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

Fixing and updating documentation

So, the team had a strong feedback session and wrote down a bunch of inputs the team could or should have done differently – it's not good if nothing happens with those inputs! The most common long-term fix is to update the documentation and training process. This could be in the form of team policies, training material or classes, and TTPs.

All of these actions will need to be categorized into short- and long-term items. Additionally, these items will be further divided into what is within the team's scope and what is outside of their scope. Anything that is within the team's scope should be assigned a point of contact within the team to own the fix. They will be responsible for documenting the item, applying the fix action, and working with all applicable stakeholders to make sure it sticks.

The fix actions that are outside the scope of the team will need to be briefed to the team's external leadership for potential...