Adversary Behavior Outlasts the Ransomware Brand | A Brand Briefing at Black Hat USA 2026 with Michael DeBolt, President and Chief Intelligence Officer of Intel 471 | Hosted by Sean Martin

Proactive and actionable get used a lot in security, and Michael DeBolt, President and Chief Intelligence Officer at Intel 471, is direct about it. Inside Intel 471, proactive means moving past indicators of compromise, which he describes as temporary, and focusing on adversary behavior instead. Indicators still get blocked. Intent, capability, and motivation are what tell a defender whether they are actually a target. So what is pre-attack intelligence? It is information gathered from inside adversary communities before an attack is launched, built on embedded access to the places where financially motivated actors communicate. DeBolt sets aside the deep and dark web framing, arguing the phrase suggests a space nobody can reach. Mapping it reveals a structured ecosystem of financially motivated cybercrime, with enabling services operating alongside the actors themselves. Why track actors rather than ransomware groups? Because operators move and behaviors stay. Many current groups are staffed by people who ran earlier groups that have since disbanded, and techniques travel with them. A threat hunt built around the behavior holds up whether that person is operating under one banner, another, or on their own. Intel 471 maps techniques to the MITRE framework, which lets a consuming team run threat profiling and decide which actors present more risk than others. The same logic applies to exposure work. An organization scanning its attack surface and finding internet facing vulnerabilities can ask which threat actors are discussing those vulnerabilities, and whether that moves an item to the top of the list. The CISO conversations DeBolt describes land on numbers most security leaders already report on. Mean time to respond, mean time to detect, and alert volume that can absorb half or more of an analyst's day. He uses the phrase decision grade intelligence for intel that informs security operations rather than sitting beside it, with integrations pushing it straight into analyst workflows. Two customer situations show the daily version. Intel 471 helped an organization locate an insider after its own monitoring flagged something unusual. Separately, initial access brokers advertise compromised credentials that feed ransomware operations downstream, and since actors lie and embellish, validating those claims is part of the work. DeBolt closes on a note that sits right next to everyone's AI investment. Credentials, identity, internet facing vulnerabilities, and open remote access tools are still how attackers get in. GUEST Michael DeBolt, President and Chief Intelligence Officer, Intel 471 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdebolt/ RESOURCES Black Hat USA 2026 Event Coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/black-hat-usa-2026-cybersecurity-event-coverage-in-las-vegas Learn more about Intel 471: https://www.intel471.com/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight ▶︎ Get your own Brand Briefing at an upcoming event: https://www.studioc60.com/buy-brand-briefings KEYWORDS Michael DeBolt, Intel 471, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand spotlight, cyber threat intelligence, pre-attack intelligence, adversary behavior, ransomware, initial access brokers, insider threat, MITRE framework, threat hunting, decision grade intelligence, compromised credentials, attack surface, cybercrime underground, Black Hat USA 2026