What is Proactive Threat Hunting?

Proactive threat hunting is manually searching for indicators of compromise (IoCs) and other suspicious activities within an organization’s IT infrastructure before it gets flagged by security solutions. It’s simple: it’s like doing regular patrols over your farm to ensure it’s safe from intruders.

Threat hunting is carried out by security analysts or threat hunters. Moreover, threat hunting is different from automated detection methods, as it requires human intuition and expertise to find threats that are missed by automated security systems.

What is Threat Intelligence 

Gartner defines threat intelligence as”evidence-based knowledge, including context, mechanisms, indicators, implications and actionable advice, about an existing or emerging menace or hazard to assets that can be used to inform decisions regarding the subject’s response to that menace or hazard.

In simple, threat intelligence refers to information that organizations collect and use to understand the current threat landscape. This information often includes

  • Indicators of Compromise(IOCs):IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, URLs, etc.
  • Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs): Strategies used by threat actors to carry out cyberattacks.
  • Threat Actor Profile: Information about individuals behind the cyberattacks, motivation, targets, and capabilities.

Sources of Threat Intelligence

There are several sources that organizations can use to gather information. Every piece of information offers unique insights and value, helping organizations to get an overall view of the current threat landscape.

👉OSINT(Open-Source Intelligence): Publicly available data, such as discussion in underground forums, threat reports, and social media can provide insights on recent happenings in cyber threats with IOCs and TTP.

👉Commercial Threat Intelligence Providers: Some companies provide threat intelligence with well-curated reports collected from various sources that are hard to reach along with actionable insights.

👉Government and Industry sharing Platforms: Government agencies, such as CISA(Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) in the U.S., and industry groups like ISACs (Information Sharing and Analysis Centers), often provide threat intelligence relevant to specific sectors.

Related Reading: Building a Threat Intelligence Team: Skills and Tools You Need

Benefits of Proactive Threat Hunting by Leveraging Threat Intelligence

The integration of proactive threat hunting and threat intelligence offers several benefits for organizations:

Quick Detection

Proactive threat hunting by leveraging threat intelligence can detect advanced persistent threats(APTs), and fileless malware before they cause significant harm. This reduces the dwell time of the attackers within the network and reduces the damage caused by their infiltration.

Effective Incident Response

With detailed insights into the current threat landscape and attack techniques, security teams are better equipped and trained to respond to threats promptly, minimizing the impact of the cyberattack.

Security posture

Threat hunting helps to detect security gaps in an organization’s defenses, allowing security teams to patch gaps, and improve configurations before an attack occurs. In this process, threat intelligence is important, as it helps security teams understand the vulnerabilities and security gaps exploited by threat actors. This makes them prioritize those vulnerabilities and risks to address first.

Leveraging Threat Intelligence to Stay Ahead of Cyber Attacks

Threat intelligence plays a vital role in proactive threat hunting by providing security teams with actionable insights into potential threats based on risk profile. By leveraging threat intelligence, organizations can reduce the likelihood of getting attacked by threat actors or APTs(Advanced Persistent Threats).

Here are some ways how security teams can leverage Threat Intelligence for proactive threat-hunting

1. Hypothesis Creation

The first step in threat hunting is hypothesis development. This involves asking critical questions based on threat intelligence, 

  • What Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) are used by attackers in your industry?
  • Are recent vulnerabilities with POC available to the public or unpatched that might affect your systems?
  • Is any unusual behavior observed by security teams similar to TTPs of APTs recently?

2. Enhancing Threat Hunting

Threat intelligence provides threat hunters the vital information for their searches. Instead of searching blindly through massive data, threat hunter leverages threat intelligence to hunt particular threats based on Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), such as IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, and URLs, that are associated with recent threats.

3. Saves Time 

Threat hunting with threat intelligence saves security teams a lot of time. With clear actionable insights from intelligence feeds, threat hunters can focus on security incidents that may have the potential for significant in fact. This approach reduces the amount of time spent on getting insights from security-related data.

4. Identifying TTP

One of the important aspects of leveraging threat intelligence for threat hunting is getting insights into attackers Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs). TTPs describe how threat actors utilize various tools and techniques to infiltrate and exfiltrate the data from the systems. This will be helpful for threat hunters to craft a strategy for effective search.

For example, if threat intelligence points out that a particular ransomware group is using cobalt strike to move laterally within networks, threat hunters can focus their searches toward identifying cobalt strike activity within networks or IT infrastructure.

Conclusion

In many sectors, staying ahead of threats is a compulsion and regulatory requirement. Proactive threat hunting by leveraging threat intelligence can help organizations stay compliant with industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI DSS. There have been many real-world scenarios where threat hunting identified APTs, malware, and other threats that evaded traditional security tools and measures. In one instance, the threat-hunting team discovered crypto mining within the office environment. This shows the need for proactive threat hunting powered by threat intelligence for detecting risks.

While implementing a fully mature proactive threat-hunting might be challenging, the rewards are always worth it.