According to Paubox’s What small healthcare practices get wrong about HIPAA and email security report, “In 2025, healthcare breaches took an average of 224 days to detect and another 84 days to contain—over 10 months total.” This delay indicates a gap in traditional, reactive security approaches. Rather than waiting months to discover a breach, organizations can turn to more proactive strategies. Cyberthreat hunting, often just called threat hunting, is a proactive cybersecurity practice where experts actively search for hidden threats inside a network or system before those threats trigger alerts or cause damage.

 

Understanding cyberthreat hunting

“While traditional cybersecurity methods identify security breaches after the fact,” says Microsoft, “cyber threat hunting operates under the assumption that a breach has occurred, and can identify, adapt, and respond to potential threats immediately upon detection.” According to IBM, “Threat hunting programs are grounded in data—specifically, the datasets gathered by an organization’s threat detection systems and other enterprise security solutions.

 

How does cyberthreat hunting work?

According to Microsoft, “Cyber threat hunting utilizes threat hunters to preemptively search for potential threats and attacks within a system or network.” This enables agile and efficient reactions to the growing complexity of cyberattacks driven by human operators. Furthermore, IBM states that “During the threat hunting process, threat hunters comb through this security data, searching for hidden malware, stealth attackers and any other signs of suspicious activity that automated systems might have missed.” When threat hunters detect an issue, they immediately take action to eliminate the danger and reinforce defenses to prevent recurrence.

 

Types of threat hunting

According to Microsoft, there are three types:

Structured

In a structured hunt, threat hunters search for suspicious tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that may indicate potential threats. “Rather than approaching the data or system and looking for breachers, the threat hunter creates a hypothesis about a potential attacker’s method and methodically works to identify symptoms of that attack.” Since structured hunting is a more proactive strategy, IT professionals using this method can frequently intercept or quickly stop attackers.

 

Unstructured

“In an unstructured hunt, the cyber threat hunter searches for an indicator of compromise (IoC) and conducts the search from this starting point.” Since the threat hunter can review historical data for patterns and clues, “unstructured hunts can sometimes identify previously undetected threats that may still place the organization at risk.”

 

Situational

“Situational threat hunting prioritizes specific resources or data within the digital ecosystem. If an organization assesses that particular employees or assets are the highest risks, it can direct cyber threat hunters to concentrate efforts or preventing or remediating attacks against these vulnerable people, datasets, or endpoints.”

 

Tools used in cyberthreat hunting

Cyberthreat hunting relies on a combination of advanced technologies that help security teams detect, analyze, and respond to hidden threats. These tools improve visibility across systems and reduce the time and effort required to identify malicious activity. According to IBM, several tools can be used to support threat hunting efforts:

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions collect and analyze data from across an organization’s IT environment, helping teams identify potential threats and vulnerabilities before they escalate.

SIEM tools enable:

  • Early detection of suspicious activity
  • Reduction of false positives, allowing threat hunters to focus on real risks

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools focus on monitoring and protecting endpoint devices such as laptops, servers, and mobile devices. “EDR software uses real-time analytics and AI-driven automation to protect an organization's end users, endpoint devices and IT assets against cyberthreats that get past traditional endpoint security tools.”

 

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a service-based approach that “combines advanced technology and expert analysis to drive proactive threat hunting.” This enables “effective incident responses and perform swift threat remediation.”

 

Security analytics platforms

“These systems offer deeper insights into security data by combining big data with sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence tools.” These platforms help:

  • Identify complex attack patterns
  • Improve visibility into system behavior
  • Accelerate investigations through detailed, data-driven insights

Best practices

Microsoft recommends the following best practices for implementing cybersecurity hunting:

  • “Create a theory or hypothesis about a potential threat. Threat hunters might start by identifying an attacker’s common TTPs.
  • Conduct research. Threat hunters investigate the organization’s data, systems, and activities— a SIEM solution can be a useful tool—and collect and process relevant information.
  • Identify the trigger. Research findings and other security tools can help threat hunters distinguish a starting point for their investigation.
  • Investigate the threat. Threat hunters use their research and security tools to determine if the threat is malicious.
  • Respond and remediate. Threat hunters take action to resolve the threat.”

See also: HIPAA Compliant Email: The Definitive Guide (2026 Update)

 

FAQS

How is cyberthreat hunting different from traditional threat detection?

Traditional threat detection relies on automated tools to flag known threats. Cyberthreat hunting goes a step further by actively investigating systems for unknown or advanced threats that may bypass those tools.

 

Why is cyberthreat hunting important?

Cyberthreat hunting helps organizations detect threats earlier, reduce the time attackers remain undetected, and minimize potential damage from cyberattacks.