What Is Threat Hunting in Cybersecurity?

What Is Threat Hunting in Cybersecurity?

Threat hunting, or cyber threat hunting, is a process of actively searching for potential cyber threats that may have evaded traditional security measures. This process is, therefore, referred to as proactive threat hunting to emphasize its difference from more reactive threat detection.

While this approach doesn’t go by without automated threat hunting tools, it relies mainly on manual research methods to identify suspicious activity in the infrastructure, investigate potential threats, and take measures for cybersecurity risk mitigation.

Threat hunting is the proactive search for cyber threats that have evaded traditional cybersecurity measures. While reactive threat detection waits for threat alerts, threat hunting involves analysts actively investigating networks and systems to find hidden attackers before they cause damage.

This manual research process combines automated tools with human expertise to identify suspicious activities, investigate potential threats, and strengthen organizational defenses against emerging risks.

Why is Threat Hunting Important?

Including threat hunting in your cybersecurity strategy is crucial because it detects advanced persistent threats that your standard cybersecurity measures may overlook, thereby preventing potentially costly breaches and data theft.

These threats can remain undetected in networks for months, using legitimate tools and avoiding signature-based detection. This, in turn, gives attackers time to steal sensitive data and establish persistent access.

Threat hunters utilize behavioral analysis and threat intelligence to identify these stealthy attacks. When you deploy threat hunting, you’ll experience faster threat detection, reduced dwell time, and improved incident response capabilities.

Where Does Threat Hunting Fit?

Threat hunting fits as a layer between automated detection and incident response, filling the gap where advanced attacks bypass your traditional cybersecurity strategies and solutions. It integrates with your existing security infrastructure rather than replacing it, and works alongside IDS/IPS systems and network detection and response solutions.

Automated systems are good at detecting known threats, but adding a threat hunting layer helps you address other advanced attacks that bypass traditional defenses. This proactive defense strategy is most effective in enterprises with mature security operations centers and sufficient resources for dedicated threat-hunting teams, where the cost of advanced threats justifies the investment in specialized threat-hunting capabilities.

Key Tools and Technologies Used in Threat Hunting

Effective threat hunting should have specialized tools that provide comprehensive visibility across your network, endpoint, and email security layers. These technologies enable threat hunters to collect, analyze, and correlate security data from multiple sources, identifying sophisticated attack patterns.

1. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

EDR platforms provide real-time visibility into endpoint activities. It accomplishes this by collecting data on process execution, network connections, and file modifications. These tools enable threat hunters to track attacker movements across systems and identify living-off-the-land techniques that utilize legitimate system tools for malicious purposes.

2. Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

NTA solutions monitor network communications to detect lateral movement, command-and-control traffic, and data exfiltration attempts, which occur after attackers gain initial access to your network.

Some advanced NTA platforms are also capable of analyzing encrypted traffic patterns and identifying covert communication channels without decrypting the data.

3. Threat Intelligence Platforms

Threat intelligence platforms integrate external threat data with internal security events. They correlate indicators of compromise with known threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures, supporting attribution and context-aware threat hunting that focuses your efforts on genuine threats. Explore these features in the Group-IB Threat Intelligence Platform for real-time threat intelligence tailored to your needs.

Threat Hunting vs. Threat Detection: What Is the Difference?

The difference between threat hunting and threat detection lies in how they find threats. Their approaches determine whether attackers remain hidden in your network for months or get caught within days.

Threat detection monitors your systems for known threats using predefined rules and signatures, automatically alerting you to suspicious activities, but it may struggle with new attack methods.

Meanwhile, threat hunting proactively searches for unknown threats using hypotheses based on attacker behavior, assuming compromise, and systematically investigates to uncover threats that automated systems may miss. This proactive approach helps combat advanced attackers who specifically design their techniques to evade detection systems.

Threat Hunting vs. Threat Intelligence

Threat hunting and threat intelligence serve different but complementary roles in cybersecurity. Threat intelligence involves collecting and analyzing information about potential threats, threat actors, and attack patterns to inform your following defensive strategies and security decisions.

Meanwhile, threat hunting involves applying threat intelligence to identify and search for threats within an organization’s infrastructure. In this case, threat intelligence provides the “what” and “who,” while threat hunting focuses on the “where” and “when” within specific environments.

Group-IB is among the few vendors in the market that conduct intelligence collection tailored to meet customers’ needs. Our blog, “Under the hood: Group-IB Threat Intelligence,” shows how we achieve a high level of accuracy through a customized four-phase approach.

How is Cybersecurity Threat Hunting Implemented?

Threat hunting in cybersecurity involves a combination of specialized tools and manual analysis techniques. The process leverages SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platforms for data aggregation and EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) systems for endpoint visibility. These are combined with threat intelligence feeds that provide context about the current attack campaigns targeting your industry.

Threat hunting analysts will review your system logs and analyze network traffic patterns, then correlate security events across multiple data sources to build a complete picture of potential threats in your infrastructure. The entire threat hunting process requires deep technical knowledge of attacker tactics and analytical skills to distinguish genuine threats from normal business activities, which makes human expertise extremely valuable.

Types of Threat Hunting

Types of threat hunting include structured, unstructured, and situational approaches. Each of these threat hunting types serves different detection scenarios.

Threat hunters may employ various tactics or strategies, depending on the available intelligence data, resources at hand, and the current state of the attack campaign landscape. Each of the approaches discussed below offers unique advantages for uncovering specific types of threats and attack patterns.

Structured

Structured hunting focuses on specific indicators of attack (IoAs) and tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) from frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK. Analysts carrying out structured threat hunting develop hypotheses based on known attack patterns and systematically search for evidence of these techniques.

Unstructured

Unstructured hunting begins with anomalies or indicators of compromise (IoCs) identified during routine monitoring. Threat hunters investigate these triggers to uncover attack campaigns or previously unknown threats, making this approach effective for zero-day discoveries.

Situational

Situational hunting responds to specific circumstances, such as newly discovered vulnerabilities or threat intelligence indicating a targeted attack on your organization’s security system. Threat hunters examine how attackers might exploit these conditions and search for related activities proactively. 

Learn how to hunt for TTPs using Windows artifacts with Group-IB’s Prefetch Files hunting methodology.

5 Steps to Threat Hunting

The threat hunting process varies depending on the chosen type and methodology. However, there are some common threat hunting steps you may encounter in most cases.

1. Hypothesis Development

The cyber threat hunting process begins with the development of a testable threat hypothesis based on threat intelligence, vulnerability assessments, or suspicious activities. Strong hypotheses enable analysts to identify patterns and anomalies that may indicate potential threats.

2. Intelligence Collection

Analysts gather relevant security data from endpoints, networks, logs, and threat intelligence sources. External attack surface monitoring complements internal telemetry by identifying public-facing assets and potential entry points that require hunting focus.

Group-IB Attack Surface Management does continuous, passive discovery and risk scoring to surface any gaps. Add anything it finds into SIEM/EDR/NDR coverage before you hunt. This phase supports a more comprehensive coverage of the hypothesis scope and serves as the foundation for effective analysis.

3. Trigger Identification

A trigger is a distinct event that prompts the need for further investigation. This occurs when threat detection tools flag unusual actions suggesting malicious activity. Alternatively, a hypothesis about a new attack or threat may serve as the trigger for proactive threat hunting.

4. Threat Validation

Next, threat hunters will analyze the anomalous condition that has been flagged. They use the analysis to generate indicators of compromise or indicators of attack. During this phase, threat hunters utilize security datasets from various sources, including EDR and SIEM systems, to identify potential malicious threats within the system.

5. Response and Remediation

The final phase of the threat hunting process involves communicating the security threat to relevant stakeholders. Once indicators are identified, threat hunters will work closely with operations teams to deploy an appropriate incident response as quickly as possible.

Threat Hunting Metrics and KPIs

Threat hunting metrics include detection speed, hunting efficiency, and business impact measurements. These KPIs help you optimize your threat hunting operations and justify your next cybersecurity investments.

• Detection Metrics: Mean time to detection (MTTD) measures how quickly hunters identify threats after initial compromise.
• Hunting Efficiency: Hypothesis validation rate tracks the percentage of hunting hypotheses that uncover genuine threats.
• Business Impact: Threat hunting ROI that drives business value includes prevented breach costs, reduced dwell time, and improved security posture.

Real-World Threat Hunting Examples

Our Hunting Ritual series highlights how analysts can move from a working hypothesis to tested queries, evidence triage, and validated findings. Each case study illustrates the logic behind the hunt, the tools and data sources we rely on, and how minor anomalies evolve into conclusive insights.

Hypothesis-Based Threat Hunting

In this case study, our team used a hypothesis-based approach to guide the hunt. Rather than scanning blindly and waiting for signatures, we developed a hypothesis drawn from our experience with real adversaries: persistence techniques that bypass signature-based tools.

This approach led to uncovering malware that had slipped past multi-layered security features, including an antivirus program, without generating a single alert.

The investigation further revealed how specific persistence techniques, such as modifying the Run key, can blend in as normal system behavior, evading signature-based detection and remaining dormant within the environment.

After testing the hypothesis with targeted queries across EDR, Sysmon, and event logs, and correlating the results with threat intelligence, we identified the threat before it could advance to the ‘impact’ stage of the attack chain.

Threat Hunting for Execution via Windows Management Instrumentation

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a trusted Windows tool for administrators, making it an attractive target for attackers (T1047). In this case study on WMI execution abuse, we hypothesized that stealthy execution might be hiding behind normal system processes.

What we found confirmed that suspicion. We observed unusual event subscriptions and process chains where WmiPrvSE.exe spawned shells, such as cmd.exe and PowerShell.exe.

To most defenders, these actions could pass as routine admin work. We dug deeper, correlating event logs and EDR data until it became clear that attackers were abusing WMI to quietly run commands, establish persistence mechanisms, and carry out various malicious activities without raising suspicion.

This hunt also emphasizes the importance of striking a balance between simplicity and thoroughness in your approach, ensuring that your threat hunting consistently hits the mark.

Threat Hunting for Scheduled Tasks

The scheduled task technique (TT1053.005) is a popular method of enabling persistent execution of malware. In Hunting Rituals #3, we investigate how attackers hide persistence and timed execution inside Windows Scheduled Tasks using Group-IB Managed XDR.

We started with the hypothesis that scheduled tasks are being abused to run code without tripping alerts. Digging through Task Scheduler logs and event data, we uncovered anomalies that didn’t fit legitimate admin behavior. This includes tasks created by non-admin accounts, scripts encoded in base64, and programs set to run from unusual directories. While each event appeared minor in isolation, together they indicated the persistence of tactics at play.

This technique gives you two independent paths to catch the same persistence. Attackers can register scheduled tasks in many ways, so creation only hunts for anything that doesn’t leave evident command-line traces. Execution hunts close that gap because malicious tasks still have to run and will surface with tell-tale parent processes. Using both angles makes your threat hunting coverage resilient to evasion and blind spots.

Managed Threat Hunting Services

Organizations often lack resources for dedicated threat hunting teams. This is because skilled threat hunters require extensive training, continuous updates to threat intelligence, and access to advanced security tools.

Managed threat hunting services provide experienced security professionals who use advanced techniques and technologies to identify threats within client networks. These services typically include 24/7 monitoring, incident response, and ongoing management of the security system.

Does Group-IB Provide Managed Threat Hunting Services?

Managed threat hunting is a core component of Group-IB Managed XDR. Our dedicated team of analysts actively searches for potential threats across various environments, such as endpoints, networks, email, and cloud platforms.

The integration of telemetry into a single console allows us to respond to any threats we uncover quickly. Managed XDR also supports a variety of integrations, including API and STIX/TAXII for seamless data exchange.

What you get when you partner with Group-IB for managed threat hunting:

• Proactive hunts, not just alerts. Threat hunts are fueled by insights from the Group-IB Threat Intelligence Platform, which focuses on actor TTPs, as well as infrastructure indicators. Our findings help create detections and provide guidance to strengthen your security stance.
• Faster investigation with sandbox-grade analysis. We also use our Malware Detonation Platform (MDP) to safely analyze suspicious files and URLs within controlled virtual machines tailored to your specific technology stack. This produces detailed reports that speed up the triage and response processes, while also identifying the threat actors targeting your sector.
• Response that reaches outside your perimeter. When threats involve external infrastructures, such as phishing or command-and-control (C2) activities, our CERT-GIB team coordinates takedowns and collaborates with relevant partners to mitigate risks effectively. You’ll also benefit from round-the-clock support from a team of SOC analysts, incident responders, and certified threat hunters.

If you want to strengthen your in-house threat hunting capabilities or improve your security program, get in touch with our experts today. We provide ongoing support, allowing you to focus on running your business effectively and securely.