Certified: The Security+ Prepcast

Incident response doesn’t end when you stop the threat. It ends when you understand it. Why did it happen? What allowed it to succeed? And what must change to prevent it from happening again? That’s the goal of root cause analysis. But great cybersecurity goes beyond reacting. It involves proactively seeking out threats before they become full-blown incidents. That’s the role of threat hunting. In this episode, we explore both: how to uncover the root causes behind security events, and how to proactively hunt for threats hiding in plain sight.
Let’s begin with root cause analysis.
When an incident occurs—whether it’s malware, unauthorized access, or data exfiltration—it’s tempting to jump straight into cleanup. But without investigating the why, the same attack vector could be used again. Root cause analysis helps identify the underlying conditions that made the incident possible, not just the surface-level symptoms.
A strong root cause analysis begins by collecting a complete timeline of the incident. This includes system logs, user activity, authentication records, alert data, and configuration states. Analysts walk backward from the first sign of compromise to determine the exact point of entry, the method of attack, and any contributing vulnerabilities or misconfigurations.
Let’s walk through a real-world example. A hospital experiences a breach where protected health information is copied to an external device. Initial analysis shows that a user account was misused. But the root cause analysis reveals something deeper: the user had retained administrative access after transferring departments, and the system storing patient records had no data loss prevention controls in place. The breach was the symptom—but excessive permissions and missing safeguards were the root causes.
Root cause analysis often uncovers human factors, such as lack of training, procedural gaps, or social engineering. It may also reveal technical debt—like legacy systems that can’t be patched, or manual processes that were never formalized. Identifying the root cause allows the organization to implement targeted remediation: changing policies, revising access controls, patching systems, or adjusting procedures.
Another example: a school district finds ransomware on several endpoints. The initial infection came from a phishing email. But root cause analysis reveals that macros were not disabled in Office documents, and the email filter failed to flag the message. The team responds by revising their group policies, improving phishing detection, and updating their training materials. The incident becomes an opportunity to strengthen the overall environment.
Root cause analysis is not about assigning blame—it’s about systemic improvement. The process should result in a report that documents the timeline, findings, conclusions, and corrective actions. These reports should feed directly into policy reviews, awareness training, vulnerability management, and future testing.
Now let’s shift to the second half of today’s episode: proactive threat hunting.
Threat hunting is the practice of actively looking for threats that have not yet been detected. It assumes that attackers may already be inside your systems—and that relying on alerts alone is not enough. While most detection methods are reactive, threat hunting is proactive. It’s about asking questions, forming hypotheses, and testing them using data from across your environment.
Threat hunting begins with an assumption. For example, “What if an attacker compromised an employee’s credentials but hasn’t triggered any alerts?” Or, “Could someone be exfiltrating data using encrypted DNS traffic?” These hypotheses guide the hunt. The team then analyzes telemetry—such as endpoint behavior, authentication logs, network flows, and file access patterns—to look for supporting evidence.
Let’s walk through a real-world scenario. A global technology company runs regular threat hunting exercises focused on lateral movement. The threat hunting team creates a hypothesis: “An attacker has breached a single user’s endpoint and is attempting to access shared drives using that user’s token.” Using log data and session traces, the team detects unusual file access patterns from a user in accounting. It turns out the user’s credentials were compromised, but the behavior didn’t trigger traditional alerts. The threat is stopped before it becomes a full breach.
Threat hunting also involves looking for indicators of compromise that don’t yet match known signatures. These include unusual PowerShell commands, unauthorized registry changes, unexpected parent-child process relationships, and strange login times. Effective hunters combine domain expertise with tools like Security Information and Event Management dashboards, endpoint detection and response platforms, and threat intelligence feeds.
Another example: a retail chain notices that several point-of-sale systems are generating traffic to a new domain. The domain is not on any known blocklist, but it’s registered in a region associated with prior attacks. Threat hunters investigate further and find malware beacons embedded in the point-of-sale software. Because the attack used new infrastructure, signature-based tools missed it—but the proactive hunt found it early.
Threat hunting isn’t just for large enterprises. Any organization with visibility into logs, user behavior, and system changes can implement a threat hunting program. It might be as simple as reviewing failed login attempts outside of business hours, or checking for unrecognized services listening on sensitive ports.
To get started, organizations can use threat hunting frameworks—such as MITRE’s ATT&CK matrix—to structure their efforts. These frameworks describe known adversary tactics and techniques, helping teams generate hypotheses and design hunts. Over time, hunting activities generate their own intelligence, which feeds back into detection systems and improves overall defense.
One of the biggest benefits of threat hunting is that it reveals gaps. A hunting exercise may uncover logging that isn’t enabled, systems that aren’t being monitored, or accounts that are too powerful. Even if no active threat is found, the act of looking improves visibility and drives better security hygiene.
Threat hunting is most effective when it’s routine. Organizations should schedule hunting sessions weekly, monthly, or quarterly—depending on their resources. They should document their hypotheses, data sources, findings, and recommendations. Over time, the team builds a library of insights that can be used for tuning alerts, refining incident response, and improving threat intelligence.
To summarize, root cause analysis and threat hunting are essential for both understanding the past and defending the future. Root cause analysis helps uncover the true origins of incidents—beyond just symptoms—and drives systemic improvements. Threat hunting enables teams to proactively seek out threats before they escalate, improving visibility and reducing attacker dwell time. These activities are part of a mature, forward-thinking cybersecurity program that goes beyond alerts and logs—and toward resilience and readiness.
For the Security Plus exam, expect questions about the purpose of root cause analysis, the steps involved in threat hunting, and how these practices differ from traditional incident detection and response. You may be asked to match findings to root causes or identify proactive steps in a threat hunting scenario. Review terms like dwell time, hypothesis-based detection, root cause, behavioral anomaly, and MITRE ATT&CK—they’re all relevant for both the exam and real-world security operations.
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