What is Cyber Threat Hunting? Definition, Techniques and Solutions

Traditionally, most of the cyber threat hunting techniques?rely on the expertise of trained and experienced IT cyber security specialists - which are hard to find. In a cybersecurity landscape littered with tricks, traps, and pitfalls, - it is crucial to deploy only the best threat hunting tools and threat hunting platforms to protect your company.

While the term "threat hunting" itself might seem thrilling and provocative - most people actually don’t know that much about what it is - let alone what the most effective and proactive cyber threat hunting tools are for their enterprise.

What is Cyber Threat Hunting?

Cyber theat hunting, or threat hunting is the proactive search for cyber threats or weaknesses which could leave your IT infrastructure vulnerable to attack. Malicious software and viruses used by cyber-criminals these days can lay dormant within the network and go undetected for days by commonplace cybersecurity protocols - leaving your entire system open to ongoing insidious damage from the inside.

Traditionally, the idea of a threat hunting platform relied solely on the skills and time of analytical cybersecurity professionals but those skills are now in high demand due to a pronounced lack of qualified technicians with adequate experience, education, and instincts. This makes threat hunting much more difficult and time-consuming - not to mention the expected human error involved with outsourcing effective analysts.

These days, threat actors are just as sophisticated as those responsible for stopping them - which forces enterprises to evaluate hacker intentions and capabilities while monitoring for vulnerabilities without any of the necessary threat hunting tools or skills to effectively do so. There are?open source and commercially available threat hunting tools , which we have discussed in this article.

Why do Organizations Need Threat Hunting?

As previously mentioned, cyber-attacks are consistently growing more sophisticated and threat actors don’t rest. Although the majority of your automated cybersecurity in place can securely deal with threats, it’s not a fail-safe solution. This is because cyber-attacks continue to evolve and become smarter and harder to detect, and given enough time and resources, they can break past your automated defense solutions. Attackers often lurk for weeks and months before being discovered. In this team, valuable and confidential information may be accessed and set the stage for a significant data breach.

Effective cyber threat hunting is a means to help organizations shed light on the areas of their cybersecurity that need extra attention. Ultimately, reducing the amount of potential damage that can be done by attackers - which is a lot. In fact, in 2022 IBM’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report” found that the average cost of a data breach was?USD 4.35 million . So, your cybersecurity can no longer afford to be reactive. Cyber threat hunting is a proactive approach to identifying vulnerabilities and threats before an attack can cause immense damage.

What Are the Objectives of Threat Hunting?

The best way to determine which cyber threat hunting platform is suited to your business needs is to evaluate the potential attacker’s goals, capabilities, and opportunities:

• Goals:?The type of data you collect and store, the size of your enterprise, and the amount of money that flows through your business daily are indicators of your level of risk and the types of threats your system is vulnerable to. Determining if a cyber-attack will target your customers, and your finances, or hold your business for ransom, will help you hone in on the methods of attack you will likely experience. A formative threat hunting platform solution will prioritize this detection.
• Capabilities:?Staying up to date on the latest cybersecurity trends will help alert your threat hunting platform to understand what attacks might be launched against your network. For example, if you have determined that your most valuable company asset is customer PII, then researching the newest and most successful cyber-attacks aimed at the theft of customer information will give you a head start towards identifying any security gaps in your network.
• Opportunities:?Closing the door on known and unknown vulnerabilities or threats before they can be used against you is an important way of proactively protecting your network from cyber threats - such as ransomware. Falling victim to the same exploits as other well-known companies imply a lack of awareness and professionalism to customers as well as a passive commitment to network security for your brand in general.

To learn more about the steps of threat hunting, what tools and techniques are used for cyber threat hunting and different types of threat hunting challenges in threat hunting, read the full article in Sangfor Glossary.

About Sangfor Technologies

Sangfor Technologies ?is an APAC-based, global leading vendor of IT infrastructure solutions specializing in Network Security and Cloud Computing. Sangfor Cyber Command was built to easily integrate with a wide range of Sangfor security and cloud solutions, and even many 3rd party solutions, making investment in Sangfor Cyber Command an investment in your future network security.

Visit us at?www.sangfor.com ?or click to contact us to know more about Cyber Command and how it can effectively accomplish your cyber threat hunting goals.