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

Getting everyone on the same page

The ability of a team lead to keep the whole team in sync with one another is a monumental task. Accomplishing this becomes much easier when you take into account the benefits of proper data collection, day-to-day communication, and documentation. Take the time and ensure that the team conducts pre-briefs and debriefs for each shift. Before starting the shift, every team member should be up to speed on what happened previously and what everyone needs to do on the oncoming shift. Before leaving for the day, everyone should review what was accomplished and agree on the planned activities for the following shift. A team member should never get to the point of saying I'm not sure what to do next.

Additionally, analysts will need the ability to pivot off of each other's data and findings on a regular basis. This starts with ensuring that the proper team environment is established so that everyone can easily and naturally access data that is...