Intel 471 has announced its new Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) Maturity Pulse Check, a free, lightweight self-assessment for practitioners based on the Cyber Threat Intelligence Capability Maturity Model (CTI-CMM v1.3).

The CTI Maturity Pulse Check offers a quick, structured way for organizations to reflect on their CTI program’s current capabilities, highlight areas that warrant a closer look and help security teams prepare for a more thorough assessment using the official CTI-CMM tool.

“The CTI-CMM is a community-driven framework designed to give security teams a clear roadmap for improving how they support their wider business,” said Michael DeBolt, President and Chief Intelligence Officer of Intel 471.

“We created this streamlined version to make the framework more accessible for busy practitioners who want to kickstart internal planning for more comprehensive CTI program evaluations. The assessment is also free to support the broader CTI community amidst rapidly evolving cyber and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven threats in today’s cybersecurity landscape,” DeBolt continued.

The 2026 SANS Cyber Threat Intelligence Survey found that 43% of CTI programs do not track maturity over time. At the same time, only 26% of CISOs feel CTI truly drives strategic decisions. Establishing a maturity baseline that teams can measure against is what allows them to make a data-backed case for budget and build the cross-functional buy-in needed to influence those strategic decisions.

The CTI Maturity Pulse Check distills each of the 11 CTI-CMM domains into a single representative question with answers mapped to the model’s maturity scale. In just 10–15 minutes, cybersecurity professionals can identify domains that warrant closer examination to mature their operation and prepare for a more thorough assessment using the official CTI-CMM self-assessment tool.

The CTI Maturity Pulse Check is designed for practitioners, program leaders and security executives. It provides a final evaluation that includes the highest priority gaps and five next steps to uplevel maturity, created to be readable at each level. After completing the survey, users will receive their overall maturity tier, which will under the following categories:

  • Emerging: Capability is being established; little structure and limited reach
  • Reactive: Responds to events and requests but doesn’t yet drive proactive work
  • Operational: Intelligence is consistently produced and integrated, but influence is still primarily technical
  • Intelligence-led: The program shapes decisions, not just operations — driving strategy, risk prioritization, and executive action

“Our goal is to help CTI teams at any level identify their ‘right-sized’ maturity to help understand where their program sits,” added DeBolt. “Depending on a company’s business model, some domains may be less relevant to its business, so our tiers and guidance should be treated as directional indicators and not definitive maturity ratings. Respondents don’t need to see perfection across all 11 domains, but instead receive a clear vision of where their program stands today. This encourages productive internal conversations between security teams and key stakeholders on where the organization can focus and prioritize efforts.”



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