Cybersecurity is not only about detecting and responding to alerts, but also about proactively searching for hidden threats that may have bypassed your defenses. This is where threat hunting comes in.

Threat hunting is a process of actively looking for and rooting out cyber threats that have secretly penetrated your network. It involves using your own knowledge and familiarity with your environment, as well as various data sources and tools, to create hypotheses about potential threats and test them.

Threat hunting can help you:

• Discover new or ongoing attacks that may have been missed by automated security solutions
• Reduce dwell time and damage caused by attackers
• Improve your security posture and resilience by identifying gaps and weaknesses in your defenses
• Enhance your threat intelligence and awareness by learning from real-world adversaries
• Develop your skills and expertise as a security analyst

How to start threat hunting

Threat hunting is not a one-time activity, but rather an ongoing practice that requires planning, preparation, execution, and improvement. Here are some steps to get you started:

1. Define your scope and objectives. What are you looking for? What are the indicators of compromise (IOCs) or behaviors of interest (BOIs) that may signal an attack? What data sources will you use? How will you measure your success?
2. Collect and analyze data. Use various tools and techniques to gather relevant data from your network, such as logs, events, alerts, telemetry, etc. Use queries, filters, visualizations, etc. to analyze the data and look for anomalies or patterns that match your hypotheses.
3. Validate and prioritize findings. Once you find something suspicious or interesting, verify if it is indeed malicious or benign. Use additional sources of information or evidence to support your findings. Prioritize the findings based on their severity, impact, urgency, etc.
4. Respond and remediate. Take appropriate actions to contain, isolate, eradicate, or recover from the threat. Document the incident details and lessons learned. Share your findings and recommendations with relevant stakeholders.
5. Review and improve. Evaluate your threat hunting process and results. Identify what worked well and what can be improved. Update your tools, techniques, procedures (TTPs), IOCs/BOIs databases based on new insights.

Threat hunting resources

If you want to learn more about threat hunting or improve your skills as a threat hunter, here are some resources that may help you:

• IBM: https://www.ibm.com/topics/threat-hunting
• Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/endpoint-security/what-is-threat-hunting.html
• Microsoft: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/threat-explorer-threat-hunting?view=o365-worldwide

Happy hunting!