Leon Kersten (Eindhoven University of Technology), Kim Beelen (Eindhoven University of Technology), Emmanuele Zambon (Eindhoven University of Technology), Chris Snijders (Eindhoven University of Technology), Luca Allodi (Eindhoven University of Technology)

The alert investigation processes junior (Tier-1) analysts follow are critical to attack detection and communication in Security Operation Centers (SOCs). Yet little is known on how analysts conduct alert investigations, which information they consider, and when. In this work, we collaborate with a commercial SOC and employ two think-aloud experiments. The first is to evaluate the alert investigation process followed by professional T1 analysts, and identify criticalities within. For the second experiment, we develop an alert investigation support system (AISS), integrate it into the SOC environment, and evaluate its effect on alert investigations with another cohort of T1 analysts. The experiments observe five and four analysts, respectively, conducting 400 and 36 investigations, respectively. Our results show that the analysts’ natural analysis process differs between analysts and types of alerts and that the AISS aids the analyst in gathering more relevant information while performing fewer actions for critical security alerts.

View More Papers

Trust and Privacy Expectations during Perilous Times of Contact...

Habiba Farzand (University of Glasgow), Florian Mathis (University of Glasgow), Karola Marky (University of Glasgow), Mohamed Khamis (University of Glasgow)

Read More

Manifoldchain: Maximizing Blockchain Throughput via Bandwidth-Clustered Sharding

Chunjiang Che (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)), Songze Li (Southeast University), Xuechao Wang (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou))

Read More

Why Do Programmers Do What They Do? A Theory...

Lavanya Sajwan, James Noble, Craig Anslow (Victoria University of Wellington), Robert Biddle (Carleton University)

Read More

ERW-Radar: An Adaptive Detection System against Evasive Ransomware by...

Lingbo Zhao (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Yuhui Zhang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Zhilu Wang (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Fengkai Yuan (Institute of Information Engineering, CAS), Rui Hou (Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

Read More