Threat Hunting Solutions

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Cybersecurity has long evolved from mainstream antivirus software protection. The modern cyber threat landscape is an actively thriving environment that grows with fervor. Cyber attacks now occur through sophisticated strategies designed to cause maximum damage, whether financial or reputational. A recent study by Ponemon Institute found that organizations spend around $3.86 million recovering from cyber attacks. 

Amidst this, with the price of a cyber attack reaching sky high, proactive security measures such as cyber threat hunting have become the pinnacle of attaining utmost cyber security. Since achieving perfect endpoint security is an ongoing task, cyber threat hunting prepares an organization for the worst possible scenario and helps mitigate some of the worst cyber-attacks. 

Since the method has proven to be exceedingly effective, threat hunting solutions are slowly emerging, ensuring that the technique becomes available to the masses. 

What Is Threat Hunting, And Why Is It Important?

Threat hunting is a proactive method of researching within the organizations' network endpoints and datasets to hunt down malicious, suspicious or risky activities that are potentially harmful to the organization and have missed detection by existing security tools. 

Unlike traditional security practices, cyber threat hunting is a proactive technique that utilizes pre-existing data, analytical and technical skills, and a professional tool with advanced security solutions to attain the utmost security. 

Threat hunting is a valued technique within the modern evolving cyber threat landscape. It is proactive and is designed as per an organization's specific security and network structure, making it effective against some of the worst cyber-attacks. A threat hunting session can:

●    Significantly help reduce the time from intrusion to discovery, effectively cutting short the amount of damage caused by attackers. 
●    Allows early detection of advanced threats preventing significant damage. 
●    Proactively helps discover hidden threats such as sneaky malware or hacked systems.
●    It helps improve the time taken in threat response.
●    Provides the security team a better insight on specific incidents helping them understand the causes and forecasting their impact 
●    It helps build a more robust defense system. 
●    Improves SOC efficiency 
●    Allows a better integration of SOC within an organization. 

Therefore, it is exceedingly crucial for an organization to utilize proactive cyber threat hunting in building, securing, and maintaining its security infrastructure. 

Are There Any Challenges With Threat Hunting?

While cyber threat hunting is effective, one major problem is that it's a lengthy and time-consuming process. The steps involved in the process are:

-    Step 1: Hypothesis 
The threat hunt begins with a hypothesis or a statement that includes the threat hunter's idea regarding possible threats present within the environment and how to find them.

-    Step 2: Collect and Process Intelligence and Data 
A typical threat hunting session requires quality intelligence and data; therefore, to fully execute the hunt, data is collected and processed. Security Information and Event Management Software (SIEM) play a significant role in this step and are responsible for providing insight and track record of the organization's IT infrastructure. 

-    Step 3: Trigger
The hypothesis that acting as a trigger leads the threat hunter to investigate a particular system in a network. The hunter deploys the use of advanced security tools to execute his tasks better. 

-    Step 4: Investigation
Advanced tools and investigative technology allow the professional to hunt or search deep into potential vulnerabilities for malicious anomalies within the system or the network. The step here is crucial as it will enable the professional to decipher if the threat is malicious. 

-    Step 5: Response/ Resolution 
The data gathered from confirmed malicious activity is then fed into automated security technology to appropriately mitigate, resolve, and respond to threats. This step often involves removing malicious files, and restoring any alerted or deleted information. The data is also used to analyze further and make room for improvements.

As evident, a typical threat hunting session involves a careful investigation of networks and security endpoints which is often done manually, along with the use of various advanced tools; after that comes the painstakingly slow process of identifying vulnerabilities and sorting them as per their relevance, which involves a careful analysis of each. 

The time to investigate, gather and create a valid hypothesis and then further set in-depth analysis is often a burden upon security teams. The main reason behind this is the significantly gaping cybersecurity skills gap. Since there seems to be a lack of adequate professionals within the industry, one person sometimes has to manage several roles within security teams, such as becoming an IT administrator, technician, and a CICSO all rolled into one. Amidst this, organizations are reluctant to have that one person engaged in lengthy processes. 

Moreover, hiring third-party security often takes out a big chunk of finances from the organization's budget, which is yet again another reason for hesitance in adopting cyber threat hunting techniques for security. Amidst this, it has become somewhat crucial to adopt advancements in threat hunting, such as deploying threat hunting solutions. 

Is Using Cyber Threat Hunting Solution A Better Option?

In contrast to manual threat hunting techniques, threat hunting solutions seem to be a better option. These solutions are innovative and AI-driven software designed to hunt down threats, analyze malware, manage vulnerabilities, and prevent attacks against critical infrastructures and organizations. 

Since threat hunting requires going through a large pool of data, implementing threat hunting solutions software can significantly cut down the one main drawback that organizations face with threat hunting today. The platforms explore through the vast number of available data and are therefore able to process, analyze and form a hypothesis, 

Most of these cyber threat hunting solutions software are fully automated and mimic a threat actor's capabilities, behaviors, and goals. They search and keep track of actors, threats, and other activities occurring throughout the internet, including the surface and the dark web, providing better insight into potential future threats. 

Final Words 

As the cyber threat landscape evolves, cybersecurity teams have become crucial to continue developing faster. Since threat hunting is a proactive method of attaining robust cybersecurity, it is essential to integrate advancements within the technique to utilize its potential fully. One way to proceed with that is to adopt threat solutions that offer a cutting-edge method of implementing cyber threat hunting technique for organizations.

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