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Case Study – Advanced Threat Hunting

A global MSP transforms from reactive detection to proactive exposure reduction with Advanced Threat Hunting

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About the client

The client is a global managed services provider (MSP) delivering IT operations and cybersecurity services to enterprises across healthcare, retail, and financial services. With thousands of endpoints under management and a hybrid cloud infrastructure, the organization was a regular target for advanced threat actors. Protecting customer environments, safeguarding intellectual property, and maintaining operational continuity were critical priorities for the security leadership team.

The client’s challenge

Despite significant investment in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) technologies, the client’s detection capabilities struggled to keep pace with modern adversaries. The SOC relied heavily on automated alerts and signature-based detections, which left considerable gaps.

Advanced attackers were using fileless malware, living-off-the-land binaries, and remote access tools that blended into normal user behavior, and so evading traditional indicators of compromise. Analysts faced alert fatigue, with thousands of daily notifications obscuring genuine threats. The hybrid nature of the client’s IT and customer-hosted environments created visibility gaps, particularly around lateral movement and post-exploitation activities.

Executives realized that without a threat-led hunting capability, the SOC remained reactive, increasing the likelihood that stealthy adversaries could operate undetected and cause material business impact.

Benefits

  • Reduced exposure: Proactive hunts ensured risks were identified and mitigated before adversaries weaponized them, strengthening resilience against ransomware and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) campaigns.
  • Threat-led resilience: By aligning hunting activities with the most relevant adversaries and techniques, the client gained confidence in its ability to withstand sophisticated, targeted attacks.
  • Optimized resource allocation: Insights from hunting highlighted ineffective detections and redundant tooling, allowing leadership to reduce wasted spend and reinvest in high-value controls.
  • Regulatory and customer assurance: Clear reporting on dwell time reduction, coverage improvements, and vulnerability response timelines gave executives evidence of compliance and operational resilience.
  • Sustainable maturity growth: Hunting results fed into detection engineering, Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR), and vulnerability management, embedding a continuous improvement cycle that evolves in step with the threat landscape.

Our solution

The organization partnered with CyberProof to deploy its Advanced Threat Hunting service as part of a broader Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) program. The service integrated intelligence-led prioritization with proactive, hypothesis-driven investigation, ensuring hunting activities aligned with the most relevant adversaries and attack techniques.

Core components included:

  • Customized threat profile: A tailored analysis of the most likely attack scenarios, based on the client’s industry, geography, and technology stack.
  • Incident- and hypothesis-driven hunts: CyberProof hunters developed and tested hypotheses based on MITRE ATT&CK techniques such as credential dumping, persistence via scheduled tasks, and anomalous PowerShell usage.
  • Advanced analytics and tooling: Using Jupyter notebooks, EDR telemetry, and SIEM queries, analysts conducted deep explorations of anomalies that standard alerts missed.
  • Continuous integration with SOC functions: Findings from hunts were systematically fed into detection engineering, DFIR, and vulnerability management workflows.
  • Executive visibility and reporting: Each hunt cycle concluded with detailed reports summarizing hypotheses tested, anomalies investigated, and recommendations for detection and mitigation.
Architecture diagram

Results

Within six months, the client achieved a significant transformation, moving from reactive detection to proactive, threat-led defense and measurable exposure reduction.

CyberProof’s hunters uncovered multiple instances of suspicious remote monitoring tool usage that blended with legitimate activity, enabling early containment before persistence or lateral movement could occur. The client also avoided exposure to the SimpleHelp vulnerability, remaining secure more than three months before widespread exploitation began.

Overall attacker dwell time was reduced by more than 50%, as hunts identified early-stage compromise attempts that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Hunting insights also improved detection fidelity, cutting false positives by nearly 30% and allowing analysts to focus on validated adversary behaviors.

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