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

Acronyms

C2 – Command and control

CEO – Chief executive officer

CMF – Cyber management framework

COO – Chief operating officer

CSF – Cybersecurity framework

CSI – Cybersecurity intelligence

DMZ – Demilitarized zone

DOS – Denial of service

EDR – Endpoint detection and response

EPS – Events per second

FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation

IDS – Intrusion detection system

IOC – Indicator of compromise

IPS – Intrusion prevention system

IT – Information technology

MOA – Memorandum of agreement

MOE – Measurement of effectiveness

MOP – Measurement of performance

MOU – Memorandum of understanding

MS-ISAC – Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center

NOC – Network operations center

NIST – National Institute of Standards and Technology

OSINT – Open source intelligence...