Sixty-four percent of global security decision makers recognize that improving their threat intelligence capabilities is a high or critical priority. Nevertheless, companies across many industries fail to develop a strategy for achieving this. Among the many reasons why organizations struggle to develop a threat intelligence capability, two stand out: Developing a mature threat intelligence program is expensive, and it’s difficult to determine viable protections without a cohesive message of what works effectively. Fortunately, the digital risk protection (DRP) market provides a solution to the threat intelligence problem for both enterprises and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) alike.

Digital risk protection services substantially improve an organization’s ability to mitigate risk by providing the organization with actionable and relevant intelligence. By simulating an outsider’s perspective of an organization’s digital presence, security professionals working for the organization can better determine which of their assets are most at risk and develop solutions to better protect those assets. Additionally, DRP services can be utilized to protect a company’s reputation by scouring the web for instances of data fraud, breaches, phishing attempts, and more.

While organizations of all sizes often struggle to develop cyberintelligence capabilities, it can be especially difficult for SMBs working with a tight budget. Fortunately, the DRP industry has found its competitive edge by developing services that cater to the needs of SMBs. DRP vendors today provide managed services by collecting information, reviewing threats, and assigning priority to issues, which means smaller organizations no longer need to hire their own proprietary teams to carry out these tasks. With the median DRP services program for SMBs priced at $45,000, and with services starting at $15,000, the DRP market has leveraged itself as a modestly priced solution toward developing your cyberintelligence strategy. Today, 24% of DRP deals are with companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, which shows how SMBs are beginning to adopt these services in large numbers.

To learn more about the DRP market and how to use the intelligence cycle to start bolstering your threat intelligence capabilities, please read my latest collaboration with Trevor Lyness, “The Digital Risk Protection Market In 2019.” This report outlines the returns of investing in the DRP market, how to use these returns to reinvest in your threat intelligence framework, and the ways in which various departments in an organization can benefit from DRP services. It also covers some of the steps you can take to effectively utilize DRP services as a stepping stone toward building your larger cyberintelligence program.

(written with Benjamin Corey, research associate)