How Does Proactive Threat Hunting Work – Tools & Techniques

Proactive cyber threat hunting has become a crucial aspect of cybersecurity for organizations. While traditional defensive strategies rely on tools like firewalls, endpoint protection, email security, and web security, proactive threat hunting takes a more aggressive approach. It involves the systematic analysis of security data to formulate hypotheses about potential threats that may have bypassed initial security defenses and are lurking within the network.

A cyber threat hunter, armed with threat intelligence and utilizing techniques like machine learning, actively seeks out these hidden threats. This proactive stance allows organizations to identify and neutralize cyber threats before they can cause significant damage. By empowering the security team to stay ahead of evolving threats, proactive cyber threat hunting enhances overall cybersecurity posture and ensures a more resilient defense against malicious actors.

How does Proactive Threat Hunting work?

Proactive cyber threat hunting is an essential process in modern cybersecurity, especially given the evolving threat landscape. Organizations can no longer rely solely on their security measures like endpoint security and automated security systems. Instead, they must adopt a proactive approach, constantly patching vulnerabilities and anticipating new threats before they materialize.

The process of threat hunting begins with creating hypotheses based on potential indicators of compromise or how threat actors might target the organization in the future. Skilled IT security professionals, armed with threat hunting tools and security analytics, then analyze security data to detect any suspicious activity that could indicate a new threat or ongoing breach. This proactive hunting approach goes beyond waiting for alerts; it involves actively searching for threats as if they have already infiltrated the network or are imminent.

By adding a human element to security operations, threat hunting programs enhance the effectiveness of automated security measures. Security teams actively monitor and neutralize threats, ensuring that potential breaches are identified and mitigated before they escalate into serious problems. This proactive stance not only strengthens overall security measures but also ensures that organizations stay ahead of the constantly evolving cyber threat landscape.

What are Proactive Threat Hunting Tools?

Proactive threat hunters employ a range of tools to bolster their strategies. These tools encompass:

1. Advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML)
2. Spreadsheet software
3. Statistical analytics tools
4. Intelligence analytics platforms
5. Security monitoring solutions
6. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems
7. Threat intelligence feeds
8. Behavioral analytics technologies

What are Different types of Threat Hunting?

When it comes to threat hunting methodologies, there are three primary types that threat hunters utilize:

Structured Hunting

This method uses IoAs (Indicators of Attack) and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) employed by threat actors. By aligning hunts with known TTPs, threat hunters can potentially identify threat actors before they cause harm to the organization’s environment.

Unstructured Hunting

In unstructured hunting, a trigger, often an Indicator of Compromise (IoC), prompts the investigation. This trigger leads the threat hunter to examine patterns pre- and post-detection, delving into data retention and past associated incidents.

Situational or Entity-Driven Hunting

Situational hypotheses stem from internal risk assessments or analyses of trends and vulnerabilities specific to the organization’s IT landscape. Entity-driven leads come from aggregated attack data, revealing current cyber threat TTPs. Threat hunters then search for these behaviors within the environment.

These hunting methodologies play a crucial role in proactive threat hunting, leveraging both human threat hunters and automated threat hunting tools to extract threat intelligence and provide visibility and context regarding potential security threats.

Proactive Threat Hunting Techniques

Proactive threat hunting involves employing various techniques to detect suspicious activities and identify potential threats that may have already infiltrated systems. Here are six proactive threat hunting techniques along with their descriptions:

Analysis

This technique involves monitoring data sources such as DNS and firewall logs, examining network, file, and user data, and reviewing alerts from security information and event management (SIEM) and intrusion detection systems (IDS) to pinpoint threats.

Searching

Searching entails defining specific search criteria before querying data to uncover anomalies. While it’s a straightforward method, hunters must strike a balance between searching broadly, which may yield too many results, and searching narrowly, which may provide insufficient information to act upon.

Baselining

Baseline analysis entails understanding and defining normal threat levels, then detecting deviations from this baseline that could indicate potential threats.

Clustering

Clustering, often facilitated by machine learning or artificial intelligence, involves grouping similar data points based on certain characteristics. Hunters use this technique to identify anomalous data patterns across system and network activities.

Grouping

Grouping involves identifying when multiple unique artifacts appear together based on predefined criteria. By grouping related artifacts explicitly of interest, hunters can detect potential tools or tactics used by attackers.

Stacking

Stacking refers to inspecting data values and organizing them into ‘stacks’ based on characteristics. This technique helps analyze outliers or extreme data points, which may reveal hidden threats.

These proactive threat hunting techniques are integral steps in the threat hunting process, leveraging cyber threat intelligence and effective threat detection to enhance overall security solutions.

Why is Proactive Threat Hunting important?

Effective threat hunting is crucial in modern cybersecurity. While automated cybersecurity solutions can handle a significant portion of threats, around 20% of threats may still evade detection. This remaining fraction can inflict severe damage on systems and networks. Implementing a robust threat hunting solution is essential as it reduces the time between intrusion and discovery, minimizing potential negative impacts.

Without threat hunting, organizations risk harboring malicious actors within their systems. Cybercriminals who breach systems can lurk undetected for extended periods, extracting sensitive data and credentials. This access can enable them to penetrate deeper into an organization’s infrastructure. Allowing malicious actors to persist within networks can lead to substantial financial and reputational damage. Threat hunting is the proactive process that enables organizations to identify and eliminate these threats before they escalate, preventing additional damages.

In essence, threat hunting, supported by endpoint detection and response capabilities, is a critical process that organizations must embrace to safeguard their systems effectively.

How Concertium is help you?

Concertium enhances proactive threat hunting by providing advanced threat intelligence feeds, automated threat detection tools, and expert security analysts. Their platform empowers organizations to detect and respond to potential threats swiftly, reducing the risk of cyberattacks and minimizing the impact of security breaches.