Organizations want to stay on top of cyber threats and detect them even before they occur. To do this, they need to detect threats and anomalies in their networks as quickly as possible. This is what we call threat hunting. It is a tool to help organizations constantly monitor their networks to detect and mitigate threats to keep them at a distance.
Today, proactive threat hunting has become a necessary tool for modern enterprises to keep themselves protected against adversaries that might otherwise go unnoticed. Beyond this, threat hunting also helps them find malicious activities as well as identify activities that might not be malicious but can be a threat to their overall security posture.
Data in Threat Hunting
A significant part of the threat hunting process is collecting and analyzing. It involves constantly analyzing data related to activities and movements in the network. This includes checking logs from servers, network devices, endpoints, and several other data points. Once this data is collected:
- 1. The security team conducts thorough interpretation and analysis to determine forming patterns and trends.
- 2. Using the data, they can find the 'who', 'what', 'where', 'when', and 'why' of any anomaly detected.
- 3. This also helps them gain enhanced visibility of the network as well as remove any threat such as malware that has penetrated without raising any alarm.
- 4. Significantly reduces the risk of a successful cyberattack.
While investigating data is important, enterprises also need metadata for proactive threat hunting. Metadata can play a critical role in uncovering vital information about digital files. Metadata gives detailed insights that can change the way security teams investigate threats in their network.
Metadata, also called data of the data, contains all the necessary information about the data that works as descriptors to the security teams. Metadata includes information, such as creation date, source, modification date, version, and other properties.
Metadata analysis is all about uncovering and examining the hidden data related to digital files. It is a process of extracting metadata from various sources to reveal essential details about the files, such as creation dates, last accessed and modified dates, and other critical information. Analyzing metadata provides threat hunters with valuable insights that help in maintaining network security for enterprises.
Importance of Metadata in Threat Hunting
Security teams today can capture metadata about every data, document, and communication protocol in the network allowing them to start threat investigations quickly and understand the full implications of an attack. For example:
- Data from inside a web session can be collected, including the source and destination IP address.
- Data related to whether a document or executable has been transmitted before, the author of the documents, when the document was created, and information about tags and attachments.
- The ability to scrutinize common attacker tactics, such as SQL injection, web shells, content staging and cross-site scripting, regardless of whether malware has been used.
The absence of detailed metadata can leave security teams to rely on basic legacy rules. Here are the key ways metadata analysis can enhance threat hunting:
- Ensures availability of comprehensive data
- Helps in investigation and analysis of potential security threats
- Acts as an early warning system for emerging threats
- Strengthens data integrity and prevents manipulation
- Supports forensic investigations for faster response
Comprehensive data availability
Effective threat hunting depends on a huge amount of data in a specific environment. Hunters are required to gather about the surroundings and formulate theories on possible threats. Metadata becomes a great source of information for the hunters providing descriptive information about other data, helping to organize, find, and understand it. Types of metadata that hunters might use:
- 1. Descriptive metadata
- 2. Structural metadata
- 3. Administrative metadata
- 4. Technical metadata
Investigation of threats
Threat hunters in organizations can investigate the captured metadata to find and pinpoint anomalies in the network that could be potential cyber threats. For example, metadata can reveal:
- What is going on in the network?
- Whether the network or the organization’s data has been compromised before.
- When, how, and why was the network compromised in the past?
- Whether the company has faced a multi-vector attack compromising multiple entry points?
- Proactive threat hunting
- Metadata analysis
- Stronger security posture
Early warning system
Analyzing metadata for threat hunting creates an early warning system that is fast, informative, and affordable.
| Fast | Metadata analysis provides a searchable description of everything that is easier to consume and can be accessed in real time. |
| Informative | Metadata contains all the necessary descriptors of the data itself allowing organizations to understand the past and present activities in the network. |
| Informative | Metadata analysis is considered comparatively affordable to full data packet capture systems as they create a huge amount of data which can skyrocket the storage fees. |
Enhance data integrity
Metadata plays an important role in maintaining quality and integrity of the data. It reveals crucial information about files to help security teams verify the accuracy and reliability of the information captured. It also provides a clear understanding of the data which can minimize the chances of errors due to misinterpretation. By analyzing metadata, threat hunters can investigate and verify whether files have been tampered with or not.
Boost forensic investigation
Metadata caters to forensic investigations by providing valuable insights to security teams. The details may include timestamps, geolocation, file paths, and relationships between files, devices, and even individuals. Metadata can also help threat hunters to verify the authenticity of the digital documents or media files. For instance, if the metadata doesn’t align with the file’s purported origin, it can indicate file tampering or forgery.
Key Types of Metadata
- Descriptive Metadata: This type of metadata provides essential details about the content of a digital file. For example, title, author, and keywords.
- Administrative Metadata: This type of metadata provides management details about a digital file. It covers information like file format, creation date, and access rights.
- Structural Metadata: This type of metadata indicates how different parts of a resource are organized, formatted, and related.
Best Practices of Metadata Analysis
- While analyzing metadata, avoid any type of modification to preserve original files and metadata.
- Capture all metadata in detail, such as file paths, timestamps, and origin to make sure that the evidence is well-documented.
- Create enforceable business rules around metadata to maintain data integrity and usability.
- Contextualize metadata analysis by recording the relevance of a specific timestamp or source in regard to the incident being investigated.
- Verify metadata from multiple sources. This ensures that the data is accurate, especially in cases of potential data tampering.
- Search for inconsistencies in data, such as mismatched timestamps or geolocation. This might indicate a case of data manipulation.
- Use metadata management tools to enhance content accessibility and reduce turnaround time while searching for information.
Conclusion
Metadata analysis is a powerful tool for proactive threat hunting. It provides contextual insights, deeper visibility, and real-time access to data to help enterprises detect anomalies and uncover hidden threats. Using metadata for threat hunting allows security teams to quickly identify compromised assets, understand the scope of an attack, and mitigate risks effectively. Thus, it makes it an essential component of modern cybersecurity strategies today.
If your organization is looking to implement a threat hunting tool, Fidelis Elevate® can be a comprehensive solution that offers advanced threat hunting capabilities. It offers users unmatched visibility into their networks and the ability to hunt threats proactively. With Fidelis, users get:
- Deep digital forensics
- Rich indexable metadata
- Automation in incident response
- Deception capabilities
- Faster threat detection
Frequently Ask Questions
What is metadata analysis?
Metadata analysis is the study of metadata. It includes examining and interpreting metadata to manage and understand information. It also involves extracting metadata from various sources to analyze the data for various purposes, such as performing an effective threat hunting process.
What is threat hunting?
Threat hunting is a process of detecting cyberattacks that might have penetrated the enterprise network without raising any alarms.
Why threat hunting is important?
Threat hunting helps enterprises strengthen their security posture against several cyber threats such as malware, insider threats, and other adversaries.
What are the best practices of metadata analysis?
The best practices of metadata analysis are preserving original files and metadata, creating detailed documentation, verifying metadata, and implementing metadata tools for effective analysis.
