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Last updated: April 29, 2026
Buying IOC feeds is the easy part. Operationalising them without false positives is the hard part.
Buying IOC feeds is the easy part. Operationalising them without false positives is the hard part.
IOC lifecycle
- Ingest from source
- Score (confidence, source reputation)
- Enrich (WHOIS, geolocation, ASN, related campaigns)
- Match against telemetry
- Decay — IOCs age out (IPs rotate, domains expire)
- Retire — remove from active matching after N days
Quality signals
- Source reputation (paid feeds > aggregator feeds)
- Recency (week-old > month-old)
- Confidence (high > medium > low)
- Context (linked to specific campaign > standalone)
False-positive management
- Whitelists (CDN IPs, common SaaS, partner organisations)
- Confidence thresholds — only act on high-confidence; alert on medium
- Ageing — old IOC in low-confidence feed = retire fast
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