Exploring Cyber Threat Hunting: Types, Strategies & Benefits

Through this article, we will gain complete understanding about the need of cyber threat hunting to enhance internet security of a business organization. As the cyber threat hunters proactively look for security threats embedded within a network of a business organization. Contrary to more passive cyber security hunting techniques like automated threat detection systems, which look for known or unresolved threats, cyber hunters actively looks for previously unidentified or unresolved risks that might have gotten past any organization’s network automated defense systems.

Importance of Cyber Threat Hunting

Due to the increased sophistication of today’s hackers, cyber threat hunting has become a crucial part of effective system, the endpoint, and dataset security procedures. A sophisticated outside attacker or insider threat could go unnoticed for months if they can get past the first network defensive systems. They might gather sensitive information, corrupt private information, or secure access credentials during this period, allowing them to move covertly throughout the network’s infrastructure.

The cyber threat hunters are able to inspect the systems for potential dangers, shady activity by gathering information from a variety of sources, including endpoint, network, and cloud data. They can then create hypotheses and conduct extensive network investigations if a threat is found or if known threat intelligence points to identify new possible threats. Finally, the cyber threat hunters look for information during these investigations in order to determine whether a threat is harmful or harmless for the organization’s business network.

Types of Cyber Threat Hunting

Basically, there are three primary types of cyber threat hunting investigation, including: –

1) Structured Cyber Threat Hunting – Based on an indication of attack and the attacker’s tactics, methods, and procedures, this type of cyber security hunting can be performed where threat hunters can then find a malicious actor before they could damage the network using this investigation type of cybersecurity threat hunting.

2) Unstructured Cyber Threat Hunting – The cyber threat hunters employ unstructured cyber threat hunting to look for any observable trends throughout the network both before and after a trigger or indicator of compromise has been identified.

3) Situational Cyber Threat Hunting – Based on threat intelligence, hypotheses are generated from specific situations, such as vulnerabilities found during a network risk assessment. The cyber threat hunters may use internal or external data on cyberattack trends or when examining their IT infrastructure, therefore the most recent threat information can also result in cyber threat hunting.

Hence, the cyber threat hunters examine events for anomalies, flaws, or unusual behavior outside of expected or permitted actions in all of these three security investigation types. The cybersecurity threat hunters may then fix the network if any security holes or suspicious activities are discovered, preventing a cyberattack from happening or happening again.

Strategies of Cyber Threat Hunting

These are the following three key strategies security professionals must implement for tracking down cyberthreats successfully: –

1) Creating Threat Hypothesis – It is the first step in hunting a cyber threat. The hypothesis may be based on infrastructure risks or vulnerabilities, recent threat information, unusual activity or a trigger that deviates from expected baseline activity, or it may be based on other factors. The cyber hunter can then develop a threat hypothesis and choose a course of action to test it using their knowledge, experience, and creative problem-solving abilities.

2) Employing Quick Response – After identifying abnormalities or threatening behavior in the network, it is the following step. This can entail removing people from service, restricting system’s IP addresses, applying security updates, changing network settings, revising permissions, or adding new identity requirements. The security teams will inevitably learn the methods, techniques, and processes of threat actors as they strive to prevent network risks from happening again in the future.

3) Starting The Investigation – Last but not least, the group of cyber threat hunters can rely on intricate and old datasets obtained by threat hunting software like SIEM, MDR, and User Entity Behavior Analytics. The investigation will continue until anomalies are uncovered and to make sure that hypothesis is either verified or determined to be erroneous.

Benefits of Cyber Threat Hunting

Some businesses have a difficult time putting this security practice into action since it involves a proactive, hands-on strategy for threat identification and repair. Any organization’s cyber threat hunting strategy must have these three crucial elements operating in unison for it to be successful: –

1) Professional Threat Hunters – In order to identify cyber threats, it requires a variety of resources, but the most important is undoubtedly the human factor. The threat landscape of today demands that threat hunters be specialists in it and have quick recognition of the early indicators of complex attacks.

2) Assembling Thorough Information – Threat hunters need to have access to a variety of information which gives them insight over a whole network’s infrastructure in order to identify threats in a correct manner. Without this gathered information, threat researchers won’t be able to develop well-informed threat hypothesis based on business’ endpoints, network, or cloud environment.

3) Updated Threat Intelligence – Threat hunters must have access to the most recent threat intelligence so they may compare internal data with the patterns of recent cyberattacks. They won’t have the knowledge which is required to properly assess prospective network risks if they don’t know what new or trending dangers are out there.

As a result, it takes a lot of organizational resources to deploy all three of these components and ensure that they work together without any problems. Unfortunately, some security teams lack the resources, staff, or knowledge necessary to set up an extensive strategy for identifying cyber threats.

The Conclusion

Hence, from the above discussion, we can conclude this article by saying that instead of taking a reactive approach, safeguarding your organization’s infrastructure successfully requires a proactive one. The time when automated threat detection methods were sufficient to protect sensitive data or information is long gone.

The security professionals of any business organization need to put in place a continuous strategy for hunting down cyber threats that will help them identify network anomalies, hazards, or suspicious activities before an outside attacker or insider threat can do harm.

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