How Intelligence Data Drives Proactive Threat Hunting?

A notable percentage of organizations rely on vendor-provided information as part of their threat intelligence strategy, with 14% depending solely on it. 

The threat environment is in a state of constant flux, with threats becoming increasingly sophisticated and persistent. Traditional security approaches, primarily reactive in nature – relying on alerts to indicate a breach – are proving insufficient against modern, evolving attack vectors. 

Today’s security teams must embrace a proactive mindset, actively searching for threats before they can cause significant damage. This shift in perspective brings the practice of proactive threat hunting into focus. 

This article will explain what proactive threat hunting is and highlight how intelligence data serves as its core component, empowering security teams to become more resilient and robust in the face of ever-present dangers.

What are the Limitations of Reactive Security?

Traditional security relies heavily on pre-defined rules and signatures to detect known threats. This approach has several drawbacks:

• Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: Reactive systems are often ill-equipped to handle previously unknown exploits.
• Evasion Tactics: Attackers often use techniques to bypass standard security controls.
• Alert Fatigue: The sheer volume of alerts can overwhelm security teams, leading to critical events going unnoticed.

Threat Hunting Statistics to Know

 

• 245+ adversaries tracked: CrowdStrike reports tracking over 245 adversaries globally, indicating a significant number of active threats in the cybersecurity landscape.
• 37% of organizations outsource threat hunting: According to the SANS 2024 Threat Hunting Survey, a growing number of organizations are opting for outsourced threat hunting services, reflecting a shift in how companies approach cybersecurity.
• 64% evaluate threat-hunting effectiveness: The same survey found that 64% of organizations formally assess the effectiveness of their threat-hunting efforts, a significant increase from previous years.
• 70% increase in RMM tool exploitation: There has been a 70% year-over-year increase in the use of remote monitoring and management tools for executing endpoint attacks, highlighting a shift in attack strategies.
• $9.5 trillion projected global cybercrime damages: Cybercrime is expected to inflict damages totaling $9.5 trillion globally in 2024, emphasizing the economic impact of cyber threats.
• 41% of CISOs cite ransomware as the top threat: A survey revealed that 41% of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) identify ransomware as the most significant threat to their organizations, followed closely by malware at 38%.
• 75% increase in cloud intrusions: The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report indicates a staggering 75% increase in cloud intrusions, showcasing how attackers are increasingly targeting cloud environments.

What is Proactive Threat Hunting?

Proactive threat hunting is a human-led, iterative process aimed at discovering threats that have successfully evaded automated security controls. It’s not merely a reaction to alerts but rather a deliberate search for evidence of malicious activity that might otherwise go undetected. 

While automated detection excels at recognizing established patterns, proactive hunting focuses on uncovering subtle anomalies and indicators that can signal a stealthy attack. By taking a proactive security stance, organizations move beyond reacting to known threats and work to neutralize new and emerging threats before they become major incidents.

Why Threat Intelligence is so Important?

Effective threat hunting is not a random search; it’s a guided mission. This is where threat intelligence (TI) becomes absolutely indispensable. Think of TI as the compass and map for your threat hunting expedition. 

It provides vital context and insights into the ever-evolving threat landscape, guiding security teams to formulate targeted and impactful hunts. Without relevant and actionable intelligence, hunting is like searching for a needle in a haystack, completely blindfolded.

Threat Intelligence: Explained

Threat intelligence is more than just raw data; it’s curated, contextualized information about existing and emerging cyber threats. It helps security teams understand attackers, their motivations, their tools, and their tactics. TI transforms disparate data points into actionable insights that drive proactive security measures, turning random noise into meaningful alerts.

The Four Pillars of Threat Intelligence

Threat intelligence is categorized into four main types, each serving a distinct purpose and providing unique benefits:

Strategic Intelligence

This provides a high-level overview of the threat landscape, encompassing industry trends, geopolitical risks, and attacker motivations. It helps in risk assessment and the formulation of long-term security strategies. 

For example, a strategic analysis might highlight that healthcare organizations are experiencing an increase in data exfiltration attacks linked to nation-state actors. This understanding allows for proactive allocation of resources toward specific risks.

Tactical Intelligence

This level delves into the how attackers operate – focusing on their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Malware analysis reports, common attack vectors, and exploit methodologies fall under tactical intelligence. For example, knowing that attackers are exploiting a specific vulnerability in a widely used application gives security teams tactical knowledge to hunt for indicators of compromise related to that exploit.

Operational Intelligence

This type focuses on the details of specific past or ongoing attacks. Details like specific indicators of compromise (IOCs), such as attack timestamps, specific network addresses involved, and the infrastructure used by the attackers, help security teams detect and respond to active threats more efficiently. An example would be identifying that a phishing campaign targeting employees used specific domain names and email subjects in the last week.

Technical Intelligence

This is the most granular type, providing very specific technical details used by attackers. It includes IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, URLs, and other technical data that can be used to detect and block malicious activity. For instance, using file hash analysis to identify malware that may have been deployed across a network.

Each type of intelligence plays a crucial role in threat hunting. Strategic intelligence helps shape the objectives of hunts, tactical intelligence informs hypothesis creation, and operational/technical intelligence helps drive actual detection and validation during the active hunting process.

Sources of Threat Intelligence

Threat intelligence is sourced from various internal and external resources:

• Internal Sources: These include system security logs, alerts from security tools, incident response reports, vulnerability scan results, and network traffic analysis. Internal data offers a valuable perspective on an organization’s specific security posture and prior attacks. For instance, examining server logs that show anomalous access attempts can provide valuable internal intelligence.
• External Sources: These include open-source intelligence (OSINT) feeds, commercial threat intelligence feeds, alerts from government agencies, industry-specific ISACs (Information Sharing and Analysis Centers), and security blogs. These sources provide insights into the broader threat landscape, often uncovering new and emerging trends. For example, subscribing to a commercial threat feed may provide information about new phishing campaigns targeting financial institutions.

Verifying and validating all threat intelligence before taking action is of vital importance. Not all sources are created equally, so it is crucial for security teams to develop processes for verifying the credibility of their sources and the accuracy of the intelligence they provide.

Preparing for Intelligence-Driven Threat Hunting

Successful threat hunting requires careful planning and setup:

Defining Objectives and Scope

It is vital to have clear, defined goals for each hunt. What threats are being targeted? What systems or network segments are included? For example, a hunt’s objective might be to detect advanced persistent threats (APTs) targeting financial data on specific servers, limiting scope to only those systems and associated network segments. This approach focuses the hunt and reduces resource consumption.

Building a Threat Hypothesis

Threat intelligence should be used to create testable hypotheses. For example, after reviewing intel that indicates a rise in attacks that exploit VPN vulnerabilities, a security team can develop a hypothesis around suspicious VPN activity within their network. These hypotheses act as starting points for focused hunting.

Setting Up Infrastructure and Tools

Access to the right tools is imperative. This includes Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) systems, network traffic analyzers, and dedicated threat intelligence platforms (TIPs). Additionally, maintaining detailed logs of activity over time will also help to identify normal behavior and highlight anomalies, which may be signs of malicious activity.

The Threat Hunting Process Using Intelligence

The threat hunting process, guided by intelligence data, typically involves these steps:

1. Gathering and Refining Intelligence: Aggregate data from both internal and external sources using TIPs, and refine the gathered data by filtering, prioritizing, and enriching it. This process aims to turn noise into signal and surface the most actionable intelligence.
2. Searching for Anomalies and Indicators: Employ hunting tools and techniques to actively search for suspicious behaviors that align with your hypothesis, specifically looking for deviations from baselines or patterns that match the intelligence data you’ve reviewed.
   • Example: If the tactical intelligence indicates attackers are using a specific malware family with a certain command-and-control pattern, the hunt will look for that network traffic in the network logs.
3. Analyzing and Validating Findings: Once potential issues are identified, analyze and validate them to confirm their malicious nature, avoiding the common issues of false positives. Triage and prioritize findings based on impact.
4. Incident Response and Reporting: After confirming malicious activity, initiate incident response plans and thoroughly document the actions, the lessons learned, and how to incorporate newly acquired data into existing defenses to make them more resilient against future attacks.

Best Practices for Intelligence-Driven Threat Hunting

To maximize the effectiveness of your threat hunting program, use these guidelines:

Continuous Learning and Adaptation

Stay ahead of emerging threats by keeping your strategies up-to-date. The cyber threat landscape constantly evolves. Regularly updating your threat intelligence feeds, your analysis tools, and your own skills ensures continuous improvement in detection.

Collaboration and Information Sharing

Foster open lines of communication by sharing threat intelligence with internal teams and external organizations through formal or informal agreements. A multidisciplinary approach involving security experts, incident responders, and IT professionals provides diverse insights and skills.

Automation and Orchestration

Automate routine tasks and workflows, specifically in the processes of intelligence collection, analysis, and report generation to improve efficiency and consistency. Balance the benefits of automation with the need for human expertise and intuition.

Focus on Critical Assets

Prioritize hunting efforts by focusing on the assets, systems, or networks that are deemed most important or most vulnerable. Tailor your hunts to address an organization’s unique vulnerabilities and risks based on business priorities and overall risk tolerance.

Palo Alto Networks Threat Detection

Palo Alto Networks offers powerful threat intelligence solutions through its Cortex platform, which is specifically designed to equip organizations with the advanced tools they need for proactive threat hunting and detection. Cortex XDR™ seamlessly integrates threat intelligence from a multitude of sources, intelligently correlating data across all key environments – endpoints, networks, and clouds. 

By using the combined power of machine learning, behavioral analysis, and advanced analytics, Cortex XDR is able to identify even the most subtle anomalies, providing security teams with a highly contextual and comprehensive view of potential threats. It also significantly automates many of the data gathering and analysis steps of detection and response, greatly increasing speed and effectiveness.

Palo Alto Networks Threat Intelligence is designed for far more than simple detection. It provides a deep understanding of the tactics, techniques, and procedures that threat actors utilize. 

By giving you this knowledge, your teams can develop more targeted threat hunts, and they can create even stronger detection strategies based on specific threats that may target you or your industry. You can explore more about their threat intelligence offerings here: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cortex/threat-intelligence

Bottom Line

In the modern cybersecurity landscape, proactive threat hunting, powered by actionable threat intelligence, is an indispensable capability that modern organizations need to adopt and invest in.

By proactively hunting for threats that slip through the cracks, you can detect them faster, minimize their damage, and build a stronger cybersecurity strategy and defensive posture. This shift towards proactive security, supported by continuously updated threat intelligence, offers the most reliable way to stay ahead of modern attackers and better defend your organization.