"In addition to performing SOC work, CTOps requires more active, unstructured, and creative thoughts and approaches. One way to characterize this more vigorous approach to detecting and responding to threats is the term “hunting.” In the mid-2000s, the Air Force popularized the term “hunter-killer” for a missions whereby teams of security experts performed “friendly force projection” on their networks. They combed through data from systems and in some cases occupied the systems themselves in order to find advanced threats. The concept of “hunting” (without the slightly more aggressive term “killing”) is now gaining ground in the civilian world.