Critical Start Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) is a managed threat intelligence service that monitors dark web forums, marketplaces, chats, open-source news, and ISAC partnerships to identify emerging threats targeting organizations. The CTI team reviews approximately 4,000 unique data points weekly across these sources and delivers actionable intelligence to customers. Intelligence is produced at three levels: - Strategic: Supports business decisions such as M&A analysis, policy, and budget planning - Operational: Informs playbook development, threat hunting activities, and tabletop exercises - Tactical: Enables creation of threat detection content and supports rapid mitigation The service includes malware analysis and reverse engineering, where analysts examine source code of newly discovered malware samples to uncover attack patterns and unique fingerprints. This analysis is used to develop new detections. Threat research is conducted continuously to identify new adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Intelligence produced by the CTI team is shared with internal MDR teams to accelerate detection development and reduce attacker dwell time, and is also passed directly to MDR customers with remediation guidance.