Threat Hunting Solutions
SentryWire provides threat hunting solutions built on full packet capture for regulated, high-value networks, enabling proactive investigation alongside incident response, network security monitoring, and forensic investigation.
Why Full Packet Capture Is Critical for Threat Hunting
Modern threat hunting solutions rely on complete visibility across network activity. Full packet capture delivers that visibility by recording every packet, preserving session content, and enabling analysts to identify threats that log-based systems often miss.
Unlike proprietary solutions, SentryWire runs on commodity hardware, making it up to 40% more cost-effective than legacy packet capture platforms while maintaining enterprise throughput and retention. SentryWire also supports 10Gbps+ traffic capture, ensuring enterprise teams can maintain zero-loss retention even in high-throughput environments. This level of packet-level visibility enables advanced threat hunting workflows that traditional threat hunting tools and log-based detection platforms cannot support.
Challenges in Modern Threat Detection
Modern enterprise networks generate vast volumes of traffic across hybrid, cloud, and on-premises environments, expanding the attack surface and limiting the effectiveness of traditional detection tools. Logs and alerts alone rarely provide the visibility required for proactive cyber threat hunting, especially as attackers use encrypted traffic, long dwell times, and emerging threats to evade detection.
Fragmented Visibility Across Environments
Security teams often rely on disconnected telemetry from network devices, endpoints, and applications. This fragmentation creates blind spots, particularly in east–west traffic, where attackers commonly move laterally without triggering alerts.
Encrypted and Long-Lived Traffic
Widespread encryption and persistent connections reduce the effectiveness of surface-level monitoring. Without access to packet-level data and historical context, suspicious behavior within encrypted sessions can go undetected.
Limited Retrospective Analysis
Threats are frequently identified weeks or months after initial compromise. Without long-term packet retention, organizations lack the evidence required to reconstruct attacker behavior, validate alerts, or determine the scope of impact.
Alert Fatigue and Validation Gaps
High alert volumes and low-fidelity signals make it difficult for analysts to distinguish true threats from noise. Without packet-level evidence, security teams cannot reliably validate detections or investigate anomalous activity with confidence.
Threat Hunting Solutions Enabled by Full Packet Capture
High-Speed Search Across Packet Data
Rapidly search large volumes of packet data to identify anomalies, trace attacker activity, and accelerate threat discovery without performance bottlenecks. Packet-level evidence can be correlated with internal and external threat intelligence to validate indicators and accelerate investigation.
Complete Packet-Level Visibility
Inspect full packet data to uncover hidden threats, validate suspicious behavior, and investigate activity that logs and alerts alone cannot explain.
Session Reconstruction and Packet Carving
Reconstruct sessions and extract payloads from packet data to understand attacker behavior, malware delivery, and command-and-control activity.
File Extraction and Deep Inspection
Extract files directly from packet captures to analyze suspicious transfers, confirm malicious content, and support deeper forensic investigation.
Scalable Performance at Enterprise Volume
Maintain lossless packet capture and fast analysis even in high-throughput environments, supporting continuous threat hunting at enterprise scale.
Visualization for Pattern Recognition
Use built-in visualization and analytics to identify unusual traffic patterns, behavioral anomalies, and relationships that indicate hidden threats.
Core Capabilities That Strengthen Enterprise Security
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SentryWire captures complete traffic across IT infrastructure, OT networks, and industrial control systems, giving teams a consistent view of communication flows in complex environments. This helps identify unauthorized access, anomalous behavior, and misconfigurations that traditional monitoring tools often overlook. The platform is purpose-built for environments where packet loss is unacceptable — including power grids, manufacturing facilities, telecom systems, and federal networks.
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Zero-loss capture and extended retention enable analysts to trace activity across months of traffic and reconstruct multi-stage behaviors with accuracy. Sessionized storage makes it easier to correlate events between separate network segments and understand how actions progressed across hybrid architectures.
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SentryWire integrates with SIEM, IDS, and analytics tools, allowing analysts to correlate alerts with packet-level evidence. These integrations help streamline investigations, improve detection accuracy, and maintain efficient SOC workflows. Teams can pivot from log analysis to packet review without interruption, which reduces investigative delays.
The platform’s interoperability supports diverse technology environments and enhances automated detection systems by providing additional context for correlation engines.
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Beyond security, SentryWire supports performance and connectivity analysis by allowing teams to review packet behavior directly. Packet-level visibility helps diagnose latency issues, unstable connections, protocol failures, or other performance irregularities, enabling network and security teams to collaborate more effectively.
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SentryWire supports compliance requirements across SOC2, HIPAA, OMB M-21-31, SEC 17a-4, and NERC-CIP by preserving full packet data with accurate timestamps and defensible chain-of-custody controls. This ensures security and compliance teams always have unaltered forensic evidence available for audits and regulatory inquiries.
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Organizations can deploy SentryWire across on-premises, hybrid, or air gapped environments. Its architecture supports scalability across multi-site monitoring programs and high-performance networks. This flexibility allows teams to maintain consistent visibility regardless of operational constraints or infrastructure design.
SentryWire’s adaptability makes it suitable for enterprises, defense systems, and organizations managing complex or regulated environments.
Why SentryWire for Threat Hunting
SentryWire supports threat hunting as part of a broader network security monitoring platform built on full packet capture . By delivering lossless packet capture, long-term retention, and consistent performance at scale, SentryWire enables confident investigations based on complete, trustworthy data.
Built for enterprise and regulated environments, SentryWire provides the forensic depth required for proactive threat hunting without the cost or rigidity of proprietary hardware.
FAQs
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Full packet capture provides tamper-resistant network evidence that attackers cannot alter, unlike logs that can be wiped or changed. SentryWire records full packets with payloads, enabling forensic replay and deep inspection that uncover threats missed by log-based monitoring.
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SentryWire enables retroactive, signature-based searches on stored packet data to find threats revealed by new indicators. It captures complete network conversations without truncation and integrates Suricata IDS for real-time alerts and long-term packet visibility, improving detection of stealthy adversaries.
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SentryWire stores weeks to years of network traffic, allowing analysts to revisit packet data and search petabytes in minutes. Its extended retention supports long-term forensics, enabling full session reconstruction and artifact extraction through an intuitive, web-based interface.
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SentryWire enables faster APT detection by providing complete packet data across entire networks, even against zero-day exploits. Its full capture exposes “living off the land” techniques that evade endpoint tools, making it indispensable for comprehensive APT analysis and investigation.
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SentryWire scales to capture 1 Mbps–1 Tbps traffic with lossless performance using a distributed architecture. Its Hadoop-like design supports over 100 PB of searchable data while reducing costs by half, delivering enterprise-scale retention and forensic-grade packet visibility.
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Advanced threat hunting is a proactive security approach where threat hunters analyze network activity to identify hidden or emerging threats that evade traditional detection tools. It relies on high-fidelity data, long-term visibility, and contextual analysis rather than alerts alone.
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Proactive threat hunting backed by full packet capture supports compliance mandates that require demonstrable network monitoring and forensic readiness, including OMB M-21-31, NERC-CIP, HIPAA, and SEC 17a-4. SentryWire preserves complete packet data with accurate timestamps and defensible chain-of-custody controls, ensuring audit-ready evidence is always available.
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Threat detection relies on automated tools and alerts to identify known threats in real time. Threat hunting is a proactive, analyst-driven process that searches for hidden or unknown threats that evaded detection, relying on high-fidelity packet data, long-term retention, and contextual analysis rather than alerts alone.
See Full Packet Capture in Action
Free, 60-Minute Demo
Get a tailored walkthrough of full packet capture, real-time filtering, long-term retention, and integrations with Splunk, Elastic, and your existing SIEM. No obligation. Built around your environment, your compliance mandates, and your visibility gaps.
✓ Free, no obligation
✓ 60 minutes, tailored to your environment
✓ Response within 1–2 business days