Types of Threat Hunting

Proactive threat hunting is the best way to uncover threats hiding in your environment. 

Over the past year, interactive intrusions have increased by 55%, driven largely by sophisticated eCrime activity. Additionally, 63% of organizations report measurable improvements in their security posture as a result of their threat hunting efforts.

To stay ahead of these evolving threats, organizations use different approaches to hunt for malicious activity. In this post, we'll explore three key types of threat hunting-structured, unstructured, and entity-driven-and explain how each plays a role in boosting your security.

Key Takeaways

• Threat hunting is a proactive security strategy that finds threats you don't know about. Reduces time to unknown.

• There are three ways to do threat hunting: structured, unstructured, and entity-driven. Each has its benefits for threat detection.

• Automation in threat hunting (data collection and investigation) helps efficiency so security teams can focus on analysis and response.

About Threat Hunting

Cyber threat hunting is not a defensive strategy; it's an offensive play in the security playbook. Unlike traditional threat detection methods which are passive, threat hunting is active. Threat hunting goes after threats that have bypassed your defenses. In modern security, this is critical so you can find and stop threats before they can do damage.

The heart of threat hunting is its active nature. While reactive security responds to incidents after they've occurred, threat hunting finds unknown threats before they escalate. Continuously looking for indicators of compromise (IoCs) and uncovering hidden threats reduces the time attackers are undetected and the damage they can do.

At its simplest, threat hunting actively searches through logs to find indicators of compromise and threats. This proactive threat detection lets businesses protect their assets by finding threats they don't know about that have slipped past their defenses. Unlike traditional threat intelligence which reacts after the fact, threat hunting goes after potential threats so it's critical in the security world.

The importance of thorough threat hunting can't be stressed enough. It can reduce time to detect by months, potentially saving millions and the organization's reputation.

Proactive threat hunting finds threats that can cause big damage if not detected, including those from threat actors. By being proactive you can focus on the hard threats, not just respond to alerts.

Threat hunting requires a mix of human expertise, advanced tools, and easy access to relevant data. A good threat hunter is curious, persistent, and questions the status quo with advanced tools that find patterns and anomalies.

Human intuition and creativity are key to finding patterns that automated systems miss. The combination of skilled human hunters and advanced tools makes for a better threat hunting process as 3rd party providers help to eliminate false positives and overlay attacker techniques.

This is a holistic approach to threat detection and response.

Types of Threat Hunting

Threat hunting can be broken down into three key types: structured, unstructured, and entity-driven. Each approach offers unique benefits, and when used within a robust threat hunting platform, they can significantly improve your security posture.

1. Structured threat hunting uses pre-defined criteria and frameworks to find threats, and focuses on indicators of attack (IoAs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

2. Unstructured threat hunting uses expert intuition and exploratory analysis to find potential threats.

3. Entity driven threat hunting prioritizes high-risk entities and looks for threats to them.

Structured Threat Hunting

Structured threat hunting is a by-the-book approach to finding specific threats. It uses predefined criteria to guide the search. This threat hunting methodology uses pre-defined indicators and attack patterns to find hidden threats.

Frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK are used to guide structured threat hunting and provide playbooks and detection runbooks to the world. Following established procedures allows security teams to detect advanced persistent threats (APT) early in their kill chain so they don't get to execute malicious activity.

Unstructured Threat Hunting

Unstructured threat hunting is a flexible and creative approach, often with no initial hypothesis. This method relies heavily on expert intuition and exploratory analysis to find potential threats.

Looking at current and historical security data allows hunters to find hidden threats that are dormant or new. Triggers like indicators of compromise (IoCs) often start unstructured hunts and guide the focus to high-value entities and risk registers. This intuitive search can find big things that structured methods miss.

Entity Driven Threat Hunting

Entity driven threat hunting looks at high-risk entities like valuable assets or critical users to find potential threats. This proactive approach prioritizes the analysis of high-risk entities so you can find threats that would otherwise go undetected.

Protecting sensitive data and critical assets through entity driven threat hunting improves your overall security posture. This means the most valuable targets are always being monitored and the risk of big breaches is reduced.

Hybrid Threat Hunting Approaches

Hybrid threat hunting approaches combine multiple methods to cover the unknown depths of cyber attacks. Combining multiple threat hunting methods gives you a full picture of potential threats and improves detection.

The structured threat hunting workflow has three main stages: planning, execution, and reporting. Combining structured and unstructured methods improves overall threat detection and response and gives you a stronger defense against advanced threats.

Structured and Unstructured

Combining structured and unstructured methods finds anomalies and malicious activity. This uses the systematic approach of structured investigations with the intuitive exploratory nature of unstructured hunts.

Good threat hunters use human intuition alongside automation, using baselining data and attack-specific hunts to get the best results. This combination gives you a full threat detection strategy that finds both known and unknown threats.

Situational Awareness and Contextual Analysis

Situational awareness allows threat hunters to find potential attack vectors based on real-time data analysis. Creating situational hypotheses based on discovered vulnerabilities guides the hunter to do more effective investigations.

Crowd-sourced attack data and focus on current TTPs keep the threat hunting relevant and targeted to high-value entities. The investigation stage continues until the threat is deemed harmless or neutralized.

Tools and Techniques for Threat Hunting

Threat hunting requires a combination of human expertise and advanced tools. Common tools are Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions. Network traffic analysis tools are also included. These tools provide real-time monitoring, threat intelligence integration, and automated incident response.

Advanced security analytics tools use algorithms to find vulnerabilities and present data in a human-readable format. Automation helps the threat hunting process by allowing for faster detection and response to security incidents.

Machine Learning and AI

With the amount of data in threat hunting automation is key. Machine learning and AI can process large data sets fast, find patterns, and automate correlation and response. These technologies work alongside human intuition and expertise to make threat hunting more effective.

User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) finds unusual activity by setting a baseline of user behavior. This combination of machine learning and human analysis means even the smallest threats are found and blocked.

Threat Intelligence Feeds

Threat hunting requires collecting actionable and reliable data from multiple sources including threat intelligence feeds. These feeds give you insight into potential threats so you can proactively detect and respond to security risks. Automating data collection from these feeds gives you threat visibility so your security team always has the latest data to fight emerging threats.

Advanced Analytics and Behavioral Monitoring

Advanced analytics tools help visualize threat hunting data through interactive charts and graphs. Threat hunters use SIEM and EDR to review system logs and investigate anomalies. Managing large amounts of security data is hard but these tools help you distinguish between real threats and false positives so you can focus on effective threat hunting.

The Process

The threat hunting process involves several stages, including forming a hypothesis based on recent threat intelligence and observed network traffic. Data analysis involves reviewing event logs and establishing user behavior baselines to find potential security threats.

The investigation stage focuses on the triggers that lead to possible malicious activity and requires a deep dive. The final stage is to take action to remediate the identified threats before further exploitation happens.

Trigger

Triggers in threat hunting can be system vulnerabilities, network behavior anomalies, or other indicators of potential threats. Knowing your organization's normal behavior is key to finding anomalies.

After a trigger is identified, threat hunters analyze it to see if it's a potential malicious activity that needs further investigation. The data collection phase involves collecting different types of data such as logs and network traffic to support the analysis of the triggers.

Investigation and Analysis

Organizations should collect relevant, reliable, and actionable data for effective threat hunting. Setting a baseline of system behavior and expected events is key to finding anomalies during threat hunting.

During the investigation stage, threat hunters proactively look for anomalies related to their hypothesis. Centralized log collection helps in analysis, and allows hunters to find anomalies and convert them into Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) or Indicators of Attack (IoAs).

Remediation

The final stage of threat hunting is to document findings and determine what needs to be done to prevent future incidents. Intelligence is fed to operational and security teams through automation.

After a threat is validated, the focus is on containing and eradicating the threat through various actions such as isolating affected systems and blocking malicious IP addresses. Automation is used for smaller, routine attacks.

Examples of Different Types of Threat Hunting

Hunt.io's research team has conducted investigations that showcase different approaches to threat hunting. Here are a few examples from our blog:

1. Tracking Cobalt Strike Infrastructure: by analyzing exposed operational files, the team effectively tracks Cobalt Strike servers, showcasing entity-driven threat hunting, where the focus is on high-risk assets​.

2. Uncovering EvilGophish Campaigns: our researchers used exploratory methods to detect phishing campaigns like EvilGophish, a clear instance of unstructured threat hunting, which depends on flexible investigative methods​.

3. JA4+ Network Fingerprinting: this technique allows for the identification of threat actor infrastructure through network traffic patterns, serving as an example of structured threat hunting, which relies on predefined frameworks​.

Hunt.io's platform supports all types of threat hunting-structured, unstructured, and entity-driven-whether conducted by internal teams or through managed threat hunting services. This flexibility ensures security teams can efficiently track and neutralize threats across any environment.

Best Practices

Best practices are key to successful threat hunting. Defining clear objectives and refining methodologies regularly will make threat hunting more effective. Transparency of your network and operational practices is key to finding anomalies.

Working with key people, both inside and outside IT is important to get complete information about normal operations. Good time management helps threat hunters to stay focused, continuous learning and adaptation will keep them ahead of emerging threats.

Internal Transparency

To find anomalies, threat hunters must have a clear understanding of what is normal in the organization. Setting standards or baselines of behavior will help to distinguish normal behavior from potential threats.

Tools like network filters, firewalls, and intrusion prevention and detection systems are useful for internal transparency. A complete understanding of the environment, including architecture, communication flows, and user rights is key to threat detection.

Continuous Learning and Adaptation

Threat hunters must adapt to new TTPs used by cyber adversaries. Staying up to date with the latest threat intelligence sources is key to threat analysis and response.

Continuing education is important for security personnel. This includes getting certifications like Certified Cyber Threat Hunting Professional (CCTHP) and Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH). This continuous learning will make threat hunters able to counter the latest cyber threats.

Collaboration and Information Sharing

Collaboration between security teams is key to threat hunting. A clear structure, defined roles, and standard procedures will create a collaborative culture that supports threat detection.

Participating in threat intelligence-sharing communities will help threat hunters expand their knowledge base and stay up to date with the latest threats. Active information sharing will help security teams to improve their overall defense against cyber threats.

Challenges

Threat hunting is challenging, with the sheer volume of security data to process. Outsourced cybersecurity services can help organizations with limited internal resources by providing expertise and sharing the burden of threat hunting.

Creating an environment where security team members can share information and share knowledge is key to overcoming these challenges. Partnerships with external cybersecurity companies can also improve threat detection.

Skill Gap and Training

Finding and retaining cyber threat hunters is a big challenge for many organizations. Training in the latest threat hunting techniques and certifications is important to upskill hunting.

Continuous professional development like attending workshops and getting relevant certifications is necessary for security personnel to stay ahead of emerging threats. This will ensure organizations have the skills to counter advanced cyber threats.

Data and Analysis

Managing huge amounts of security data is a big challenge that can overwhelm organizations and hinder threat hunting. Filtering through massive data to find relevant threats requires advanced tools and techniques.

The inability to manage and analyze security data will lead to missed threats and increased vulnerability for the organization. Make sure security analysts have the right tools and training to manage data and detect threats.

Keeping up with Emerging Threats

Staying up to date with TTPs and threat intelligence is key to analyzing current cyber attack trends. Not validating systems and tools will put organizations behind the attacker's timeline and make them more vulnerable to attacks.

20% of threats are not caught by automated solutions, so a proactive approach is needed for early detection. Continuous adaptation and validation of security systems are key to keeping up with emerging threats.

Automation in Threat Hunting

Automation in threat hunting makes threat hunting more efficient and scalable. Human hunters should be comfortable working with traditional security tools, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence to leverage automation.

Automating Data Gathering

Data gathering is an important phase of threat hunting, collecting different types of data from multiple endpoint sources. Automating data gathering will reduce the time to collect, sort, and maintain.

This will give threat hunters more time to analyze the data, reducing collection and organization time. Automation will streamline the threat hunting process, and faster and more effective detection of potential threats.

Automated Investigation and Response

Automated investigation tools will manage large amounts of alerts, and streamline the response process. Consolidating and prioritizing alerts with these tools will make it easier to address potential threats. 

Incident response solutions can be configured with specific remediation actions to quickly address detected issues. This automation will make even routine attacks to be addressed quickly, making threat hunting more effective.

Related Questions

How is structured threat hunting different from unstructured threat hunting?

Structured threat hunting uses methods and criteria, a more organized way of finding threats. Unstructured threat hunting relies on an analyst's intuition and exploratory techniques, with no defined starting point.

What is the role of automation in threat hunting?

Automation will make threat hunting more efficient by simplifying data gathering, analysis and response, faster detection, and mitigation of threats. This will make threat hunting more effective and scalable.

What are the obstacles in threat hunting?

Big data and skilled threat hunters are the biggest obstacles in threat hunting. And staying current with emerging threats requires collaboration and continuous learning.

Conclusion

Threat hunting is a must-have in modern cybersecurity. By knowing the types, methods, and best practices, organizations can improve their threat detection and response.

Using advanced tools, continuous learning, and collaboration among security teams will give a strong defense against emerging cyber threats. Automation will further simplify the process, making threat hunting more efficient. By being proactive, organizations can stay ahead of attackers and protect their assets from threats.

Take your threat detection to the next level with Hunt.io. Schedule a demo today and see how our platform can enhance your security strategy!