Arctic Hub 2025

As we prepare for this year's key gathering at FIRST in Copenhagen, we're pleased to share the progress Arctic Hub has made since the summer of 2024. This year, we focused on addressing practical needs identified by our community of over 30 national CSIRT teams, with six releases that enhanced core functionality and platform reliability.

2025 development summary

Our development focused on three key areas: improving stakeholder communication capabilities, expanding data source coverage, and modernizing underlying infrastructure for long-term stability.

• 6 platform releases addressing user feedback and operational needs
• 15+ new data source integrations expanding coverage for existing feeds
• Enhanced email notification capabilities to help CSIRTs communicate better through their brands
• Infrastructure updates ensuring continued platform stability
• Security improvements

Enhanced Email Notification Capabilities

HTML Email Support with Markdown Editing

One of the most frequently requested features from our user community was the ability to send more visually structured notifications to stakeholders and to incorporate their CSIRT branding on the outgoing alerts. Arctic Hub now supports HTML email notifications while maintaining our commitment to simplicity and reliability.

Key improvements:

• HTML email templates for more structured stakeholder communications
• Markdown-based editing for straightforward content creation
• Backward compatibility ensures existing notifications continue unchanged
• MIME multipart support maintains accessibility across email clients

The feature remains optional and requires activation for each share separately, ensuring existing workflows remain unaffected.

Command Line Tool Enhancements

Our CLI tools now include email notification capabilities. We have enhanced the command-line tool with the ability to send or print notification emails.

Expanded Data Source Integration

Have I Been Pwned Integration

We've added comprehensive support for Have I Been Pwned data feeds, accommodating both their Enterprise and v3 API access levels. This integration includes support for new data fields, such as "IsStealerLog," and enhanced error handling for more reliable operation.

Shadowserver Feed Expansion

Arctic Hub now supports nine additional Shadowserver report types, including:

• IoT compromise detection (compromised_iot, compromised_website6)
• Additional scan types (scan_imap, scan_msrpc, scan_pop)
• IPv6 variants for existing scan types
• Enhanced tunnel and proxy detection capabilities

Additional Feed Sources

• Ransomware. Live integration providing ransomware victim intelligence
• Fitsec data feeds now include HTTP-based data delivery support

Infrastructure Modernization

Database and Storage Updates

We've completed necessary infrastructure upgrades to maintain platform stability and support:

• MongoDB 8.0 upgrade ensuring continued vendor support beyond MongoDB 6's July 2025 end-of-life
• Redis to Valkey migration while maintaining functionality
• SQLite integration for URL mapping components, reducing complexity

These changes were necessary maintenance updates to keep the platform current with supported technologies.

Performance and Reliability Improvements

• Enhanced compression options with the XZ compression method for event archives
• Disk caching implementation improves memory utilization for extensive feed processing
• Better retry logic for external API interactions

Data Processing Enhancements

Event Tracking Improvements

All data events now include insertion time information, providing better visibility into data processing pipelines. This helps teams understand the timing between data observation and storage, which is useful for performance monitoring, troubleshooting, and auditing.

Integration Robustness

We've improved error handling and retry mechanisms across various integrations, including SANS DShield, HIBP, and Nessus. These improvements reduce the likelihood of missed data due to temporary connectivity or API issues.

Security and Maintenance

Security Updates

We addressed security vulnerabilities promptly when identified, including improvements to URL generation and mapping components. We've also implemented better logging and monitoring to help identify potential security issues.

Practical Benefits for Operations Teams

For Daily Operations

• More communication options through HTML email capabilities
• Broader threat visibility with additional data sources
• Improved reliability through enhanced error handling
• Better performance with infrastructure optimizations

For System Administration

• Simplified maintenance with modernized infrastructure components
• Enhanced monitoring through improved logging capabilities
• Better scalability with performance optimizations
• Continued vendor support through timely dependency updates

For Stakeholder Management

• More professional communications through structured email templates
• Consistent service delivery with improved integration reliability
• Better asset coverage through expanded data sources
• Actionable notifications with enhanced data processing

Looking Forward

Arctic Hub continues to serve the practical needs of national cybersecurity teams. Our 2025 improvements focus on usability, reliability, and maintainability rather than fundamental changes to proven workflows.

The platform is designed to meet the specific requirements of national CSIRT operations, including processing large volumes of threat data, maintaining extensive stakeholder databases, and delivering relevant, actionable notifications at scale. We intend to continue on this track and make the platform an even more powerful tool for CSIRT teams in the future.

See Arctic Hub 2025 in Action

We'll be demonstrating these improvements at FIRST 2025. Visit us at our booth to discuss:

• Your plans for an early warning capability for your country or industry sector 
• Our new HTML email notification capability and template customizations
• New data source integration options and configuration
• Operational improvements available in the latest releases

Ready to Learn More?

These improvements represent another year of steady development for Arctic Hub, addressing practical needs while maintaining the reliability and simplicity that national CSIRT teams require. As always, part of this year's work involved setting the foundation for our plans for 2026. 

We're looking for feedback, so please come and discuss your team's needs with us at FIRST!

Connect with our team:

• Visit our booth at FIRST 2025 in Copenhagen
• Schedule a technical discussion about specific requirements

Arctic Hub: Early warning for national cybersecurity teams

Questions about Arctic Hub 2025 updates? Contact us at contact@arcticsecurity.com or visit arcticsecurity.com/products/arctic-hub