Threat hunting is a proactive exploratory task that is designed to detect threats that are not known in the environment. The method is an investigational method for testing an ever-changing set of theories with threat hunting tools that allow for the creative process of detective work as well as creating workflows based on the latest research findings. Threat hunting methods shift organizations from reactive reaction to proactive detection, allowing companies to be ahead in their fight against their adversaries.
Top 5 Challenges Threat Hunting Teams Face
Data Growth
SOCs are beset by excessive data expansion and organisational silos, both of which impair visibility. Threat hunting will become much more difficult as the attack surface expands with the addition of new applications and services on a regular basis.
High cost
For the majority of SOCs, the cost of licensing and storage of data make it costly to store and collect all security information for the analysis of historical and real-time data.
Slow Queries
When running queries against huge amounts of data can cause slow response time. Traditional solutions may take hours to complete an entire query due to performance and scalability issues that can hinder an organization’s ability to recognize and deal with threats.
Lack of Context
The process of identifying threats requires a context to identify an exact signal of compromise. However, it can be a challenge and long-winded to connect the dots across petabytes of data as well as numerous points.
Threat Complexity
Modern threats are multi-faceted, complex creatures. Threat actors can alter attacks at will which requires analysts to hunt constantly for new tactics, techniques and processes (TTP).
4 Techniques to overcome active threat hunting
Technique #1
Examine the development of hypotheses using all of the data
Data that is not properly stored can result in an undiscovered cyber threat and if unnoticed for long enough, it could lead to a possibly costly, high-profile security breach could be a high-profile, costly. SOCs taking the lead in cyber security recognize the necessity of having one line of sight into all historical and real-time data to conduct a thorough analysis. This involves storing, collecting and analyzing all data on security all in one location regardless of the nature or source for testing the latest theories.
Technique #2
Perform a historical analysis
There are many threats in an environment that is undetected for months or even years. Modern SecOps integrates the analysis of hot, live data with the analysis of historical data to precisely determine the threat’s strategy, path to take and impact on the company. This requires a strong data platform that can gather and store the event data constantly hot indefinitely is necessary. The ability to go back into petabytes worth of data to detect patterns is essential to hunt down threats.
Technique #3
Enhance creativity through flexible search
Hunting for threats does not always result in the desired outcome. Hunters can test several theories throughout the process of discovery. Therefore, they require agile querying capabilities for pivoting, filtering and re-evaluating their findings. Platforms for hunting threats assist in the creative investigation by allowing quick, simple queries that are scaled. This lets threat hunters gather, analyze and join different datasets to gain more depth without having to wait for hours to view the query results.
Technique #4
Integrate threat intelligence
The process of hunting down cyber threats for campaigns such as APTs that are persistent and advanced, also known as APTs, is not easy without threat intelligence. Threat hunters draw on high-fidelity, high-confidence threat intelligence feeds, curated by professionals as well as indications of compromise (IoCs) to aid in their research. This involves integrating proprietary, third-party, and open-source intelligence, also known as OSINT feeds within one single platform for hunting threats. And automatically enriching hunts with relevant information.
Conclusion
After reading this article, you will be able to identify active threat hunting difficulties that businesses will face in 2022, as well as strategies to combat cyber security risks using professional and intelligence feeds.
