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 13: Post-Hunt Activity and Maturing a Team

Once all the necessary work and effort has been put in place, the deliverables are sent to the stakeholders and the threat hunt is complete. Perhaps all the members have returned to their normal daily tempo or have moved on to the next threat hunt they've been contracted to execute. While this may feel like the time for the team to take a deep breath and relax, it is not yet time to lower the team's effort. The customer has received all the deliverables that they required, but it is now time for the threat hunt team to benefit from all the effort that has been put toward performing the hunt.

During this final phase of the team's hunting cycle, all members, including leadership, will need to have candid discussions concerning what did and did not occur and how it did or did not happen. Since everyone is going through this process, you must keep a few things in mind:

  • Failure is an exceptionally common occurrence...