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

Summary

A restraint is something the team does not want to occur. A constraint is something an external entity does not want to occur. The expected scope is required to be defined early on in the planning, as this sets the expectation of the who, what, where, and when of the threat hunt. Assumptions are everywhere in the plan and ignored by most. You need to specify what an assumption is in order to enhance the communication between the customer and the team.

MOPs are the yes or no answer to whether or not an analyst task was performed. MOEs are the answers to whether the group of tasks performed by the analyst had the intended effect. MOPs and MOEs allow the team to articulate their level of effectiveness against the hypotheses throughout the hunt.

Ensure that you identify the requirements the team needs to successfully execute the threat hunt. Any limitations need to be identified and remediated ahead of execution of the hunt. Deviations occur, so plan for them as best as you...