Threat hunting is an integral part of any cybersecurity strategy. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, this article will help you strengthen your threat intelligence program.
What is Threat Hunting?
The cybersecurity industry is moving from a passive to a proactive approach. Instead of waiting for cybersecurity alerts and then responding, security organizations deploy red teams to proactively seek out breaches, threats, and risks and isolate them. This is also called “threat hunting”.
Why You Need Threat Hunting
Threat hunting complements existing prevention and detection security controls. These controls are essential for threat mitigation. However, they are optimized for fewer false positive alerts. Hunt’s solution, on the other hand, is optimized for fewer false negatives. This means that anomalies and outliers that are considered false positives in the detection solution are looking for clues in the solution under investigation. This allows threat hunting to close existing gaps between detection solutions. A strong security strategy utilizes both types of solutions. Tal Darsan, security services manager at Cato Networks, added: An organization’s network can last for weeks or months before an attacker achieves their ultimate goal. Therefore, with an active threat hunting program, you can quickly detect and respond to cyberthreats that other security engines and products miss. ”
How to threat hunt
Threat hunters start by conducting an in-depth study of your network and its vulnerabilities and risks. This requires a variety of technical security skills, including malware analysis, memory analysis, network analysis, host analysis, and attack skills. When an investigation yields “clues,” they are used to challenge existing security assumptions and attempt to identify how a resource or system could be compromised. To prove/disprove their hypothesis, they run repetitive hunting campaigns.
A “successful” compromise could help the organization develop detection methods and remediate the vulnerability. Threat hunters may even automate some or all of this process to make it scalable.
Tal Darsan adds:MDR (Managed Detection and Response) The team plays a key role in enabling effective threat hunting by providing the expertise and tools to monitor and analyze potential security threats. MDR services provide your organization with expert cybersecurity support, advanced technology, 24/7 monitoring, rapid incident response, and cost-effectiveness. MDR service providers have expertise and use advanced tools to detect and respond to potential threats in real time. ”
Where to find threats
A good threat hunter should become an expert in open source intelligence (OSINT). By searching online, threat hunters can find malware kits, compromise lists, customer and user accounts, zero-days, TTPs, and more.
These vulnerabilities can be found on the clear web, the widely used public internet. In addition, there is actually a lot of valuable information in the deep web and dark web, which are the Internet layers below the clear web. We recommend carefully hiding your persona when entering the dark web. Failure to do so could put you and your company at risk.
We recommend spending at least 30 hours a week on the dark web. Most of what you identify is probably from the deep and well-defined web, though, because it’s hard to find vulnerabilities there.
Threat intelligence program considerations
Setting up a threat intelligence program is an important process and cannot be taken lightly. Therefore, it is imperative that you thoroughly research and plan your program before beginning implementation. Here are some considerations to consider:
1. “Crown Jewel” thinking
The first step in building a threat hunting strategy is to identify and protect your treasure. What constitutes mission-critical assets varies from organization to organization. So no one can define them.
Once you’ve decided what they are, utilize Purple Team to test if and how you can access and compromise them. so security controls can be put in place. Continuously validate these controls.
2. Choosing a Threat Hunting Strategy
There are various threat hunting strategies that can be implemented in your organization. It is important to ensure that your strategy addresses your organization’s requirements. Examples of strategies are:
- Build a wall and block access completely to block anything related to initial access and execution.
- Building a minefield assuming the threat actor is already inside the network
- Prioritizing where to start according to the MITER framework
3. When to use automated threat intelligence
Automation drives efficiency, productivity and error reduction. However, automation is not required for threat hunting. If you’re going to automate it, it’s a good idea to make sure:
- Have staff to develop, maintain and support tools/platforms
- Completed basic housekeeping to identify and secure the crown jewels.Automating is recommended for high maturity
- Make the process easily reproducible
- Automation can be closely monitored and optimized so you can continuously create relevant value
Threat Hunting Maturity Model
As with any business strategy being implemented, there are varying levels of maturity that an organization can achieve. For threat hunting, the various stages include:
- Stage 0 – Responding to Security Alerts
- Stage 1 – Incorporating Threat Intelligence Indicators
- Stage 2 – Analyze data according to procedures written by others
- Stage 3 – Create a new data analysis procedure
- Stage 4 – Automate most of the data analysis steps
Threat intelligence best practices
Whether you’re building a program from scratch or iterating to improve an existing program, here are some best practices that can help enhance your threat hunting efforts.
1. Define what’s important
Determine critical assets in your threat space. Keep in mind the “crown” mentality that recommends taking an inventory of your mission-critical assets to see their risk posture (i.e. how they might be compromised) before you protect them please give me.
2. Automation
Automate processes where possible. It’s okay if you can’t. As you become more mature you will get there.
3. Build a network
Protecting yourself from cyberattacks is very difficult. The attacker only needs to succeed once, but he can never go wrong. Besides, they don’t follow any rules. That’s why it’s important to build and get (and give) your network. Information from other industry players and stakeholdersThis network should include peers from other companies, influencers, online groups and forums, employees from other departments, leadership and vendors.
4. Think like a criminal, act like an attacker
Threat hunting means shifting from a reactive mindset to a proactive mindset. Researching threat intelligence, tracking groups, experimenting with tools, and leveraging Purple Teaming for testing can encourage this thinking. This may seem counterintuitive, but keep in mind that this is how you protect your organization. Remember, it’s either you or the attacker.
To learn more about the different types of cybersecurity measures and how they can be used to protect your organization, Watch Cato Networks Cyber Security Masterclass Series.
