Every alert signals a potential risk to your system’s security, performance, or reliability. As cyber adversaries become smarter and faster, your SOC simply cannot keep up.
Without the right people, processes, and tools in place, alert management can feel like an endless, impossible boss fight, requiring attention to the entire lifecycle of a threat—not just the initial (though crucial) triage step. Here’s how it works:
1. Initial Assessment
Purpose: Quickly evaluate the basic details of an alert to gauge its potential severity and authenticity.
When an alert first appears, time is critical. Analysts must perform a swift initial review to determine:
- What triggered the alert?
- Which system or user does it affect?
- Is there evidence suggesting it’s a critical event?
This step often involves checking metadata, timestamps, and automated summaries. The goal is to weed out any obviously irrelevant or low-risk alerts so resources are allocated efficiently.
2. Prioritization
Purpose: Rank alerts to address the most critical threats first.
Alerts are not created equal. Prioritization relies on predefined criteria such as:
- Severity levels (e.g., high, medium, low)
- Impact on systems or business operations
- Likelihood of compromise
- Sensitivity of affected data
For example, an alert related to a critical server with sensitive customer data might receive immediate attention, while a lower-risk endpoint issue can wait. By ranking alerts effectively, teams ensure that time and effort are focused where they matter most.
3. Context Gathering
Purpose: Collect additional data to understand the full scope and implications of the alert.
At this stage, analysts gather context by:
- Reviewing logs, user activities, or related alerts
- Checking threat intelligence sources for known indicators of compromise (IOCs)
- Understanding network behavior to detect anomalies
Context is critical because isolated alerts often miss the bigger picture. For example, a single failed login attempt might not seem important until you discover it’s part of a larger brute-force attack.
4. Validation
Purpose: Determine whether the alert is a true positive or false positive.
Not every alert represents a real security incident. False positives—alerts triggered by benign activities—can waste precious time. Analysts validate alerts by:
- Comparing them against threat signatures
- Reviewing baseline activity for deviations
- Leveraging security tools to confirm suspicious activity
If the alert proves to be legitimate (a true positive), the team can move forward with further action. If not, the alert is documented and closed, ensuring that lessons learned help improve future detection.
5. Categorization
Purpose: Classify the alert based on type and severity for appropriate handling.
Categorization provides structure to the incident response process. Common categories include:
- Malware detection: Indicators of viruses, ransomware, or trojans.
- Unauthorized access: Failed login attempts, credential misuse.
- Policy violations: Alerts triggered by deviations from security policies.
- Network anomalies: Unusual data transfers or lateral movement.
Assigning the right category ensures that escalation paths, tools, and team roles are clear for handling the alert effectively.
6. Escalation Decision
Purpose: Decide if the alert requires escalation to higher-tier analysts or incident response teams.
Not all alerts can be resolved at the first tier of response. Analysts must evaluate:
- Complexity of the alert: Does it require specialized expertise?
- Scope of the issue: Is this part of a broader attack?
- Severity of potential impact: Could this disrupt critical operations?
If escalation is needed, the alert is passed to senior analysts or incident response teams for advanced investigation and remediation.
7. Initial Response
Purpose: Take immediate action to mitigate the threat within the analyst’s authority.
At this step, analysts act quickly to contain potential threats. Immediate responses may include:
- Isolating affected endpoints to stop malware spread
- Blocking malicious IPs, domains, or ports
- Resetting compromised credentials
- Quarantining suspicious files
These actions help limit damage while higher-tier teams continue investigating and implementing long-term fixes.
8. Documentation
Purpose: Record findings, actions taken, and recommendations for future reference.
Documentation ensures accountability and continuous improvement in alert management. Analysts should include:
- Details of the alert (e.g., source, affected systems)
- Steps taken during validation and response
- Outcomes and recommendations for next steps
Proper documentation creates a knowledge base that helps teams:
- Analyze trends and recurring threats
- Improve detection and response processes
- Train new analysts to handle alerts effectively
Automate Every Step with AI
Start by understanding where your gaps exist in this process. This will help determine where to deploy AI Agents to better handle alert overload, respond faster, or simply reduce manual work throughout the entire lifecycle of an alert. AI Agents both interact with and free up time for your human team, so they can focus on more strategic activities but still have the confidence that the Agents are making correct decisions.
Expand Your SOC Team with Bricklayer AI
Bricklayer AI agents help manage alerts, faster and more efficiently than your human team can do alone.
Alert Management Use Case →The SOC Alert Management Playbook →
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