Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for improved data comparison, particularly when scanning large amounts of data for particular conditions or configurations. With respect to cyber-security, this improvement takes the form of receiving a plurality of threat conditions for cyber threats against a networked computer device; identifying commonalities among the plurality of threat conditions by comparing each threat condition in the plurality of threat conditions against the plurality of threat conditions; generating, based on the commonalities, a hierarchy for scanning of the cyber threats; and scanning for the cyber threats according to the hierarchy.