Cyber threat hunting excelling at identification and prevention, says research

Proactively looking for cyber threats is a continuous process 'that should become part of the security team's DNA'

Threat hunting is helping to identify cyber security threats faster for three quarters of organisations using the approach, according to Computing's own research on the subject, carried out in collaboration with Carbon Black.

The finding reinforces Carbon Black's past research into threat hunting, which puts the average time taken to detect a breach at 220 days for passive cyber security approaches.

This is where threat hunting comes in. As the report explains:

"Threat hunting is the active pursuit and detection of the abnormal activity on the network that indicates potential compromise. Rather than a reactive activity carried out in response to a security alert, threat hunting is a continuous process that should become part of the security team's DNA.

"Threat hunters can make decisions quickly and wisely, using human judgement supported by machine intelligence to proactively defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threat actors."

Increasingly in today's digital world, the security professionals responsible for defending the network are realising that they need to understand the way adversaries think in order to stay ahead of emerging threats.

More than three quarters of participants in Computing's research who use threat hunting also said they benefitted from more effectively preventing threats before they entered the network.

Meanwhile, a quarter of organisations also recognise the cost reductions from the possible impact of a breach if it is detected more quickly or prevented entirely as a result of threat hunting.

Those companies using threat hunting are clearly seeing the benefits. Despite this, just a quarter of all participants were able to confirm that their organisation employed specific proactive threat hunting individuals as part of their security function.

To learn more, read the full report: Outsmarting the Smart: Entering the Age of Threat Hunting.