volume and diversity of threat data are also crucial. A comprehensive TI feed should draw from a large, diverse pool of sources to provide a broad view of emerging threats.
ANY.RUN’s Approach:
- Has a community of over 500,000 analysts continuously submitting fresh public samples of malware and phishing to its sandbox for analysis.
- In Q1 2025 alone, ANY.RUN users conducted 1.4 mln public interactive analysis sessions, ensuring the threat intelligence feeds are populated with indicators from various geographical regions and attack vectors.
3. Timeliness of Data
Cyber threats evolve rapidly, and outdated information can leave your organization vulnerable. The best threat intelligence feeds provide real-time or near-real-time updates to ensure SOCs can respond to emerging threats promptly. The frequency of updates is critical to reducing the detection lag and enabling proactive defense.
| Evaluate ANY.RUN’s IOC freshness, volume, and relevance: request a test sample of Threat Intelligence Feeds |
ANY.RUN’s Approach:
- Continuously updates Threat Intelligence Feeds every few hours, drawing from the latest sandbox analysis sessions.
- The rapid update cycle ensures that users receive near real-time threat intelligence.
- This enables quick detection and response to new threats.
4. Contextual Enrichment
Threat feeds provide basic indicators, such as IP addresses, domains, and file hashes. But high-quality products go further by offering contextual information that levels up incident response. Contextual data, such as the malware family associated with an IP, attack patterns, or links to detailed analysis, helps SOC analysts understand the threat’s behavior and impact, enabling faster and better-informed decision making.
ANY.RUN’s Approach:
- Provides contextual metadata for IOCs, including related file hashes, first and last detection times, accessed network ports, and malware classification tags.
- Adds detailed analysis reports of malware samples linked to the IOCs, sourced from ANY.RUN’s public submissions database.
5. Ease of Integration and Customization
A threat intelligence feed must integrate seamlessly with your SOC’s existing tools, such as SIEMs, TIPs, or Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS). Feeds delivered in standardized formats like STIX or MISP, or via protocols like TAXII, simplify integration and enable automated threat detection and response workflows.
ANY.RUN’s Approach:
- Provides data in STIX and MISP formats, standardized languages for conveying threat intelligence, thus facilitating integration with various SIEM and TIP systems.
- Supports TAXII integration, allowing SOCs to set up feeds as endpoints in their security stack for real-time updates.
Lets users customize the data they receive, choosing specific types of indicators such as URLs, IPs, and domains, or downloading everything together
| Request a sample of ANY.RUN’s TI Feeds to test its quality and integration options |
Conclusion
By focusing on accuracy, volume, timeliness, contextual enrichment, and integration, organizations can significantly improve their threat detection and response strategies. ANY.RUN’s Threat Intelligence Feeds exemplify these qualities, making them a valuable asset for any security team. Thereby choosing the right threat intelligence feed for your Security Operations Centers (SOCs).
