Threat intelligence feeds come with a simple promise: Improve operational security by teaching security practitioners what Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) threat actors use in the real world. The more you know about threat actor strategies, the better you can defend against them.
But in practice, most threat feeds overwhelm defenders with low-context data that expires quickly, gives little insight into attacker behavior, and fails to prioritize the threats that matter most.
The result is a growing disconnect between threat intelligence and security operations. Without context into how adversaries actually operate, teams struggle to take action with confidence. To close that gap, security teams need more than data points. They need insights into the procedures used by adversaries, mapped to their environment and operationalized to strengthen coverage, close gaps, and reduce real risk.
The Problem with Traditional Threat Feeds
Early threat intelligence solutions were designed to track relatively stable and slow-moving adversaries. In the early 2000s when these platforms came out, threat actors could not easily launch automated campaigns from malicious websites spun up for mere hours at a time. Now they can.
This has led to a dramatic surge in threat feed volumes as attackers register new domains, launch attacks, get taken down, and repeat the process. This fills threat feeds with irrelevant indicators of compromise (IOCs) that are essentially dead-on-arrival.
This slows down operations for security teams that are already stretched thin. Instead of enabling faster, smarter responses, traditional threat feeds flood SIEMs and SOAR platforms with low-fidelity alerts that trigger investigations but rarely lead to meaningful action. The result is alert fatigue, missed threats, and wasted time.
Even when these feeds accurately describe relevant threats, they lack insight into how attackers behave once inside the network. Without procedural context into the the techniques specific adversaries use, analysts are left guessing which detections matter, which controls are effective, and where their actual exposures lie. Intelligence exists, but it can’t be operationalized fast enough to make a difference.
What Security Teams Actually Need
Increasingly sophisticated TTPs drive the need for threat intelligence that goes beyond detection and truly informs operational decision-making. That means shifting from indicator-based alerts to behavior-based context so teams can prioritize, measure, and act with confidence. The right kind of intelligence enables alignment across CTI, SOC, and engineering teams and connects threat data directly to defensive outcomes.
In practice, that means:
- Procedural intelligence that reveals how adversaries operate post-access, not just the artifacts they leave behind.
- TTP-level visibility that aligns to MITRE ATT&CK and maps behaviors to specific adversary groups, campaigns, and toolsets.
- Continuous relevance based on sector, geography, and tech stack, contextualized by real-world use case.
- Operational alignment to existing security tools and controls, highlighting what works, what doesn’t, and where coverage gaps exist.
- Prioritized action based on the behaviors most likely to impact their organization.
Enter Threat-Led Defense
Threat-Led Defense is a fundamental shift from chasing IOCs and puts adversary behavior at the center of your security strategy. This is the way defensive security should be. Instead of reacting to what attackers did last week, it focuses on how they operate today. By mapping defenses to real adversary behavior it solves one of the most critical challenges in modern defensive security: “Can you defend against the threats that matter most?”
Tidal Cyber was founded to make this shift not just possible, but practical. Built by the original creators of MITRE ATT&CK, Tidal Cyber’s platform operationalizes Threat-Led Defense by mapping procedure-level adversary behaviors to the tools, controls, and teams defending your environment. It gives you a clear picture of how attackers could move through your systems and how well you’re equipped to stop them. Threat-Led Defense was born out of the need to make operationalizing the MITRE ATT&CK framework accessible to everyone by mapping defenses and aligning them with ATT&CK TTPs.
Since MITRE ATT&CK® launched in 2015, security teams have increasingly leveraged its ATT&CK Tactics and Techniques to analyze behavior trends, assess security controls, and understand residual risk. However, with the inclusion of procedural level intelligence available as an industry-first capability by Tidal Cyber, Threat-Led Defense is enhanced with procedure-level granularity to make CTI more relevant and actionable.
How Procedural Intelligence Transforms Operational Security
Procedural intelligence takes threat modeling out of the realm of theory and embeds it directly into day-to-day operations. By focusing on how adversaries operate, security teams gain the precision needed to evaluate whether their defenses will really work in practice.
This level of intelligence improves the measurability and adaptability of security programs in several ways:
- Detection engineering gains clear prioritization based on actual attacker behavior, reducing redundant work and improving coverage.
- Threat hunting becomes faster and more focused, guided by known exposures in defenses against high-risk TTPs.
- Control validation shifts from compliance exercises to threat-informed benchmarking, revealing what defenses matter most and where to improve.
- Red and purple team efforts become more strategic, aligning test plans with sector-specific adversaries and procedures they are known to use.
The result is security operations are no longer reactive, driven by guesswork, or overwhelmed by low-fidelity alerts. Instead, procedural intelligence delivers clarity, alignment, and measurable impact.
Real-World Outcomes with Tidal Cyber
Embedding procedural intelligence into security workflows can yield immediate and measurable results.
One global financial services provider used Tidal Cyber to overhaul their detection engineering process. By mapping detections to adversary behaviors and automating coverage tracking, they improved detection coverage measurement efficiency by 10x, saving hundreds of analyst hours and accelerating time-to-insight across the SOC.
This kind of outcome isn’t limited to detection. Organizations also use Tidal to guide red team test development, prioritize threat hunts, validate controls, and justify new investments. With Tidal Cyber, every security decision can be grounded in a shared, data-driven understanding of how adversaries operate in the real world.
Delivering Value for Threat-Led Defense
Tidal Cyber’s new Procedures Library is deeply integrated with our Coverage Map and defensive Capabilities, giving defenders a decisive edge. Procedures represent how adversaries actually execute behaviors in the real world, bringing the clarity and specificity needed to move from high-level intel to concrete action.
By mapping these behaviors to detection logic, visibility needs, and specific tools in your stack, Tidal Cyber enables defenders to operationalize threat intelligence with precision. Whether you’re engineering detections, hunting threats, simulating adversaries, or prioritizing CTI, we make it easy to act on threat intelligence, not just collect it. Tidal Cyber turns insight into impact.