On the Integration of Course of Action Playbooks into Shareable Cyber Threat Intelligence

TL;DR

This paper presents a standardized metadata template for integrating course of action playbooks, like CACAO, into cyber threat intelligence systems to enhance interoperability and operational effectiveness.

Contribution

It introduces a uniform metadata template for managing and integrating course of action playbooks into knowledge systems, demonstrated through implementations in MISP and OASIS Threat Actor Context.

Findings

Successful integration of CACAO into MISP platform

Enhanced interoperability of threat intelligence data

Practical applicability demonstrated through use-case implementations

Abstract

Motivated by the introduction of CACAO, the first open standard that harmonizes the way we document courses of action in a machine-readable format for interoperability, and the benefits for cybersecurity operations derived from utilizing, and coupling and sharing course of action playbooks with cyber threat intelligence, we introduce a uniform metadata template that supports managing and integrating course of action playbooks into knowledge representation and knowledge management systems. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach through two use-case implementations. We utilize the playbook metadata template to introduce functionality and integrate course of action playbooks, such as CACAO, into the MISP threat intelligence platform and the OASIS Threat Actor Context ontology.