In the world of technology, things are constantly moving and changing — and cybersecurity is not an exception. As the good guys get smarter, the bad guys get sneakier and stealthier. This is especially true of malware, which has evolved dramatically in the last couple of years.

We’re now seeing malware with artificial intelligence (AI) that is capable of mutating and even automatically detecting whether it is being run inside a sandbox. Due to this challenge, adoption of malware analysis has been on the rise in recent years. Does this mean that every company should start analyzing malware? The short answer is no.

How to Know If Malware Analysis Is Right for You

There are two main reasons why it may not be the right time for a company to invest in a malware analysis team. First, many enterprises don’t have the resources to build and maintain such a team. Second, there are a lot of companies out there that specialize in malware analysis, many of which provide an on-demand service that generates indicators of compromise (IoCs) and makes them available to the public for free.

For some companies, it may not make sense to have a team dedicated to analyzing malicious code because the business does not specialize in that area. It would be difficult to imagine an energy company investing in a malware analysis team, for example, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t use threat intelligence gathered by malware specialists. Even though most organizations don’t have to worry about malware analysis, they all need to worry about their security. Integrating a system that can alert security teams based on IoCs generated by specialized companies is a great way to enhance security on a budget.

Enhance Enterprise Security on a Budget

Publicly shared IoCs are a great resource and can help businesses identify the presence of malware in their infrastructure, despite their inability to analyze malicious code. Ingesting these types of IoCs can help security teams detect malware without analyzing the code itself.

For companies that want to have more visibility into network activity but lack the ability to analyze malware, using what is publicly available and developed by specialized companies around the world could be the difference between a malware infection and a crisis.