What is threat hunting?

Threat hunting, also known as cyberthreat hunting, is a proactive method for detecting previously undisclosed or continuing cyberthreats in an organization’s network.

Significance of threat hunting:-

1. Threat hunting is crucial because it allows organisations to reinforce their security postures against ransomware, insider threats, and other intrusions that would otherwise go undetected.
2. While automated security technologies and diligent security operations centre (SOC) analysts can detect the majority of cybersecurity threats before they do significant damage, some clever threats can bypass these defences.
3. When a hostile actor gains access to a system, they may remain undetected for weeks or even months. According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, identifying a data breach takes an average of 194 days. During this time, attackers are syphoning data and stealing credentials in order to gain additional access.
4. Effective threat hunting requires security teams to aggressively seek out these hidden hazards. As a result, organisations can detect intrusions and implement mitigations considerably faster, limiting the harm that attackers can cause.

How does the cyber threat hunting works?

Cyberthreat hunters are experienced cybersecurity specialists. They are typically security analysts within a company’s IT department who are intimately familiar with the organization’s operations, but they can also be independent analysts. Threat hunting teams employ security automation to assist them find, log, monitor, and neutralise threats before they cause major problems.

Threat hunting programs are built on data, specifically the information collected by an organization’s threat detection systems and other enterprise security solutions.

During the threat hunting process, threat hunters go through this security data for hidden malware, stealth attackers, and any other signals of unusual activity that automated systems may have overlooked.

When threat hunters discover the hazard, they immediately take action, eliminating the threat and strengthening defences to ensure that it does not occur again.

Types of Threat Hunting:-

1. Structured Hunting:-Structured hunts are guided by formal frameworks such as MITRE’s Adversary Tactics Techniques and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK) methodology. They look for specific indicators of attack (IoA) as well as recognised threat actors’ strategies, methods, and procedures (TTPs).
2. Unstructured Hunting:- An unstructured hunt is more reactive than a structured one. It is frequently triggered by the detection of an indication of compromise (IoC) in an organization’s system. Hunters then investigate what caused the IoC and whether it is still active on the network.
3. Situational Hunting:- A situational hunt is a response to an organization’s specific problem. It is typically motivated by the findings of an internal risk assessment or a trend and vulnerability study of the IT environment.

Hunting Models:-

1. Intel Based Hunting:- Intel-based hunting relies on IoCs obtained from threat intelligence sources. Threat hunters utilise security information and event management (SIEM) systems to keep track of known indicators of compromise (IoCs), such as hash values, IP addresses, domain names, and host artefacts. When IoCs are identified, hunters look into potential malicious activities by comparing the network’s status before and after the alert.
2. Hypothesis based Hunting:- Hypothesis-based search is led by known IoAs stored in frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK. Hypothesis-based hunts investigate whether attackers may use specific TTPs to gain access to a network. When a behaviour is discovered, threat hunters can monitor activity patterns to detect, identify, and isolate any dangers that exhibit that behaviour. Because of their proactive character, hypothesis-based hunts can assist in identifying and stopping advanced persistent threats (APT) before they cause significant damage.
3. Custom Hunting:– Custom hunting is based on an organization’s context, which includes previous security incidents, geopolitical difficulties, targeted attacks, security system alarms, and other reasons. Custom hunts can combine the benefits of intelligence-based and hypothesis-based hunting methods.

Tools required for Threat Hunting

1. SIEM(Security Information and Event Management):- SIEM is a security technology that enables organisations to detect and handle threats and vulnerabilities before they impair business operations. SIEMs can assist detect threats sooner and limit the number of false positives that threat hunters needs to analyse.
2. EDR(Endpoint detection and response):- EDR software employs real-time analytics and AI-driven automation to safeguard an organization’s end users, endpoint devices, and IT assets against cyberthreats that bypass standard endpoint security technologies.
3. MDR(Managed detection response):-MDR is a cybersecurity service that tracks, detects, and responds to attacks in real time. It combines modern technology and skilled analysis to enable proactive threat hunting, effective incident response, and rapid threat remediation.
4. Security Analytics:-These systems provide deeper insights into security data by merging big data with advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. Security analytics can speed up cyberthreat detection by providing detailed observability data.