SANS 2026 Threat Hunting Survey: The Evolution of Threat Hunting

The 2026 SANS Threat Hunting Survey is part of a multiyear longitudinal study that has tracked how organizations approach proactive threat detection since 2021. Each year, we survey practitioners and security leaders across industries and organization sizes to build an independent picture of how the threat-hunting community is evolving.

This year’s respondent base of 500 participants spans technology, banking and finance, government, healthcare, and a dozen other sectors, with operational reach across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. This diversity is important because the benchmarks and frustrations captured in this report reflect real programs at real organizations, from teams still building their first playbook to those running automated, intelligence-driven hunts across multiple cloud environments. More than 80% of respondents have been hunting for at least two years, which means this data is shaped by accumulated experience rather than early experimentation.