RA-10: Threat Hunting

To meet the ra-10: threat hunting requirement, you must stand up and operate a repeatable cyber threat hunting capability with defined ownership, scope, data sources, hypotheses, execution cadence, escalation paths, and retained evidence showing hunts occurred and led to actions. Treat it as an operational control, not a policy statement. ¹

Key takeaways:

• You need a documented, staffed, and recurring hunt program tied to your environment and threat model. ¹
• Auditors will ask for proof of execution: hunt plans, hypotheses, queries, results, tickets, and remediation follow-through. ¹
• The fastest path is a “control card + evidence bundle + health checks” approach that makes RA-10 auditable. ¹

RA-10 (Threat Hunting) in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 expects more than reactive alert handling. It expects you to proactively search for adversary activity that may evade controls, and to institutionalize that work so it happens consistently, produces learnings, and feeds improvements back into detection engineering, incident response, and risk decisions. ²

For a CCO, compliance officer, or GRC lead, the operational challenge is predictable: security teams may “hunt” informally, but the organization cannot show governance, repeatability, or evidence. That gap is what sinks you in audits, customer diligence, and federal control assessments. ¹

This page translates the ra-10: threat hunting requirement into an implementable control with clear roles, a practical runbook, and an evidence package you can request and store. It also flags common failure modes (for example, hunting without defined data coverage, or running hunts that never create tickets). The goal is simple: you should be able to prove, quickly, that threat hunting is real, recurring, and improving your security posture. ¹

Regulatory text

NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 RA-10 excerpt: “Establish and maintain a cyber threat hunting capability to:” ¹

What the operator must do with this text

Because the excerpt is phrased as an establishment-and-maintenance requirement, examiners will look for three things:

1. A defined capability (people, process, and tooling/data access) that can perform threat hunts on your environment. ¹
2. Ongoing operation (recurring hunts, triggered hunts, and documented outcomes). ¹
3. Sustained governance (ownership, scope, approval points, and evidence retention that shows the capability is maintained over time). ¹

If you can’t answer “who runs hunts, how often, using what data, under what rules, and where the proof lives,” you are not operationalizing RA-10. ¹

Plain-English interpretation (requirement level)

You must run proactive investigations that assume compromise is possible, use your logs/telemetry to look for suspicious behavior beyond existing alerts, document what you did, and track outcomes through remediation or detection improvements. The program must be repeatable and defensible, not ad hoc. ¹

Who it applies to (entity + operational context)

RA-10 is most directly relevant where NIST SP 800-53 is the control baseline, especially:

• Federal information systems. ¹
• Contractor systems handling federal data, including environments operated by third parties on your behalf (cloud, managed security providers) where you still need provable outcomes and evidence access. ¹

Operationally, the requirement touches:

• Security operations (SOC), detection engineering, incident response.
• IT operations (endpoint, identity, network, cloud) for data access and remediation.
• GRC for control design, evidence standards, and audit coordination. ¹

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

Step 1: Publish a “RA-10 control card” (your auditable operating design)

Create a one-page control card that answers the audit questions up front:

• Objective: proactive identification of threats not caught by standard alerting. ¹
• Owner: named role (for example, SOC Manager or Threat Hunting Lead).
• Scope: systems, networks, cloud accounts, critical applications; include third-party hosted environments where you rely on their telemetry.
• Trigger events: new critical vuln, new threat intel relevant to your stack, major architectural change, incident learnings.
• Cadence: define a recurring schedule plus event-driven hunts (cadence can be “monthly” or “per sprint” as your standard; treat it as a policy decision, not a fact claim).
• Entry criteria: minimum telemetry availability (identity logs, endpoint telemetry, cloud audit logs) and access approvals.
• Exit criteria: documented findings + tickets created + detection improvements tracked.
• Exception rules: what happens if telemetry is missing or a system is out of scope. ¹

This aligns with a proven approach: “Create a requirement control card with objective, owner, trigger events, execution steps, and exception rules.” ¹

Step 2: Define your minimum telemetry and access map

Threat hunting collapses without data. Build a “hunt data map” that lists:

• Data source (EDR, identity provider, VPN, firewall, DNS, cloud control plane, email security, SaaS audit logs).
• Coverage (which business units/environments are included).
• Retention window (state your configured retention; don’t guess).
• Access method (SIEM, data lake, native console).
• Data owner / approver. ¹

If a critical system is operated by a third party, confirm contractually that you can access hunt-relevant logs or receive hunt outputs. Otherwise you will fail the “maintain capability” test in practice. ²

Step 3: Build a repeatable hunt workflow (runbook)

Your runbook should be specific enough that a new analyst can run a hunt:

1. Select a hunt theme (for example, credential theft, suspicious OAuth consent, lateral movement patterns) based on your threat model and recent internal incidents.
2. Write a hypothesis in a standard template: “If X is happening, we expect to see Y in data source Z.”
3. Execute queries / analytics in your SIEM/EDR with saved searches or notebooks.
4. Triage leads with defined thresholds for escalation (what becomes an incident, what becomes a detection ticket).
5. Document results including negative results (hunts that find nothing still prove operation and coverage).
6. Create follow-up work:
   • Detection engineering improvements (new rules, tuning, logging changes).
   • Remediation tickets (patching, hardening, least privilege fixes).
   • Third-party actions (requests to a managed service provider, SaaS provider configuration changes). ¹

Step 4: Define the evidence bundle (make it painless to prove)

Adopt an explicit evidence standard: “Define the minimum evidence bundle for each execution cycle (inputs, approvals, output artifacts, and retention location).” ¹

A practical minimum bundle per hunt:

• Hunt plan (theme, scope, hypothesis, data sources, operator, date range).
• Query set / notebook export (or saved search IDs and screenshots).
• Results summary (findings, severity rationale, affected assets/users).
• Ticket(s) created (IR case, JIRA/ServiceNow items) with status history.
• Detection changes (pull request link, rule change record, before/after tuning notes).
• Management sign-off for closure (SOC lead approval) where your governance model requires it.
• Storage location and retention rule (GRC repository, ticketing system, SIEM export folder). ¹

Step 5: Add control health checks (prove “maintain”)

Run “control health checks and track remediation items to validated closure with due dates.” ¹

Your health check can be lightweight but must be documented:

• Are hunts happening on schedule?
• Are required data sources still flowing?
• Are tickets closed with validation (not just “done”)?
• Are recurring hunt themes updated based on new threats and internal learnings? ²

Required evidence and artifacts to retain (audit-ready list)

Keep these artifacts in a central GRC evidence repository with clear naming:

• RA-10 control card (owner, scope, cadence, triggers, exceptions). ¹
• Threat hunting SOP/runbook and hypothesis template.
• Hunt calendar or sprint plan showing planned hunts.
• Hunt reports (including “no findings” reports).
• Query artifacts (exports, saved search IDs, screenshots).
• Case/ticket records and closure notes.
• Change records for new detections, log onboarding, and tuning work.
• Control health check results and remediation tracking log. ¹

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Expect these questions, and prepare a one-page response for each:

• “Show me the last hunts.” Provide two or three recent hunt evidence bundles end-to-end. ¹
• “Who owns RA-10?” Name a role and a backup; show approval and reporting lines.
• “What’s your scope and why?” Show your data map and rationale for exclusions.
• “How do hunts drive improvement?” Show detection PRs, tuned rules, and logging backlog items tied to hunt outcomes.
• “How do you handle third-party environments?” Show contract clauses, shared responsibility notes, or provider reports that support your hunt capability. ²

Hangups that slow audits:

• Evidence scattered across Slack, analyst laptops, and SIEM comments.
• “We do hunts” with no defined hypothesis or closure criteria.
• Findings that never create trackable remediation work. ¹

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

1. Mistake: Policy-only RA-10.
   Fix: publish a control card plus runbook and show executed hunts. ¹

2. Mistake: Hunting only in the SIEM with weak data coverage.
   Fix: maintain a data source map and log onboarding backlog; treat missing telemetry as a tracked risk. ²

3. Mistake: No linkage to remediation.
   Fix: require a ticket for every meaningful finding and for every control gap discovered during a hunt (logging gaps count). ¹

4. Mistake: No “negative result” documentation.
   Fix: record hunts even when nothing is found; auditors accept disciplined execution and rational scope. ¹

5. Mistake: Third-party blind spots.
   Fix: treat third-party logging and security operations as part of RA-10 scope, and document how you receive telemetry or outcomes. ²

Enforcement context and risk implications

No public enforcement case references were provided in the source catalog for RA-10. ¹

Operational risk still matters: without threat hunting, you rely on alerts and signature-based detections, which increases dwell time risk and reduces your ability to find control gaps early. For regulated environments and federal contractors, the near-term consequence is usually assessment findings, customer trust erosion, and corrective action plans that consume engineering time. ²

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

First 30 days: Stand up the control so it can run

• Assign RA-10 owner and backup; publish the RA-10 control card. ¹
• Inventory telemetry sources and create the hunt data map with gaps and owners.
• Draft the hunt runbook and hypothesis template; define what artifacts must be saved.
• Run a pilot hunt on a high-value theme with available data; produce a complete evidence bundle. ¹

Days 31–60: Make it repeatable and auditable

• Set a recurring hunt schedule and a method to select themes (threat intel + internal incidents + control gaps).
• Build a standard reporting format (one-page summary + appendix with queries).
• Formalize ticketing integration: every hunt produces either findings tickets or improvement tickets.
• Start control health checks and track gaps to closure. ¹

Days 61–90: Expand coverage and prove “maintain”

• Expand hunts into previously uncovered areas (cloud audit logs, identity, critical SaaS), based on the gap list.
• Add quality criteria: peer review of hypotheses and queries, and management sign-off for closure.
• Run a tabletop audit: pick two hunts and rehearse evidence retrieval within your GRC process.
• If you use Daydream, map RA-10 to a control card, attach your evidence bundle checklist, and schedule control health checks so evidence collection stays consistent across quarters. ¹

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we need a dedicated threat hunting team to satisfy RA-10?

No. RA-10 expects a “capability,” which can be a defined function within the SOC with trained staff, access to telemetry, and a repeatable workflow you can evidence. ¹

What is the minimum evidence to prove a hunt happened?

Keep a hunt plan/hypothesis, the queries or saved search references, a results summary, and any resulting tickets or detection changes. Store them in a known location with consistent naming. ¹

Can “we reviewed alerts” count as threat hunting?

Alert review is operations, not hunting, unless you document a hypothesis-driven search that goes beyond existing detections and produces a hunt record with outcomes. ¹

How do we handle threat hunting when logs are controlled by a third party?

Document the shared responsibility model and ensure you can access needed logs or obtain hunt outputs from the third party. If you cannot, record the gap as risk and track a contract or architecture fix. ²

What do we do when a hunt finds nothing?

Close the hunt with a negative-results report that lists scope, time window, data sources, and the exact queries run. Auditors still want proof of disciplined execution. ¹

How do we show we “maintain” the capability over time?

Run recurring hunts, keep evidence bundles, and perform periodic control health checks that verify cadence, telemetry coverage, and closure of hunt-generated remediation items. ¹

Footnotes

1. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON

2. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5