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

Scenario A – internal threat hunt

With the identification of some hypotheses and data logs, information is available to research before the threat hunt happens by an intel analyst. This role is a requirement of the team, and the team lead speaks with the CEO and stakeholders about how best to fill this position moving forward.

The CEO wants to keep the threat hunting team organic but doesn't want to commit to another manned position until the team has shown it can accomplish the goals set for it. So, they will approve a contract position to supply the intel analysis role for the initial hunt and then, based on the outcome, a full-time hireable one.

The team lead works quickly with HR and their team to get referrals and hires for a contract position that will be filled quickly enough to get the work done. Thankfully, one of the team members has a friend who's done intel in the past and is looking to get back into the discipline.

Because of the lack of investment...