Breaking the Silo: Turning Fragmented Hunts Into Operational Awareness With a Common Operating Picture

Threat hunters frequently rely on fragmented notes and inconsistent case records, making it difficult to correlate weak signals, preserve prior analysis, and quickly determine the scope of an intrusion. Although case management and collaborative visualization tools are commonly recommended, their effects on threat-hunting performance have received limited empirical evaluation. This study compared a traditional, unstructured workflow with an enhanced workflow combining a structured Elastic Cases template and the VIPER common operating picture across four controlled, four-hour incident response scenarios.