Cybersecurity is often likened to a game of whack-a-mole, where hackers are constantly searching for new avenues of attack. The moment one threat is extinguished, they’ll refine their tactics, exploit new vulnerabilities and pop up in another part of the network. Organizations have to stay on their toes, always ready and waiting to snuff out whatever risk emerges next.
It’s an exhausting game. Teams can feel as if they’re constantly on the defensive, reacting to put out one fire, only to immediately spot another one flaring up somewhere else.
This is why solid threat intelligence is so highly prized by security teams. A threat intelligence report provides a detailed breakdown of the latest cyber threats, vulnerabilities and techniques used by hackers to slip past organization's defenses. Rather than wading through a sea of false positives, security teams can use it to stay one step ahead by focusing on the most pressing risks, moving from a reactive to a proactive strategy.
Threat intelligence comes in different shapes and sizes. In general, we can break down a threat intelligence report into three main categories, with each one targeted at a different audience within organizations.
Strategic threat reports are like a boardroom briefing. They tend to contain higher level information focused on the broader threat landscape within a particular industry. They’re usually aimed at executives, aiming to answer questions regarding the most prevalent security trends and threats their business faces. They discuss how these trends might impact a company’s overall risk profile and the potential consequences of falling victim to these kinds of attacks.
The content will typically provide insights about the main threat actors, such as state-sponsored hacking groups or profit-driven cybercrime groups, discuss their motivations and targets and the kinds of attacks and techniques they’re using.
For instance, Google's 2025 annual M-Trends report revealed that 55% of threat groups last year were motivated by financial gain, marking a steady increase from the prior year. Just 8% of threat groups were driven by espionage. It also highlighted the most common initial infection vectors, with exploits leading the way with 33%, followed by stolen credentials at 16%.
Tactical reports dig deeper, looking to provide more technical and actionable intelligence for senior security professionals and analysts. Their main purpose is to reveal the most common tactics, techniques and procedures used by specific threat actors. For instance, they’ll break down the latest variants of malware and ransomware, the vulnerabilities they exploit and their modus operandi. It’s a bit like a cyberattacker’s playbook, detailing their expected moves so that security teams can prepare their defenses accordingly.
Indicative of this is Hoxhunt’s 2026 Threat Intelligence Report on tactics, trends and risks, which offers an extensive look at phishing attacks. It describes how Salesforce’s mailing services have become one of the most popular avenues used by attackers, often using the noreply@salesforce.com email address. The report digs deeper, exploring how many attacks have evolved to leverage Salesforce’s extensive marketing cloud ecosystem and exploit new delivery mechanisms. It explains why malicious emails from Salesforce-owned domains increased from 0.6% at the beginning of the year to more than 1.8% by June.
This is just the kind of rich detail that security teams need to stay informed and predict where the next attack is likely to come from. Using these insights, organizations can be proactive in defending against these threats, such as by blacklisting risky domains and updating their employee training programs.
Operational intelligence is often more precise, referring to the specific attack vectors currently in fashion. It usually comes in the form of bespoke reports created internally. They’ll generally include details about the most active threat actors’ profiles, indicators of compromise such as malicious domain names and IP addresses, the current phishing templates they’re using and the targets they’re going after.
Imagine a security alert flares up. The notification provides only a single data point – a seemingly random IP address. Security teams are aware something has happened, but beyond that they know little else. This is where operational threat intelligence comes into play, providing much-needed context. Operational intelligence can tell the security team which specific threat actor that IP address belongs to, along with rich detail about the group’s activities, targets and methods of attack.
For instance, it might reveal that the IP address 1.5.3.6.3 has previously been observed targeting financial organizations using a specific kind of spear-phishing email disguised as a customer’s invoice. This level of detail can be invaluable, enabling incident response teams to quickly thwart an attacker at their door.
Armed with accurate threat intelligence reports, companies can take proactive steps to shore up their cyberdefenses. By studying the latest trends and attack patterns, it’s possible to predict where the bad guys will strike next, and take steps to stop them in their tracks before they can pull it off.
We saw this happen en masse in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when companies began to pivot to remote work models in response to lockdowns. Threat intelligence warned of the urgent risks associated with workers logging into networks remotely, enabling forward-thinking security teams to switch from perimeter-based security to zero-trust models that employ continuous authentication to prevent breaches.
Each type of threat intelligence informs a different aspect of security strategy. In the case of strategic threat intelligence, executive decision-makers should use these reports to identify the most prevalent security risks they face, allocate resources and proactively shape their long-term security strategy. If a report indicates that an industry is being targeted using a specific kind of malware or phishing attack, organizations can prioritize their defenses to protect against it.
Tactical intelligence is great for running attack simulations and creating training scenarios for security teams. Teams can simulate attacks from known adversaries to test their responses and identify gaps in their network defenses. Should any glaring holes show up, teams will hopefully have time to plug them before a real attacker shows up.
Finally, operational threat intelligence is more granular, used by security teams to configure their security controls with the utmost precision in order to prevent specific threat types. These insights can be extremely powerful. For instance, if an organization receives intelligence about a particular indicator of compromise, such as a new kind of spear phishing attack, it can take steps to block that threat on its firewall, email and proxy gateways. Doing this might prevent a flood of malicious emails from landing in employees’ inboxes.
By studying the latest threat intelligence, security teams can adopt an adversary-focused approach and fend off the most likely attacks. They’ll be able to make informed guesses about where the next attack will happen, how it will happen, and sometimes even when it will happen. By watching the most likely entry points, prioritizing the right alerts and having an effective response plan in place, organizations can respond immediately to most incidents, reducing the risk of data breaches and preventing any major fallout.
Threat intelligence reports offer no guarantees. They won’t put a stop to the endless game of cybersecurity whack-a-mole, but they'll make sure you’re ready for when the bad guys pop up next.