Security Alert Triage

Alert Triage

Analyze Elastic Security alerts one at a time: gather context, classify, create a case, and acknowledge. This skill depends on the case-management skill for case creation.

Prerequisites

Set the required environment variables:

export ELASTICSEARCH_URL="https://your-cluster.es.cloud.example.com:443"
export ELASTICSEARCH_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export KIBANA_URL="https://your-cluster.kb.cloud.example.com:443"
export KIBANA_API_KEY="your-kibana-api-key"

Quick start

All commands from workspace root. Always fetch → investigate → document → acknowledge.

node skills/security/alert-triage/scripts/fetch-next-alert.js
node skills/security/alert-triage/scripts/run-query.js --query-file query.esql --type esql
node skills/security/case-management/scripts/case-manager.js create --title "..." --description "..." --tags "classification:..." "agent_id:<id>" --severity <level> --yes
node skills/security/alert-triage/scripts/acknowledge-alert.js --related --agent <id> --timestamp <ts> --window 60 --yes

Critical principles

• Do NOT classify prematurely. Gather ALL context before deciding benign/unknown/malicious.
• Most alerts are false positives, even if they look alarming.
• "Unknown" is acceptable and often correct when evidence is insufficient.
• MALICIOUS requires strong corroborating evidence: persistence + C2, credential theft, lateral movement.

Workflow

- [ ] Step 0: Group alerts by agent/host and time window
- [ ] Step 1: Check existing cases
- [ ] Step 2: Gather full context (DO NOT SKIP)
- [ ] Step 3: Create or update case (only AFTER context gathered)
- [ ] Step 4: Acknowledge alert and all related alerts
- [ ] Step 5: Fetch next alert group and repeat

Step 0: Group alerts before triaging

Query open alerts, group by agent.id, sub-group by time window (~5 min):

FROM .alerts-security.alerts-*
| WHERE kibana.alert.workflow_status == "open" AND @timestamp >= "<start>"
| STATS alert_count=COUNT(*), rules=VALUES(kibana.alert.rule.name) BY agent.id
| SORT alert_count DESC

Step 1: Check existing cases

node skills/security/case-management/scripts/case-manager.js find --tags "agent_id:<agent_id>"

Step 2: Gather context

Time range warning: Extract the alert's @timestamp and build queries around that time with +/- 1 hour window.

Example — process tree (use ES|QL with KEEP; avoid --full):

FROM logs-endpoint.events.process-*
| WHERE agent.id == "<agent_id>" AND @timestamp >= "<alert_time - 5min>" AND @timestamp <= "<alert_time + 10min>"
  AND process.parent.name IS NOT NULL
  AND process.name NOT IN ("svchost.exe", "conhost.exe", "agentbeat.exe")
| KEEP @timestamp, process.name, process.command_line, process.pid, process.parent.name, process.parent.pid
| SORT @timestamp | LIMIT 80

Step 3: Create or update case

node skills/security/case-management/scripts/case-manager.js create \
  --title "<concise summary>" \
  --description "<findings, IOCs, attack chain, MITRE techniques>" \
  --tags "classification:<benign|unknown|malicious>" "confidence:<0-100>" "mitre:<technique>" "agent_id:<id>" \
  --severity <low|medium|high|critical> --yes

node skills/security/case-management/scripts/case-manager.js attach-alert \
  --case-id <case_id> --alert-id <alert_id> --alert-index <index> \
  --rule-id <rule_uuid> --rule-name "<rule name>"

Step 4: Acknowledge alerts

node skills/security/alert-triage/scripts/acknowledge-alert.js --related --agent <id> --timestamp <ts> --window 60 --yes

Tool reference

fetch-next-alert.js

Fetches the oldest unacknowledged Elastic Security alert.

node skills/security/alert-triage/scripts/fetch-next-alert.js [--days <n>] [--json] [--full] [--verbose]

run-query.js

Runs KQL or ES|QL queries against Elasticsearch. For ES|QL on PowerShell, always use --query-file:

node skills/security/alert-triage/scripts/run-query.js --query-file query.esql --type esql

acknowledge-alert.js

Acknowledges alerts by updating workflow_status to acknowledged.

Guidelines

• Report only tool output — do not invent IDs, hostnames, IPs, or details not present in the tool response.
• Preserve identifiers from the request — use exact values the user provides in tool calls and responses.
• Distinguish facts from inference — label conclusions beyond tool output as your assessment.
• All write operations prompt for confirmation. Pass --yes to skip when called by an agent.
• Use --dry-run before bulk acknowledgments to preview scope without modifying data.