Vulnerability hunting, otherwise known as threat hunting, allows businesses to identify weak areas within their digital security while simultaneously seeking out impossible invaders that have breached their system. It centres around patching up and improving so-called ‘problem areas’ to prevent further issues from developing.
Here’s what you need to know about vulnerability and threat hunting and how they can help to strengthen business IT systems.
Understanding active vulnerability hunting
Vulnerability hunting involves identifying hidden threats within IT security systems. If teams actively practice vulnerability hunting, it can help improve the overall response to future attacks. By setting up a vulnerability-hunting framework, experts can identify risks and test various security controls in place. This proactive approach allows IT teams to continually develop existing systems.
Cyber-attacks come in many different shapes and sizes – while some are less severe, others could be detrimental to a business. Worryingly, statistics show that cybercrime is on the rise, which means it’s even more important for businesses to up their game.
Tools and techniques for effective hunting
Common techniques for vulnerability hunting include searching in line with specific search criteria. You shouldn’t make this criteria too broad as you’ll be overwhelmed with data, however you also shouldn’t narrow your criteria too much, as this could cause you to miss key areas. It’s all about balance when creating a search strategy.
Cluster analysis is another approach you can take. This involves tackling groups of similar information from a larger set of data. AI is commonly used to assist in this part of the process. Meanwhile, grouping means checking a set of unique products and assessing why several of them appear together. Stack counting involves going through a data set of related or equal values and establishing any outliers.
Cost-benefit analysis
When it comes to how you prioritise vulnerability hunting, it’s all about assessing cost-benefit analysis. The more you invest in vulnerability-hunting measures, the more secure your organisation will be from cyber-attacks.
The amount you could lose from a cyber-attack could be enough to severely harm or even shut down a company. For this reason, investing in penetration testing by a reputable tech company could be a worthy investment to protect your business.
Integrating hunting into regular security practices
After setting up an initial hypothesis, the team can begin to collect and process data to align with this goal. This is where you should be strategic about the raw material collected as quality and relevancy are important things to consider.
Then, it’s a case of moving into the ‘trigger’ phase and looking out for potential threats in line with your hypothesis. At this stage, you’re looking for anomalies and unusual activity to investigate further. After thorough analysis, you’ll need to adopt a response to help resolve the issue you’ve identified.
