Book Image

The Foundations of Threat Hunting

By : Chad Maurice, Jeremy Thompson, William Copeland
Book Image

The Foundations of Threat Hunting

By: Chad Maurice, Jeremy Thompson, William Copeland

Overview of this book

Threat hunting is a concept that takes traditional cyber defense and spins it onto its head. It moves the bar for network defenses beyond looking at the known threats and allows a team to pursue adversaries that are attacking in novel ways that have not previously been seen. To successfully track down and remove these advanced attackers, a solid understanding of the foundational concepts and requirements of the threat hunting framework is needed. Moreover, to confidently employ threat hunting in a business landscape, the same team will need to be able to customize that framework to fit a customer’s particular use case. This book breaks down the fundamental pieces of a threat hunting team, the stages of a hunt, and the process that needs to be followed through planning, execution, and recovery. It will take you through the process of threat hunting, starting from understanding cybersecurity basics through to the in-depth requirements of building a mature hunting capability. This is provided through written instructions as well as multiple story-driven scenarios that show the correct (and incorrect) way to effectively conduct a threat hunt. By the end of this cyber threat hunting book, you’ll be able to identify the processes of handicapping an immature cyber threat hunt team and systematically progress the hunting capabilities to maturity.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1: Preparation – Why and How to Start the Hunting Process
9
Part 2: Execution – Conducting a Hunt
14
Part 3: Recovery – Post-Hunt Activity

Chapter 10: Data Analysis

Data is everywhere. When planning out a threat hunt there is a myriad of questions that will need to be answered. What types of data does the team need? Where does the team need to collect the data from? What data can the team live without and still be successful? There are three main methods of data collection to be followed. This chapter will cover all of those as well as different methods on how to perceive the data that is analyzed.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following topics:

  • Data collection mindsets
  • Direct analysis versus secondary correlation
  • Host logs versus network logs
  • Automating everything
  • Getting everyone on the same page
  • Finding everything or nothing
  • Scenario A - internal threat hunt
  • Scenario B - external threat hunt

By the end of the chapter, you will be able to do the following:

  • Discuss the different mindsets when it comes to data collection
  • Comprehend the difference...