Cybersecurity can no longer be described as waiting to notice alerts and then respond. Currently, organisations are facing high-level cyberattacks, and moving toward a proactive stance is a must. This is where threat hunting becomes crucial. To those who want to build a career in security operations, understanding the art of threat hunting will improve your capabilities and reputation significantly.
As the shortage of professionals with a certified SOC analyst continues to grow, it is essential to learn how to recognise impending threats before they can result in actual damage.
What is Threat Hunting?
Threat hunting refers to the active exploration or search for indications of malicious activity within a system prior to the automation tools raising an alarm. Rather than relying on firewalls and intrusion detection systems alone, the SOC teams examine suspicious patterns, anomalies, and behaviours that might indicate an invisible threat.
Such active defensive measure helps to mitigate the occurrence of malicious viruses as attacks are identified sooner, and the damage to business operations is no longer as intense.
Why SOC Analysts Require Threat Hunting Capabilities
SOC analysts tend to be at the front line of an organisation’s cybersecurity defence. While numerous depend on automated detection tools, these solutions cannot detect every attack, particularly those sophisticated ones. Through the use of threat hunting methods, analysts can:
- Identify threats evading conventional security measures.
- Map attacker activity and motivations.
- Decrease the organisation’s mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR).
- Construct more solid incident response processes.
A SOC analyst certification not only confirms your expertise in security event monitoring and analysis but also proves your ability to execute threat hunting measures effectively.
The Threat Hunting Process
SOC teams typically adopt a formalised process to provide consistency in their hunts. The most important steps are:
- Creating a Hypothesis: Threat hunters begin with the premise that an attack may already be present. For instance, “An attacker might have utilised phishing emails to establish initial access.”
- Data Collection: The certified SOC analyst collects logs, endpoint data, and network traffic to look for abnormal patterns.
- Analysis and Correlation: By correlating across multiple sources, SOC teams can find hidden connections that could indicate malicious activity.
- Reacting and Enhancing: After verification, the SOC team attempts to contain and clean up the threat and then modifies detection tools to avoid repeating in the future.
Conclusion
Threat hunting makes SOC activities proactive and allows organisations to prevent and eliminate the development of threats. These are essential skills that aspiring and actual SOC workers must develop in order to have a successful career in the long term. With a SOC analyst certification and a good understanding of proactive defence measures, you can establish yourself as an expert to get a job in cybersecurity.
Take your first step in becoming a defender. Enrol in Hacker School now and acquire the skills, credentials and confidence you need to become an elite SOC analyst.
