Find what your alerts miss.
Structured threat hunts, SOC capability assessments, SOC build-out advisory, and hunt program design for teams that want to graduate from reactive to proactive. Built around MITRE ATT&CK and hypothesis-driven methodology.
Reactive SOCs miss the threats that matter most
A SOC that only responds to alerts will always be behind attackers who know how to move without triggering them. The average dwell time for a sophisticated intrusion is measured in weeks. During that time, an attacker is establishing persistence, escalating privileges, and staging data. None of it generates an alert queue entry because the attacker has studied your detection logic and stayed below it. Alert response is necessary. It is not sufficient.
Threat hunting starts from a hypothesis, not an alert. A hunter asks: given the techniques this threat actor uses, what evidence would they leave in this environment? Then they go looking. Hypothesis-driven hunting finds activity that automated detection missed because the detection was never written, the threshold was set too high, or the attacker adapted. The gap between an alert-response team and a hunt team is the difference between catching what your tools found and catching what your tools missed.
Signs you need this
- Your team responds to alerts but has never run a structured threat hunt
- You cannot map your SOC's current capabilities to MITRE ATT&CK techniques
- You had an incident where the attacker had been in the environment for weeks before detection
- You are standing up a SOC and want to build hunt capability from the start, not retrofit it later
- Your MDR or MSSP handles alert response but you want internal hunt capability on top of that
- You are considering an EDR upgrade and want to know what your current visibility gaps are before buying
What you get
Engagements are scoped to what your team needs: a one-time hunt sprint, a SOC capability baseline, a full hunt program build, or ongoing advisory. Every engagement produces written outputs your team can act on and retain.
SOC capability assessment
- Current-state review: log sources, tooling, alert volume, escalation paths, and staffing
- ATT&CK coverage mapping against your actual visibility, not theoretical tool capability
- Prioritized maturity roadmap with specific, actionable recommendations
Hypothesis-driven threat hunts
- Hunt hypotheses developed against your threat profile and environment
- Executed using your existing telemetry: EDR, SIEM, network, and identity logs
- Findings documented: what we looked for, what we found, and what it means
Hunt playbook library and program design
- Reusable hunt playbooks your team can run independently after the engagement
- ATT&CK coverage analysis showing which techniques your hunts address
- Tooling recommendations: EDR, SIEM, UEBA, and log enrichment to support ongoing hunting
- Hunt program design: cadence, staffing model, hypothesis backlog, and output documentation standards
How the engagement works
Hunt sprints run 2 to 4 weeks. SOC capability assessments run 4 to 6 weeks. Full program design and build-out varies by scope. An optional advisory retainer supports your internal team on an ongoing basis as they mature their own hunting capability.
Engagement structure
- Hunt sprint: 2-4 weeks; scoped hypothesis set, execution, and findings report
- SOC assessment: 4-6 weeks; capability baseline, coverage map, and maturity roadmap
- Program build: scoped based on current maturity; playbook library, team training, and governance design
- Advisory retainer: ongoing monthly hours to support your team's hunt cadence and hypothesis development
What we ask of you
- Read access to your EDR, SIEM, and key log sources for the duration of the engagement
- A technical contact who can answer questions about your environment and tooling
- Availability for a kickoff session and a findings walkthrough at the end of each sprint
- Openness to findings that may include techniques your current detection stack is not covering
Why Red Hound for SOC and threat hunting
We wrote detection content for Fortune 500 SOCs and built hunt programs from scratch. We know the difference between a hunt and a search. A search is "show me all the PowerShell events." A hunt is "given that this threat actor uses LOLBins to establish persistence after initial access via phishing, what evidence would that technique leave in this specific environment and what does it look like at this specific noise level?" That specificity is what separates useful hunt output from busy work.
What makes us different
- Built hunt programs, not just run hunts. We have designed the process, the cadence, the hypothesis backlog, and the output standards that turn a one-time hunt into a repeatable capability.
- Offensive grounding. Our red team background means our hunt hypotheses are built around how attackers actually operate, drawn from real TTPs rather than vendor threat intel summaries.
- ATT&CK-mapped outputs. Every hunt maps to specific techniques. When the sprint is over you know exactly which parts of the ATT&CK matrix you just covered.
- Playbooks your team can run. We do not deliver findings and walk away. The playbooks we write are designed to be executed by your analysts on the next hunt cycle without us in the room.
- Right-sized for SMBs. We do not bring a Fortune 500 hunt program template and try to fit it onto a 50-person company. The program we design looks like the team it is built for.
Frequently asked
Questions we hear from security teams considering their first structured hunt engagement.
Do we need an EDR to do threat hunting?
An EDR with process-level telemetry makes hunting significantly more productive. Without it, you are hunting with network and authentication logs, which limits the hypothesis set considerably. We can work with what you have, and we will tell you what tooling would open up the most coverage for future sprints.
How is this different from MDR?
MDR services monitor your environment continuously and respond to alerts. Most MDR providers include some level of threat hunting, but it is typically shallow: pattern-matching against known IOCs or running vendor-provided hunt queries on a schedule. Our hunts are hypothesis-driven and tailored to your specific environment, threat profile, and ATT&CK coverage gaps. MDR and structured hunt engagements complement each other; they are not the same thing.
Can you train our team to run hunts themselves?
Yes. Hunt program design includes knowledge transfer as a core deliverable. The playbooks we write are annotated so your analysts understand the hypothesis, the query logic, and the expected output. We can also run working sessions with your team during the sprint to walk through the hunt in real time.
What about IOCs versus TTPs?
IOC-based hunting has a short shelf life. Attackers rotate infrastructure constantly, and a hash or IP you are hunting today is useless after the next campaign update. TTP-based hunting targets the behaviors that are harder to change: how an attacker moves laterally, establishes persistence, or exfiltrates data. Our hunts focus on TTPs mapped to ATT&CK, supplemented by IOCs when they are relevant and recent.
Do you publish your hunt content?
Some of our generic hunt playbooks are shared publicly through our research. The content we develop for your environment is yours and remains confidential. We do not reuse or publish client-specific hunt queries, hypotheses, or findings.
Find threats that have been hiding in your environment.
A 30-minute discovery call, no obligation. We talk through your current SOC capabilities and threat profile, and scope a hunt sprint that starts producing findings in the first two weeks.