Hunting Advanced Persistent Threats

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• Conducting proactive threat hunting sprints (typically 2–4 week cycles) based on newly published APT intelligence
• A UEBA alert or anomaly detection system flags behavioral deviations warranting deeper investigation
• A peer organization or ISAC sharing partner reports active APT compromise and you need to validate your own exposure

Do not use this skill as a substitute for incident response when a confirmed breach is in progress — escalate to IR procedures (NIST SP 800-61).

Prerequisites

• EDR platform with telemetry retention (CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, or SentinelOne) covering 30+ days
• Access to MITRE ATT&CK Navigator for hypothesis development
• Network flow data (NetFlow, Zeek, or Suricata logs) in a queryable SIEM
• Threat hunting platform or query interface (Velociraptor, osquery fleet, or Splunk ES)

Workflow