NetScout Systems Inc.

06/11/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/11/2025 07:34

Top 3 Threat Hunting Takeaways from RSA Conference 2025

Top 3 Threat Hunting Takeaways from RSA Conference 2025

Hint: It's a core discipline for any organization serious about cyber resilience.

Robert Derby
June 11th, 2025
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Threat hunting isn't just a buzzword anymore; it's a necessity. At RSA Conference 2025, one theme came through loud and clear: Cyberthreat hunting has matured, and the expectations surrounding it have evolved.

To understand what's really happening inside security teams, we conducted a survey with vetted cybersecurity professionals, all actively involved in incident response and security operations. Combined with numerous conversations at RSA, one thing became evident: Threat hunting isn't a niche activity for elite teams; it's a core discipline for any organization serious about cyber resilience.

Here are the top three takeaways for anyone looking to elevate their threat hunting capabilities.

1. You Can't Hunt What You Can't See

Visibility is everything. Whether you're investigating suspicious behavior, tracking lateral movement, or verifying policy enforcement, you need access to complete, unfiltered data.

84 percent of surveyed security professionals said network visibility is critical to their threat detection and response process.

That's no surprise. The network offers a continuous, source-agnostic record of activity unlike endpoint logs or agent-based tools, which can be incomplete, manipulated, or bypassed entirely.

True threat hunting requires more than alerts. It requires transparency across the network-the kind of visibility that reveals not only what was flagged, but also what was missed.

2. Historical Data = Real Hunting Power

Threat hunting isn't limited to what's happening right now. Some of the most valuable insights are found in what already happened, especially the things that weren't caught in real time.

84 percent of respondents said retrospective analysis of historical data is essential to their incident response process.

This is a critical point and consistent with the visibility requirement. Many common tools retain data only for short periods, or only when an alert is triggered. In other words, No Detection = No Historical Data. That model limits the ability to investigate subtle or stealthy threats that slipped through the cracks.

Effective threat hunting depends on the ability to go back in time to pivot from indicators, trace behaviors across systems, and reconstruct the full timeline of an attack, even when there was no alert.

3. Knowledge Is the Differentiator

Most organizations track mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR). But for threat hunters, the most important metric is often mean time to knowledge (MTTK)-how quickly they can understand what really happened. In many cases, threat hunting is a proactive action not associated with a past alert or event. In these cases, threat hunters rely on their experience or obtain a new piece of threat intelligence (for example, a new MITRE ATT&CK tactics, techniques, and procedures [TTP] notification or information from their Information Sharing and Analysis Center [ISAC]) to proactively look for signs of compromise, or investigate a hypothesis by conducting retrospective analysis of historical network metadata or packets.

Threat hunting isn't just about answering, "Is this malicious?" It's about asking:

  • What was or is the attacker's objective?
  • How did the attacker move through the environment?
  • What evidence do we have to prove what occurred (for example, has our new threat intelligence uncovered evidence of a past, missed breach)?
  • What needs to happen next?

The answers to these questions require more than alerts. They require context, continuity, and confidence-the ability to move from signal to story, and from assumption to action.

The Hunt Is On: Are You Ready?

Threat hunting has become an essential part of modern cyberdefense. But it's only as effective as the tools, data, and context that support it. To enable truly proactive threat hunting, organizations need:

  • Complete and unaltered data, especially from the network and hybrid cloud environments
  • Long-term historical visibility, not limited by alert conditions
  • Analytical depth, with the flexibility to pivot, explore, and verify

In a world where the threat landscape is constantly evolving, the ability to proactively uncover what others miss may be the most powerful capability your security team can develop.

For organizations looking to operationalize these principles, NETSCOUT's Omnis Cyber Intelligence delivers the capabilities that fill proactive threat hunting demands. With NETSCOUT Adaptive Threat Analytics, it provides continuous packet-level visibility and retrospective analysis at scale, helping teams uncover what happened, even when threats evade real-time detection.

Learn how NETSCOUT Omnis Cyber Intelligence can help by providing comprehensive network visibility with scalable deep packet inspection (DPI) to detect, investigate, and respond to threats more efficiently.

NetScout Systems Inc. published this content on June 11, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on June 11, 2025 at 13:34 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io