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

MOA

Whatever written agreements might be called within an organization, there should always be a formalized and signed agreement between the hunt team and the organization's stakeholders who own and operate the target enterprise. In the case of a threat hunt, this typically starts with a formal request for assistance that allows for discussions to begin. This formal request can be as simple as an email to a sales mailbox, or a formal written request for proposal (RFP). Then, negotiations start to determine the resources that will be made available to the threat-hunt team. If those negotiations go well and a threat hunt is determined to be value-added and beneficial to the organization, then planning will begin.

Upon conclusion of planning, a deliverable is due to all parties in the form of a signed/approved plan that specifies all the requirements and expectations of the threat hunt. This is where the items that were painstakingly laid out, drilled, and refined in Chapter 7...