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

Setting the stage for feedback

As we mentioned in Chapter 5, Methodologies, there should be a final debrief or feedback session. When that feedback must be received, just like all the prior debriefs, preparation is key, and the following team requirements contribute greatly to the team's progress:

  • All members should arrive armed and ready to go with all of the notes that they accumulated throughout the event. Members should be encouraged to think about the main topics and write down their impressions, ideas, and more for discussion.
  • Each member will need to come prepared to invest time in the discussion. If done correctly, these sessions can be completed in only an hour or two if the hunt was relatively short and uneventful. If the hunt lasted months, then set aside a few days of the team's time to walk through everything.
  • Choose a member as a timekeeper. They will help keep the team on topic and on time for breaks.
  • Choose a member as a note keeper. They...