In cybersecurity, time is leverage—and when attackers have more of it, the consequences escalate. The longer a threat remains undetected and unresolved, the more damage it can do. This period, known as dwell time, is often overlooked in favor of detection counts or incident volume. But when it comes to minimizing harm, speed is everything.
Why Low MTTR Matters
Mean Time to Respond (MTTR) is one of the most critical metrics in a Security Operations Center (SOC). The faster your team can detect, investigate, and contain a threat, the less opportunity it has to spread, exfiltrate data, or establish persistence.
A low MTTR offers tangible benefits:
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Reduced damage: Quicker containment prevents lateral movement and deeper compromise.
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Lower recovery costs: Fewer systems impacted means less time and money spent restoring operations.
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Less reputational fallout: Early response can prevent major public incidents or data disclosures.
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Higher analyst morale: Efficient workflows reduce burnout and alert fatigue.
But reducing MTTR requires more than awareness—it demands smarter tooling and streamlined workflows.
The Cost of Letting Malware Linger
A stark example of the consequences of high dwell time is the Sunburst supply chain attack. In this 2020-2021 campaign, attackers infiltrated SolarWinds’ Orion software and went undetected for months. During that time, the malware silently communicated with command-and-control servers, harvested credentials, and compromised high-value targets—including U.S. government agencies and major corporations.
By the time it was discovered, the attackers had already moved laterally, escalated privileges, and established multiple backdoors. The prolonged dwell time didn’t just enable the attack—it magnified its scope exponentially.
Modern threats often take a similar approach. Malware may start small—an email attachment, a loader—but if not identified and addressed quickly, it can escalate into a full-blown incident with devastating consequences.
How SOC Teams Can Lower Response Times
To reduce dwell time and MTTR, SOC teams must modernize their detection and response workflows. Here are three key strategies:
1. Automate Early-Stage Analysis
Don’t waste precious time manually triaging every suspicious file. Automated behavior analysis can flag dangerous files and provide actionable insights within minutes—giving analysts a head start.
2. Invest in Contextual Intelligence
Alerts are only useful if they come with context. Tools that map activity to known TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) using frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK allow faster prioritization and understanding.
3. Streamline Threat Investigation Workflows
Reduce handoffs between teams and consolidate visibility into a central dashboard. The fewer manual steps involved, the faster the threat can be contained.
The CodeHunter Solution
CodeHunter equips SOCs with automated, behavior-based malware analysis that identifies threats, even evasive or unknown malware, within minutes. Instead of relying on static indicators, CodeHunter evaluates how a file behaves and maps that behavior to known malicious techniques. This approach gives analysts the full picture, accelerating triage and reducing dwell time significantly. Discover how CodeHunter can support your SOC in the race between attacker and defender here.
