5 Signs You Need an Enterprise Cyber Fusion Center

The concept of a fusion center originated in response to the intelligence-sharing challenges of the war on terror. Typically state-owned and operated, a fusion center distributes threat-related information between state, local, tribal, federal, and private sector partners to close intelligence and communication gaps in their counterterrorism efforts.

Emulating the public sector, cyber fusion centers in the enterprise aim to improve security by facilitating threat analysis and intel sharing across disparate areas of the business. Cyber fusion centers are usually initiated by the Security Operation Center (SOC). Unlike a SOC, which is primarily reactive, cyber fusion centers drive proactive activities to uncover new and emerging threats.

Properly resourced, your fusion center can tackle more than just cyber threats. Fraud, physical security threats, and risks to your brand’s reputation resulting in business loss are equally important to address. By assembling a team with representation from every corner of your business, you’re able to streamline, accelerate, and expand intelligence gathering while facilitating analysis and dissemination.

But how do you know if your organization is ready for a cyber fusion center?

Here are five signs you’re ready:

1. Your threat intelligence is siloed. As organizations scale, their ability to share knowledge across different business functions is inhibited. This is a result of each operation focusing on the unique objectives that help them drive success for the company. Yet, risks exist throughout the organization. Complicating matters, what one unit considers innocuous, may keep another up at night. A cyber fusion center brings leaders from all areas of the business together to have an honest conversation about risk. Doing so is an important first step toward breaking down silos.
2. Your team is overwhelmed with threat alerts. Although the risk isn’t exclusive to cyber, SOC analysts benefit from a wealth of threat data generated from their security stack. This can be a double-edged sword. Alert fatigue is a significant challenge, but tossing out data wholesale runs the danger of missing a real threat to the business. A fusion center can help set priorities for the SOC based on actual risk scenarios, provide anticipatory intel on emerging threats, and facilitate more impactful scoping of risk.
3. You struggle to define and qualify risk to leadership. Short of a recent breach, getting security buy-in from senior leadership can be an uphill battle. The cross-functional representation of your fusion center makes it easier to contextualize the value of an action or the significance of a specific risk. That context is critical to driving action.
4. You want to develop a proactive view of your adversaries. Behind every cyber-attack is a person with a motivation for their malicious behavior. Blocking attacks at the firewall and killing threats on your endpoints is fine, but if you can’t tie these attacks back to a “who” and “why” you are left in a position of playing security whack-a-mole.
5. You are considering one already. If you are asking whether your organization needs a cyber fusion center, you already do.

Want to learn more about building a cyber fusion center? Check out our podcast “Episode 41: The Cyber5 – Scaling a Cyber Fusion Center Using Threat Intelligence” or our Advanced Persistent Talks videocast “Building Cyber Fusion Centers.”

About Nisos®

Nisos is The Managed Intelligence Company®. Our services enable security, intelligence, and trust and safety teams to leverage a world-class intelligence capability tailored to their needs. We fuse robust data collection with a deep understanding of the adversarial mindset delivering smarter defense and more effective response against advanced cyber attacks, disinformation, and abuse of digital platforms.