49% of organizations have experienced a major security breach in the past 12 months, according to our “Voice of a Threat Hunter 2024” report. Of course, any data breach can have a number of impacts, from reputational to financial.
However, of those that did have a breach, 72% say their threat hunting program played a key role in preventing or mitigating the breach. Numerous factors can make a threat hunting program effective, but two of those are the tools and technology you employ and having well-trained threat hunters on your team.
Here’s what the 293 security practitioners we surveyed say about how having the right tools and the right training for your security team can boost the effectiveness of your threat hunting program.
Having the Right Tools and Technology
53% said that their threat hunting program is very effective. What makes their program so effective is having the right tools in place, such as endpoint detection and response (EDR) and security information and event management (SIEM). Additionally, the top enhancement they would make to their program is to add more actionable threat intelligence.
What threat hunting tools or products do they say are the most effective? The top tools are network forensic detection, netflow telemetry, raw network telemetry data and/or full packet captures. They also say that commercial threat intelligence feeds and detection and response capabilities (EDR, NDR, XDR, etc.) help them be more successful in their security approach.
Next Steps
To improve their threat hunting efforts, security teams should look to invest in tools that offer improved visibility into networks and environments, assets, endpoints, and more. Advanced tools can also map your attack surface to pinpoint vulnerabilities and see where you’re most at risk for compromise. Invest in tools that provide relevant external threat intelligence specific to your organization, which can make your threat hunting more proactive and boost your ability to uncover malicious actors targeting your organization faster and more effectively. Additionally, look for tools that have the ability to integrate across multiple platforms for faster response. Since speed is a factor in protecting an organization, tools need to work quickly, with easy-to-use dashboards that allow for full visibility into oncoming threats.
Training Your Threat Hunters
Those who say their threat hunting program is very effective also attribute it to having trained and experienced threat hunting analysts on their team — and their biggest worry about their program is failing to retain qualified personnel. To enhance their threat hunting program, respondents would like to add additional staff with specific threat hunting experience.
Next Steps
Having security team members who are trained on how to conduct threat hunting can make a security team much more effective. But how can security teams take the time to train when teams are already stretched thin as it is? Having the right tools and technology to assist with threat hunting can expedite the learning process. So can implementing more automation to handle manual, repetitive tasks to free up your security team for more high-impact activities such as threat hunting.
How Tools and Trained Threat Hunters Facilitate Threat Reconnaissance
By having the right tools and the right people, a security team can improve their threat hunting and make it more proactive. By using those tools and training, they can evolve their threat hunting approach to a threat reconnaissance approach.
Threat reconnaissance is having the right intelligence and tools to take action against external threats before they even happen. Too often security teams are scrambling to hunt for an adversary after they've caused a breach or infiltrated a network. Today, successful security teams can take a more proactive approach to threat hunting by increasing their awareness of external threats to their organization and to their third-party partners.
Contextualized, relevant, real-time threat intelligence forms the foundation for effective threat reconnaissance. This intelligence tells a security team exactly what the imminent threats are to the organization so that they can take action to shore up infrastructure or vulnerabilities to protect against a future attack. Real-time intelligence helps security teams take action before an attack can occur. And more relevant data frees up team members from having to sift through large reports filled with unapplicable information. Real-time intelligence that is specific to your organization means you can make more informed decisions about how to act against those threats as well.
Conclusion
An effective threat hunting program starts by having the right tools and technology in place, as well as trained threat hunters who can perform threat reconnaissance. By taking action today to shore up your threat hunting capabilities, you can ensure that you’re not one of the 49% to experience a data breach in the future.
Read the “Voice of a Threat Hunter 2024 report today.