Table of contents
- What is Google Threat Intelligence?
- Key features of Google Threat Intelligence
- How Google Threat Intelligence works
- Benefits for organizations
- From intelligence to action
The ability to detect and respond to threats in real time is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. Organizations must go beyond traditional defense mechanisms and actively seek out knowledge about attackers, their tools, and their tactics.
That’s exactly where Google Threat Intelligence (GTI) comes in. Backed by the power of Google Cloud, the expertise of Mandiant, and the global reach of VirusTotal, GTI delivers actionable threat intelligence designed to anticipate attacks and enable a faster, more informed response.
In this article, we will see what Google Threat Intelligence is, how it works, what features distinguish it, and how it can be used concretely to protect infrastructure, data, and people.
What is Google Threat Intelligence?
In today’s complex and ever-evolving cyber security landscape, knowing where to look—and doing it before the attackers do—is the foundation of a strong defense.
This is the mission at the core of Google Threat Intelligence (GTI), a platform launched by Google in 2024 to aggregate, analyze, and operationalize cyber threat data on a global scale.
But GTI is not just another feed of indicators or a daily threat bulletin. It’s a fully integrated ecosystem, designed to give organizations a clear, actionable view of the cyber threats that matter most—with context, expert insight, and the ability to act in real time.
GTI is powered by three key pillars:
- The massive telemetry and processing capabilities of Google, which protect billions of users across services like Gmail, Chrome, Android, and Google Cloud.
- The deep threat analysis expertise of Mandiant, a world-renowned leader in cyber threat intelligence and incident response.
- The collaborative, community-powered intelligence of VirusTotal, a platform that receives and analyzes millions of suspicious files and URLs every single day.
By combining these strengths, GTI becomes more than just a source of data—it becomes a living, operational platform that tells you not only what’s happening, but also who’s behind it, what their tactics are, what they’re targeting, and what you should do about it.
GTI is built to be actionable. That means the intelligence it provides is not only relevant but also directly usable: enriched with context, mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, and packaged with detection rules, technical indicators, and ready-to-execute recommendations.
Whether you’re dealing with a live attack or building a proactive threat intelligence strategy, GTI adapts to your needs. It enables your team to monitor active campaigns, understand attacker behavior, and deploy defenses faster than ever before.
In short, Google Threat Intelligence doesn’t just show you what’s out there—it gives you the tools to fight back.
Key features of Google Threat Intelligence
What truly sets Google Threat Intelligence (GTI) apart is its unmatched visibility into the global threat landscape.
Leveraging the scale and reach of Google’s infrastructure, GTI processes insights from billions of users, millions of daily events, and hundreds of thousands of hours of expert investigations—all to help organizations see, understand, and anticipate threats before they strike.
Know who’s targeting you and how
Unlike many threat intel platforms that deliver long lists of IP addresses or malware hashes, GTI provides deep insight into threat actors, their motivations, and how they operate.
Example
If you’re working in the energy sector and experience a phishing campaign, GTI might reveal that the attack aligns with an ongoing campaign by a known threat group (e.g., APT28).
Through GTI, you could instantly access:
- The attacker profile and threat actor attribution
- Detailed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework
- Exploited vulnerabilities (e.g., CVE-2023-23397 in Microsoft Outlook)
- A collection of IOC feeds (Indicators of Compromise) ready for integration into your defense tools
This contextualized visibility allows you not only to respond, but to anticipate and disrupt the attack chain.
Real-time dashboards with actionable intel
GTI’s intuitive interface includes dynamic dashboards that keep your security team informed in real time. These dashboards offer:
- Live tracking of ongoing threat campaigns targeting your industry or region
- An overview of active malware, including families, variants, and distribution tactics
- High-risk vulnerabilities currently being exploited in the wild, prioritized by relevance to your environment
Example
If a zero-day is discovered in Apache, GTI won’t just alert you to the CVE. It will tell you who’s exploiting it, how it’s being used in the wild, and what types of systems are most affected—so you can act accordingly.
From intelligence to immediate action
A major advantage of GTI is its ability to bridge the gap between threat insight and operational response. Instead of manually copying IOCs into different tools, GTI lets you:
- Automatically integrate IOC feeds into your SIEM, EDR, XDR, SOAR, or firewalls
- Deploy ready-made YARA or Snort rules for real-time detection
- Enforce blocklists at the network, DNS, or proxy level using curated threat data
- Get remediation guidance tailored to your infrastructure
Expertise built into the platform
One of GTI’s greatest assets is the human intelligence behind the platform. This isn’t a tool driven solely by automation or AI—it’s backed by the world-class threat analysts from Mandiant.
That means every dataset, advisory, and attribution has been vetted and enriched by real experts. And this expertise is available directly within the platform, through:
- Live assistance and advisory support during incidents
- Strategic consulting to help you evolve your detection and response capabilities
- In-platform learning paths and threat intelligence training for your team
In summary, Google Threat Intelligence goes far beyond just aggregating threat data. It delivers a holistic threat operations environment, where insights, tools, visibility, and expert guidance converge—enabling your team to move faster, act smarter, and defend stronger at every stage of the security lifecycle.
How Google Threat Intelligence works
At the core of Google Threat Intelligence (GTI) is a sophisticated system that combines massive global data collection with advanced AI-driven analysis and the expertise of seasoned human analysts.
The goal is simple yet ambitious: to turn vast amounts of raw threat data into meaningful, actionable insights that can power real-time decisions and defenses.
Data collection: a global and multi-layered feed
The first step in GTI’s process is acquiring threat data from a diverse network of trusted and unique sources:
- Google Cloud and consumer services like Gmail, Chrome, and Android contribute signals from billions of users and endpoints, allowing Google to spot phishing campaigns, malware trends, and exploit attempts as they emerge in the wild.
- VirusTotal, which receives and scans over 3 million suspicious files and URLs every day, contributes crowdsourced threat intelligence enriched with behavioral analysis and sandbox results.
- Mandiant, Google’s elite threat intelligence and incident response unit, provides deep insights from real-world investigations and adversary tracking.
- Security communities and open-source feeds, offering indicators, reports, and TTPs gathered from researchers and public intelligence platforms.
This rich and diverse data flow gives GTI an exceptional breadth and depth of visibility—capable of detecting new threats before they become global crises.
Intelligent analysis: turning data into insight
Once the data is collected, the next step is analysis—powered by two core components:
Advanced machine learning models that:
- Identify behavioral patterns across multiple data streams
- Prioritize threats based on real-world risk and exploitability
- Correlate seemingly unrelated indicators to uncover coordinated campaigns
Gemini, Google’s generative AI engine, which acts as a virtual threat analyst—constantly working to:
- Filter out noise and eliminate irrelevant or redundant alerts
- Summarize complex threats in plain language
- Adapt its results over time to match the unique risk profile of your organization
Real-world example: Gemini in action
Imagine a SOC analyst detects unusual traffic from IP addresses in Eastern Europe. Instead of combing through raw logs, they query GTI with the observed IOC. Within seconds, Gemini returns a concise summary like:
“The IPs are associated with a phishing campaign by APT28 targeting energy infrastructure. The attack exploits CVE-2023-23397 (Outlook vulnerability) using Excel documents with embedded macros. Detection rules and mitigation steps are available below.”
With one query, the analyst receives context, attribution, TTPs, and ready-to-deploy defenses—saving hours of manual investigation.
Use case: automatic alert enrichment
GTI can integrate seamlessly with your SIEM to automatically enrich alerts. For example, a raw alert containing just a suspicious file hash can be enriched with:
- Threat actor attribution
- Linked malware families and campaigns
- MITRE ATT&CK techniques
- Relevant YARA rules
- Actionable recommendations
Sample Code (Simulated API Call)
import requests
import json
headers = {
"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY",
"Content-Type": "application/json"
}
query = {
"indicator": "185.172.132.45",
"type": "ip"
}
response = requests.post("https://api.gti.google.com/v1/enrich", headers=headers, data=json.dumps(query))
if response.status_code == 200:
data = response.json()
print("Threat Level:", data.get("threat_level"))
print("Actor:", data.get("actor_name"))
print("TTPs:", data.get("attack_patterns"))
print("Recommendations:", data.get("mitigation_steps"))
else:
print("Request failed:", response.status_code)This kind of integration allows SOC teams to automate context-building and move from alert to action in a fraction of the time.
In summary, I think of Google Threat Intelligence as a smart radar: it constantly scans the threat landscape using some of the most powerful lenses available—Google’s global infrastructure, expert analysis from Mandiant, and AI from Gemini. It processes all that data into actionable, understandable, and personalized intelligence, helping security teams make better, faster decisions and reduce risk across the board.
Benefits for organizations
Adopting Google Threat Intelligence (GTI) means shifting from a reactive posture—where action happens after a breach—to a proactive approach, where threats are anticipated, contextualized, and neutralized before they can cause damage.
GTI isn’t just another intelligence feed; it’s a fully operational platform that helps security teams make faster, smarter, and more strategic decisions. Let’s explore the key benefits GTI brings to organizations—and how they translate into real impact.
Enriched IOC data and smarter alert prioritization
Security analysts are often overwhelmed by thousands of alerts, many of which turn out to be false positives. GTI addresses this challenge with context-aware threat scoring, prioritizing alerts not just based on raw indicators but on how relevant and dangerous they are to your organization.
Example
An IP address reported in your SIEM could be simply an anonymous proxy… or a resource actively used by a ransomware group. GTI links that IP to a specific campaign, known TTPs, timestamps, and preferred targets. This way, the alert is only classified as high priority if it represents a real threat to your environment.
Faster and more effective incident response
When incidents strike, speed is everything. GTI provides forensic tools, enriched metadata, detection rules, and visual correlation maps—allowing your team to understand and respond in minutes, not hours.
Example
You’re analyzing a malware dropper. With GTI, you instantly get:
- The malware family name
- Behavioral analysis from VirusTotal
- Related hashes and C2 infrastructure
- YARA detection rules ready to deploy
This cuts investigation time dramatically and ensures your response is based on solid intel—not guesswork.
Targeted threat hunting and risk-based monitoring
GTI enables teams to build custom risk profiles based on their industry, location, tech stack, and threat exposure. It delivers tailored insights, ensuring your team focuses on threats that are actually relevant.
Example
A financial institution in North America configures GTI to prioritize Iranian and North Korean APT groups known for targeting banks. Instead of wasting time on irrelevant alerts, the SOC receives focused intelligence on threat actors, phishing lures, and exploit tools currently active in their vertical.
External threat monitoring and brand protection
GTI doesn’t just defend what’s inside your network. Its external threat monitoring feature lets you watch for:
- Phishing sites that impersonate your brand
- Corporate credentials stolen from underground forums
- Assets exposed online (e.g. unprotected S3 buckets)
- Malware that exploits cloud infrastructure to spread
Example
A company receives a warning from GTI: its domain has been cloned in an active phishing campaign. The malicious domain, the server IP, and a script to automatically block DNS in the company network are already available within the console.
Smarter vulnerability management
Rather than rely solely on CVSS scores, GTI incorporates real-world exploitation data to prioritize patching. This means you patch what’s actively being used in attacks, not just what’s technically risky.
Example
Two vulnerabilities have the same CVSS score. GTI shows that one is being used in live ransomware campaigns, while the other is theoretical. Your team patches the real risk first, making more strategic use of limited resources.
A unified Threat Intelligence console
All these capabilities are delivered via GTI’s Threat Intelligence Workbench—a single, unified interface where security teams can:
- Conduct threat research with filters, tags, and visualizations
- Create and share threat graphs between analysts
- Collaborate in real time across distributed teams
- Integrate MITRE ATT&CK visual mappings into investigations
From intelligence to action
Many threat intel tools stop at delivering data. GTI goes further by embedding intelligence into real-time security operations.
- Enrich alerts automatically
- Get real-time help from Mandiant analysts
- Integrate feeds and APIs into SIEM, XDR, SOAR, and firewall tools
- Leverage Gemini AI for summarization, analysis, and smarter decision-making
With GTI, security teams can respond to emerging threats in minutes, not weeks.
Conclusion
With Google Threat Intelligence, cyber threat defense becomes an intelligent, collaborative, AI-powered process. It’s not just about data, but about contextualized information, operational tools, and strategic support that help you make faster, more targeted decisions.
In an era of increasingly targeted attacks, GTI is the right tool to anticipate, identify, and respond, before threats have an impact.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Google Threat Intelligence?
It’s a cloud-native threat intelligence platform combining data from Google, Mandiant, and VirusTotal. - What makes GTI different?
Unrivaled visibility, integrated AI (Gemini), and direct support from Mandiant analysts. - Can GTI integrate with existing security tools?
Yes, via APIs, JSON feeds, and STIX/TAXII standards. - Does GTI support incident response teams?
Absolutely—offering enriched IOC data, visual analysis, and expert support. - Can I receive real-time alerts?
Yes, with configurable daily or weekly threat updates. - Is GTI suitable for small teams?
Yes, the platform is scalable for organizations of all sizes. - What does Gemini do in GTI?
It provides AI-generated summaries, insights, and prioritization tailored to your risk profile. - Can I research specific threat actors or campaigns?
Yes, with access to profiles, TTPs, and campaign tracking. - How much does GTI cost?
Pricing is subscription-based—contact Google Cloud Sales for details. - Is a demo available?
Yes, you can request a demo to explore GTI’s capabilities.
