Threat hunting gains in popularity to combat cyber threats

The use of threat hunting techniques to combat cyber attacks is increasing according to a new report.

The study by Crowd Research Partners of cybersecurity professionals in the 350,000 member Information Security Community on LinkedIn reveals that threats are rising dramatically and that deployment of sophisticated threat hunting platforms can significantly accelerate the time needed to detect, investigate and fix threats.

"Following the unprecedented wave of cybersecurity attacks, threat hunting is emerging as a new line of defense and the latest innovation for security operations centers (SOCs) to combat advanced security threats," says Holger Schulze, founder of the Information Security Community on LinkedIn. "By pairing human intelligence with next-generation threat hunting platforms, SOC teams are empowered to proactively identify and mitigate threats faster and more reliably."

Among the study's findings are that over 80 percent of respondents say threats have increased at the rate of 2x or greater in the past year. Based on current market conditions, the number of advanced and emerging threats will continue to outpace the capabilities and staffing needed to handle those threats.

Detection of advanced threats and the inability of organizations to find expert security staff to assist with threat mitigation are the top two challenges security operations centers are facing. Plus confidence in the industry's ability to uncover advanced threats is low. For example, data breaches still have an average dwell time of 5 months. Only about six percent of respondents say their SOC is cutting-edge in relation to handling emerging threats.

The main benefits of threat hunting platforms include improving detection of advanced threats, creating new ways of finding threats, and reducing investigation time. The average time spent to detect a threat improved by 61 percent, and the average time to investigate a threat by 42 percent with a threat hunting platform. 46 percent say that investment in a threat hunting platform would pay for itself in a year.

You can find out more in the full report which is available on the Crowd Research Partners website.

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