Facebook has recently launched a new, dedicated social platform called ThreatExchange. It aims to allow security experts to come together, collaborate and benefit from each other’s information. With cybercrime on the rise, this is a welcome step and could help prevent several large scale attacks in the future.

What is ThreatExchange?

ThreatExchange is a social network for companies that allows them to share important information about all kinds of online threats. This includes information about bad URLs, malware, phishing, large scale cyber attacks and more. Many major attempts to breach security in the past have remained unnoticed until it was too late. ThreatExchange hopes to change that. Initial partners to ThreatExchange include the companies Bitly, Dropbox, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, and Yahoo.

According to the information on the official website:

ThreatExchange is a platform created by Facebook that enables security professionals anywhere to share threat information more easily, learn from each other’s discoveries, and make their own systems safer. We included a set of privacy controls so that participants can help protect any sensitive data by specifying who can see the threat information they contribute.

That’s the beauty of working together on security. When one company gets stronger, so do the rest of us.

Why is it necessary?

In the past few months the internet has been plagued with several attacks from different hacker groups and cybercriminals, with the attack on Sony as the most prominent example. Apart from disrupting services, such attacks also lead to privacy leaks and data breaches. Recent cyber attacks on large internet-based companies is probably what caught Facebook’s attention.

As useful as it may seem, the effectiveness of any network depends on those who use it. Now it is up to security professionals and companies to make use of this mutually beneficial system to reduce response time to threats and discover vulnerabilities before they are widely exploited.

Have a nice (malware-free) day!