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

Approving the plan

Once the plan is ready to execute, it must be approved. The approving panel should include feedback from all stakeholders, as it will be the last time to provide feedback and establish expectations prior to the hunt. The final approver will be the stakeholders who are granting the overall authorization for the hunt.

This plan approval will need to cover, at a minimum, the following:

  • The stakeholders and the roles
  • The restraints and the constraints
  • The assumptions
  • The team location and operating hours
  • The scope (time and target systems)
  • The deviation plan
  • The communication contracts
  • The trigger events
  • The evidence of a stress test

With these items documented and formally approved by the appropriate stakeholders who can grant authorization for the hunt, the main planning phase is complete. The goal should always be to have a plan that is plainly documented and outlined so that a new stakeholder that arrives late to...