Advanced Persistent Threats were the big talking point of the security industry last year and they're still a force to be reckoned with as we enter the second quarter of 2015, but instead of engaging in a never-ending chase to capture the threats using a rule-based approach, companies are increasingly turning to the concept of the Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP), a community-based method of having a fighting chance against aggressively dynamic threats.

Robert McNutt, a systems engineer at ForeScout Technologies, explains how TIPs work and why they hold increasing importance in the security industry as part of his blog post, "The Year of TIP" in which he examines the interactions between data loss prevention, access control and encryption systems that were once plagued by a lack of common language but which are now able to collaborate due to TIP technology.

There is still some way to go in achieving a completely unified approach to community security systems, as Robert explains, but he believes that this is the year that the sheer weight of demand on the security industry will bear fruit and the needed interactivity between disparate systems will start to knit together into an integrated fabric.

"The Year of TIP" blog can be found on the ForeScout Technologies web site.

Jonathan Newell is a broadcast and technical journalist specialising in security systems and transport safety. He contributes to a range of titles in the technical press. He shares his time between the UK and Kazakhstan