An alternative to internal sourcing is to contract with a threat intelligence vendor. These organizations utilize their own personnel and infrastructure to acquire malware, analyze attacks, and conduct research on various threat groups. Commercial threat intelligence providers will often process the threat intelligence so that it is tailored to the individual client organization.

Often, commercial vendors provide SIEM and SOC services for a variety of clients utilizing a common SIEM platform. From here, they can aggregate samples of malware and attacks across various enterprises that span the entire world. This allows them to offer a comprehensive product to their clients. This is one of the distinct advantages to utilizing a commercial service. This is in addition to the cost savings that comes from transferring the cost to a third party.