Talk about federation or decentralization in certain online circles, and you're bound to get some heated opinions. Technologists love nothing more than making a cause out of a tool, be it an operating system, browser, text editor, or communications protocol. And believe me, we have more than a few of those opinions around here (most of them mine, probably).

But this isn't about that. We're building a human network. The technology is just a means, not an end.

Most of what we want to do can be accomplished with thoughtful implementations of existing technologies. We want to discover the best ways to use them, then teach others how to do so for themselves, building a network of intelligence collectors and sharers independent of governmental or commercial hubs. There's a version of that network that functions entirely with what's already out there, and that will be the starting point. But we also believe something fundamental about what should come next: The future of threat intelligence is social

Leave aside the firehose of IP addresses, domains, and file hashes. Leave aside the we-assess-with-medium-confidence PDFs you pay for but rarely read. The richest, most valuable cyber threat intelligence lies in the connections between passionate professionals sharing what they know. In the days of yore, this occurred in places like Twitter (note: not X). For some, that conversation moved to places like Mastodon or Bluesky. For others, more private communities emerged on platforms like Discord. Heck, even LinkedIn can have valuable information for practitioners. Regardless of platform, what mattered was the person-to-person connection. "I saw this and I'm sharing it with you." It's simple, yet powerful.

That kind of sharing is the cornerstone of IFIN's mission. We know we want to encourage and improve the experience of sharing threat intelligence in social spaces.We have some ideas about how that might look, but if we properly follow the design thinking process, our first objective is listening. We want to hear from you about what you think a future social intelligence network should look like. Maybe it's a forum like our Discourse—that's certainly where we're starting the conversation. Maybe it looks like the Fediverse, where many of us came from to start IFIN. Maybe it's an emerging technology like ATProto. Maybe it's something entirely new. We have some ideas, but we really want to hear yours.

Whatever the technological substrate, it must facilitate human connection first and foremost. No matter how decentralized it is, if it fails to connect people with shared knowledge, it fails utterly.

We want you to help shape the future of threat intelligence. In fact, we can't do it without you. Please consider joining the conversation—which is to say, joining the human network.