ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the financial and practical benefits of an intelligence-led approach to security and describes how intelligence helps an organization prevent incidents. It demonstrates the role for intelligence in helping prepare the organization and suggests ways in which intelligence can help drive profits, becoming a key business enabler rather than a cost center. A security function of a business is often regarded as something of an insurance policy. Threat intelligence is principally involved with assessing adversaries’ capability, intentions, and perception of the organization’s vulnerabilities. The role of intelligence in this is clear—threat assessment. This most commonly comes into play when considering specific asset protection, but is closely related to red-teaming and executive protection. A formal security intelligence function is to some extent similarly a more expensive “bolt on” to a basic function.
