What is Threat Hunting?
Threat hunting is a proactive cybersecurity practice designed to identify and mitigate potential threats before they can cause significant harm. This process involves the active search for indicators of compromise (IoCs) and anomalous behavior within an organization’s IT environment. Unlike traditional security measures that rely on automated detection tools, threat hunting necessitates human intuition and expertise to uncover sophisticated attacks that may evade conventional security systems.
A key component of threat hunting is the analysis of data collected from various sources, including network traffic, endpoint logs, and threat intelligence feeds. Skilled security professionals, often referred to as threat hunters, employ a variety of techniques to correlate this data and spot patterns that may indicate malicious activity.
Successful threat hunting often involves the development of hypotheses based on known threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). By testing these hypotheses, hunters can detect hidden threats, assess the level of risk, and implement effective response strategies.
Overall, threat hunting enhances an organization’s security posture by providing deeper visibility into the threat landscape, allowing for faster detection and response to potential incidents, which is critical in today’s rapidly evolving cyber threat environment.