The importance of the security explorer in threat hunting – Investigating Threats with Query Explorers and KQL

Threat hunting involves proactively searching for security threats or potential vulnerabilities within an organization’s cloud infrastructure by using custom queries and analysis. Let us see how the query explorer plays a crucial role in threat hunting for several reasons:

• Data gathering: Threat hunters begin their activities by using query explorer tools and languages to gather data related to the cloud environment’s security configuration, activities, and logs. This data includes information about user access, resource configurations, network traffic, and more.
• Custom queries: Threat hunters create custom queries using the query explorer to search through the collected data for indicators of compromise (IoCs), unusual patterns, and security anomalies. These queries are tailored to the specific threat scenarios or behaviors they are investigating.
• Behavioral analysis: The query explorer allows threat hunters to perform behavioral analysis on data. They can look for deviations from normal system behavior, identify unauthorized access or unusual data transfers, and pinpoint potentially malicious activities.
• Incident detection: By using custom queries and continuous monitoring with the query explorer, threat hunters can potentially identify security incidents or vulnerabilities that may not have been detected by automated security measures. This proactive approach is crucial for detecting sophisticated or novel threats.
• Response and mitigation: When suspicious activities or threats are identified through the query explorer, threat hunters can take immediate action to respond and mitigate the security risks. This may involve isolating compromised resources, altering access controls, and initiating incident response procedures.
• Iterative process: Threat hunting is an iterative process. As new threats emerge and the threat landscape evolves, threat hunters continually refine their custom queries within the query explorer to adapt to changing circumstances and enhance the organization’s security posture.

The security explorer plays a pivotal role in threat hunting within the context of cloud security. It empowers security teams to proactively investigate their cloud environment’s data, configurations, and activities, enabling them to detect and respond to potential security threats and vulnerabilities before they can escalate into significant incidents.