IBM X-Force Steps Up

IBM has had a lot of news lately in the incident response world, with new capabilities and new acquisitions. What excites me, however, is the organic growth and extension of X-Force into IBM X-Force Incident Response Services.

Back when X-Force was founded, researchers were focused on specific topics like vulnerabilities. As the group has evolved, so has the breadth of coverage, which now includes spam, Web applications, botnet analysis, malware, mobile research and fraud campaigns.

It’s an exciting time when the IBM X-Force name also stands for applied expertise directly to our clients through actual on-site engagements.

Machine-Generated Data

X-Force is a busy group of people that could not accomplish what it does without a substantive quantity of data — whether it’s the sizable vulnerability database, 25 billion URLs and images, 860,000 IP addresses, 270 million endpoints or even the 15 billion security events a year from our managed security services clients. That is literally more data can you can shake a USB stick at, and we have the reports to prove it.

Before the advent of X-Force Exchange, that data was housed in corners of the organization, where you could get to it if you knew the right person or the right website. With the openness of X-Force Exchange, however, anyone — whether they are an IBMer or a client or even a fellow security provider — is welcome to research, inquire and collaborate with the wealth of machine-generated intelligence.

The collaboration of users within X-Force Exchange adds human context to threat intelligence to further refine the value of the data, particularly as X-Force practitioners, from researchers in the lab to those deployed on client sites, contribute insights and commentary on the threat observables in the platform.

Enhanced Security Products and Services

Long before X-Force Exchange was available, X-Force expertise was worked into a variety of products such as network protection, security intelligence and more. Threat intelligence is the foundation of and refining quality for a range of solutions. Whether it’s automatic blocking rules in a network protection product, securing cloud applications for employee use or refining prioritization of security events to prioritize investigations, the value of additional threat intelligence is clear.

Insight from X-Force permeates IBM Security as possibly the least secret sauce ever. Until last year, these insights were distributed via our products and in published reports and various speaking events, but not on an as-needed or on-call basis. That began to change in X-Force Exchange as researchers (as noted with a blue bar on their avatar) posted publicly and created collections focused on emerging threats and original research. With the advent of X-Force Incident Response, that same expertise can now come to you when you need it.

Real-World Engagements

Whether you are experiencing a breach or developing response plans to prepare for the worst, the same discipline that built the foundation of threat intelligence that saturates IBM Security is now available with a phone call. The combination of threat intelligence and applied insights is a dynamic duo, but the additional capability of making it actionable makes X-Force a triple threat.

Interested in emerging security threats? Read the latest IBM X-Force Research

More from X-Force

Strela Stealer: Today’s invoice is tomorrow’s phish

12 min read - As of November 2024, IBM X-Force has tracked ongoing Hive0145 campaigns delivering Strela Stealer malware to victims throughout Europe - primarily Spain, Germany and Ukraine. The phishing emails used in these campaigns are real invoice notifications, which have been stolen through previously exfiltrated email credentials. Strela Stealer is designed to extract user credentials stored in Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. During the past 18 months, the group tested various techniques to enhance its operation's effectiveness. Hive0145 is likely to be…

Hive0147 serving juicy Picanha with a side of Mekotio

17 min read - IBM X-Force tracks multiple threat actors operating within the flourishing Latin American (LATAM) threat landscape. X-Force has observed Hive0147 to be one of the most active threat groups operating in the region, targeting employee inboxes at scale, with a primary focus on phishing and malware distribution. After a 3-month break, Hive0147 returned in July with even larger campaign volumes, and the debut of a new malicious downloader X-Force named "Picanha,” likely under continued development, deploying the Mekotio banking trojan. Hive0147…

FYSA – Critical RCE Flaw in GNU-Linux Systems

2 min read - Summary The first of a series of blog posts has been published detailing a vulnerability in the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS), which purportedly allows attackers to gain remote access to UNIX-based systems. The vulnerability, which affects various UNIX-based operating systems, can be exploited by sending a specially crafted HTTP request to the CUPS service. Threat Topography Threat Type: Remote code execution vulnerability in CUPS service Industries Impacted: UNIX-based systems across various industries, including but not limited to, finance, healthcare,…

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