Due to the overwhelming amount of online threats lurking out there, organisations are forced to put matters into their own hands. Instead of just waiting for the next cyber threat to hit them, there is now an option to move towards a more proactive approach. This process is called cyber threat hunting.
Essentially, the goal of a threat hunter is to detect the threats that evade traditional security systems. If you’re interested in preventing threats before they happen, then this guide is for you.
What is Threat Hunting?
Cyber threat hunting is a process of analysing potentially malicious events. It also involves designing methods to get ahead of the attackers by finding and analysing unusual behaviours in the context of your organisation.
It is a proactive approach to cyber security, which enables one to discover and stop cyberattacks before they can cause harm.
What Threats Can Threat Hunting Help Mitigate?
Threat hunting is helping organisations detect and respond to cyberattacks. While it cannot avert all cyber threats, it can assist in mitigating:
Data Breaches
Countless data breaches that have caused massive losses to the organisations and their customers have been caused by someone within the organisation.
Threats That are Difficult to Detect
Some of the threats are very difficult to detect, and in order to mitigate them, one may need to analyse all the logs that are generated by all the network and application components. These logs are difficult to analyse manually because of their massive volume.
Hard-to-Predict Attacks
Threats are difficult to predict. The prediction of threats is even more difficult because of the multitudes of attacks that are in action at any point in time. The chances of guessing the next attack at a particular organisation are not that high.
How Does Threat Hunting Differ From Security Monitoring?
Cyber security monitoring is often a time-driven process, where the security teams use various tools to detect the attacks at a particular time. This requires security teams to have a lot of resources and people.
This problem can be mitigated by using cyber threat hunting. Threat hunting is more outcome-oriented than process-oriented. In this process, one is expected to make decisions based on the analysis of their own behaviour and activities, which will help them catch the threats and respond to them.
The threats that are detected by threat hunting are usually those that are difficult to detect by automated or manual security systems.
Cyber Threat Hunting Techniques
Threat hunting involves a lot of techniques, which are adapted depending on the organisation. It is important that the organisation identifies its regular behaviours, such as the user browsing patterns, and then uses these activities while threat hunting.
Attack Pattern Analysis
Attack pattern analysis is a process of analysing the behaviour of the attackers. The behaviour pattern of the attack is the same across different organisations.
Situational Awareness
Situational awareness is about being aware of external factors that could pose a risk to the organisation. This could be due to the external political climate, a potential acquisition or merger, or a change in key personnel.
Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence is the most important technique to understand the attack patterns of the competitors and to understand the current security threats in the market. However, it is important to know how to leverage the threats and how they can be used to improve the organisation’s overall security.
Profiling
Profiling the users and the employees that are part of the organisation is often difficult because the organisation wants to preserve their privacy. However, it is important to know the identity of the employees and the users in order to understand their behaviour.
Footprinting
Footprinting is done to understand the details of the network, such as the topology, the existence of the applications, the virtual infrastructure, and the configuration of the network devices and the OS.
Cyber threat hunting is gaining a lot of popularity because it is a very useful process to mitigate threats that are very difficult to anticipate. However, threat hunting cannot be considered a substitute for traditional security practices. One needs to leverage the threat hunting process with the existing security monitoring in order to be extremely effective.
Protecting yourself and your organisation from outside threats is of paramount importance, especially in the digital age. You need the help of a partner like FraudWatch to keep you protected at all times. As a digital brand protection company, we offer modern security solutions to help you fight off whatever online threats are out there. Contact us today and get the level of protection your organisation deserves.