One of the more important skills in intrusion detection and analysis is the ability to evaluate an IP address or domain name in order to build an intelligence profile on that host. Gathering this intelligence can help guide you to making more informed decisions regarding the remote hosts that are communicating with your network in order to determine if they are of a malicious or hostile nature. I recently wrote a two-part article on collecting threat intelligence for WindowsSecurity.com which describe some methods that can be used to collect threat intelligence on a host or network.