What is Cyber Threat Hunting?
In essence, cyber threat hunting is a proactive detective method for cybersecurity. Threat hunters aggressively explore an organization's network for unusual behaviour and concealed attackers, as opposed to waiting for security systems to identify threats. It resembles playing the role of a digital Sherlock Holmes, looking for hints that might point to harmful behaviour.
The following are important details concerning cyber threat hunting:
• Proactive: It is not limited to conventional security systems that use signatures of known threats.
• Concentrates on unidentified threats: It looks for malware and covert attackers that have gotten past the first line of security.
• Requires expertise: To look into possible threats, knowledgeable analysts utilize their tools, knowledge, and threat intelligence.
• Data-driven: This type of job entails the analysis of vast volumes of data from several sources, including user activity, network logs, and endpoint activities.
• Benefits include enhanced security posture, quicker incident response, and early detection and prevention of complex cyberattacks.
Here's a comparison: Consider your network to be a home. Conventional security systems respond to suspicious activity, much as security cameras and alarms. Threat hunting is essentially sending a detective through the residence to look for signs of possible break-ins and concealed intruders.
What is a Cyber Incident Response?
Cyber incident response, also known as cybersecurity incident response, describes the procedures and methods that a company uses to address a data breach or cyberattack. The key is to locate, contain, eliminate, and deal with these security incidents in a way that reduces harm and keeps them from happening again.
Below is a summary of the salient features:
Objectives:
• Reduce the incident's impact: The primary goals are to stop the harm from getting worse and stop the attackers from gaining access to private information.
• Recuperate effectively and promptly: As quickly as feasible, restore the impacted systems and data to reduce downtime and business interruption.
• Take a lesson from the event: Examine the assault to determine its underlying cause and take steps to stop future occurrences of the same kind.
Phases:
• Preparation: It is essential to have a written incident response plan with clear processes, roles, and responsibilities.
• Identification: Use security tools, monitoring, or user reports to find and identify a possible security event.
• Containment: Keep the attacker from propagating throughout the network by isolating the compromised computers.
• Eradication: Empty the infected computers of the attacker and any harmful malware.
• Recovery: Make sure everything is back to normal by restoring the impacted systems and data.
• Activities following the incident: Look into what happened and how to stop such assaults in the future. Update the incident response strategy and share with stakeholders the lessons learned.
Benefits include
• Lessened effect from cyberattacks: Damage and data loss are minimized by quicker notice and reaction.
• Enhanced business continuity: Less downtime means more seamless operations.
• Strengthened security posture: By drawing lessons from past mistakes, defences against new threats are made stronger.
• Adherence to rules: Many regulations mandate that companies have an incident response strategy.
Extra Information:
• A specialized Cyber Incident Response Team (CIRT), made up of IT security experts and other specialists, is frequently involved in incident response.
• Businesses can hire specialist firms to provide these services, or they can create their own internal CIRT.
Threat Hunting vs. Incident Response: Key Differences
Although both are essential for cybersecurity, incident response and threat hunting have different functions to perform:
Approach
• Threat hunting: Proactively looks for unknown threats and covert assailants before they can do any harm. Consider it as a detective searching for hints.
• Incident response: Reactive, concentrated on managing detected security issues, reducing harm, and making a successful recovery. Imagine a group protecting the area after receiving an alarm.
Focus
The focus is on threat hunting, which includes finding new risks, examining big data sets, and utilizing threat intelligence to spot questionable activities.
• Reaction to the incident: eliminating and containing identified risks, looking into what happened, repairing affected systems, and drawing lessons from the assault.
Skills
•Threat hunting: Proficiency in data analysis, investigative skills, and a thorough understanding of attacker tactics, methods, and procedures (TTPs) are necessary for threat hunting.
• Incident response: Needs proficiency in communication, collaboration, containment techniques, and forensics.
;So What is the Relationship between Threat Hunting & Incident Response:
• They enhance one another. Through the identification of assault patterns and the development of containment methods, threat-hunting results can enhance incident response. On the other hand, threat hunting can benefit from incident response insights that draw attention to weak points and attacker tactics.
Who needs it?
• Organizations that look for threats: Those with valuable assets, sophisticated opponents, and intricate IT systems.
• Incident response: All enterprises, irrespective of size or sector, must respond to cyber-attacks.
In summary:
• Consider incident response as damage control and threat hunting as prevention. A strong cybersecurity strategy requires both.
I believe this makes clear the main distinctions and how important they are for system security. Please don't hesitate to ask any more questions or to discuss any particular instances you'd want to talk about!
If you're interested in learning more, here are some resources:
CrowdStrike: https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/threat-hunting/
Trellix: https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/threat-hunting/
IBM: https://www.ibm.com/qradar/threat-hunting