Incident Response and Operations

Overview

Incident Response (IR) and Security Operations rely on early, reliable signals that separate real intrusions from background noise. Modern attackers now use AI to compress reconnaissance and lateral movement into short windows, often blending identity misuse and low-visibility techniques that resemble routine activity. This leaves IR and SOC teams with limited opportunities to detect malicious intent before it escalates.

Deception strengthens this foundation by exposing interactions that have no legitimate purpose. Decoys and honeytokens act as monitored touchpoints across user, server, and identity surfaces. When they are probed or used, the signal is verified and immediately actionable. These high-fidelity incidents arrive enriched and triaged, enabling IR teams to contain threats, accelerate investigations, and trigger automated response through SIEM, SOAR, and EDR integrations. The result is consistently lower MTTD and MTTR and higher analyst throughput without increasing operational load.

What Is Incident Response and Operations?

Incident Response is the set of coordinated actions an enterprise uses to detect, triage, contain, eradicate, and recover from security incidents. Security operations applies this lifecycle every day by monitoring alerts, correlating events, running investigations, and orchestrating automated playbooks across the environment. As attackers adopt AI to speed reconnaissance, identity misuse, and lateral movement, these workflows face greater pressure to detect and act earlier.

Modern incident response depends on signals that are early, accurate, and tied to attacker intent. Deception supports this by converting interactions with decoys, breadcrumbs, and honeytokens into verified events that map to tactics an adversary actually used. Each interaction becomes a structured incident with identity, endpoint, and network context that IR and SOC teams can use to scope activity quickly and take action through SIEM, SOAR, and EDR workflows. AI-assisted enrichment and automated correlation further shorten analysis time and support faster containment.

Key Takeaway:
Incident response is a disciplined lifecycle and security operations is the system that executes it. Both rely on early, high-fidelity signals that expose malicious intent before damage occurs, especially as AI accelerates attacker speed.

How Deception Strengthens Incident Response and Security Operations

ShadowPlex anchors IR and SecOps with autonomous deception. Every interaction with a decoy, breadcrumb, or honeytoken becomes a triaged incident enriched with attacker context, including MITRE ATT&CK mapping, endpoint and identity relationships, and subnet visibility. As attackers adopt AI to automate reconnaissance and identity-driven lateral movement, these verified deception events expose malicious intent at a speed and certainty that traditional analytics cannot match. Optional enrichment from EDR, sandboxing, and reputation checks provides additional evidence for containment and investigation.

Response and notification policies route these high-fidelity incidents to SIEM and SOAR systems, where automated playbooks can quarantine endpoints, trigger forensic collection, and coordinate cross-tool actions. AI-supported correlation and rapid policy execution reduce analyst handoff time and streamline incident routing, ensuring that containment begins as soon as malicious interaction occurs.

Key Takeaway:
Verified deception signals supply the context and automation IR and SecOps need to act with speed, accuracy, and confidence, especially as AI increases the velocity and volume of early-stage attacker behavior.

What Are the Types of Incidents Detected through Deception?

Deception turns adversary interaction into structured incident categories that reveal intent early in the attack lifecycle. These incidents map to attacker behaviors that are difficult to detect through traditional analytics, especially when identity misuse or low-visibility techniques are involved. As attackers use AI to automate reconnaissance and pivot across identities and endpoints at higher speed, these deception-driven signals provide clarity that behavioral tools often miss.

Identity Compromise:
Triggered when honeytoken credentials are used for authentication or access attempts. These incidents surface credential misuse, rogue authentication flows, and identity pivoting before attackers reach privileged systems. This is especially critical as AI-assisted identity attacks reduce the time between credential harvesting and attempted use.

Endpoint Compromise:
Generated when an endpoint interacts with deceptive files, processes, or mapped resources. These incidents highlight malicious scanning, unauthorized process execution, and early persistence activity. AI-driven scanning and automated exploitation chains make these early indicators even more valuable for containment.

Network Compromise:
Detected when attackers probe, scan, or attempt to access deceptive services, hosts, or high-value asset replicas. These signals expose reconnaissance, lateral movement paths, and privilege escalation attempts. AI-accelerated intrusions often explore multiple paths at once, making deterministic deception events essential for IR scoping.

Each category arrives enriched with context that IR and SOC teams can use to scope and act quickly. Incidents contain identity relationships, endpoint paths, subnet information, MITRE ATT&CK mapping, and optional enrichment from EDR or sandbox analyses. AI-assisted enrichment accelerates correlation and supports faster containment decisions.

Key Takeaway:
Deception creates high-fidelity incident categories that map to real attacker behavior, giving IR and SOC teams verified, early indicators of compromise across identity, endpoint, and network surfaces, even as AI increases attacker speed.

What Types of Incidents Does Acalvio Detect?

ShadowPlex categorizes and merges deception events into three incident categories. Discovery incidents focus on low risk reconnaissance, Endpoint Compromise elevates confirmed malicious activity, and Network Compromise captures activity indicating broader propagation across the environment. As attackers use AI to automate reconnaissance, scanning, and credential misuse, these categories help IR and SOC teams identify intent earlier and separate automated noise from true intrusion signals.

1) Discovery Incidents

Discovery incidents help separate harmless or expected probing from suspicious activity. They also support suppression rules that reduce noise without losing visibility. AI-powered reconnaissance tools often generate high-volume scans that resemble benign traffic, making these distinctions especially important.

Subcategories:
• Decoys Probed: Single-port probing or scanning of decoys. Multiple probes from the same endpoint roll into one incident to reduce churn.
• Endpoint Scanned: Discovery activity on the endpoint itself.
• Potential Scanner: Non-malicious scanning activity from an endpoint that targets multiple ports of a decoy. Only one such incident is maintained at a time. IR teams can mark the source as a known scanner or classify it as a Threat. Marking as Threat promotes the activity to Endpoint Compromise.
• AD Scanned: Attempts to authenticate to resources using Honey Accounts, including both user and service account types. This exposes credential harvesting attempts that AI-driven attackers often execute early in the intrusion.

2) Endpoint Compromise

Endpoint Compromise incidents indicate malicious activity directed at an asset. These include decoy login attempts, MAIMON scans, brute-force activity, breadcrumb or credential misuse, or cases promoted from Discovery when the source is marked as a Threat. AI-driven exploitation chains often pivot rapidly between discovery and credential use, making these endpoint signals critical for early containment.

Subcategory:
• Identity Compromise: Assigned when an identity on an endpoint attempts to log in to a decoy. This confirms credential misuse, lateral movement attempts, or or identity-driven threats that AI tools can accelerate with minimal human guidance.

3) Network Compromise

Network Compromise incidents represent activity that indicates propagation or compromise beyond a single endpoint. These incidents align with downstream SIEM and SOAR incident types, enabling case management systems and automated playbooks to respond quickly and consistently. AI-orchestrated intrusions often explore multiple lateral paths at once, making deception-based network signals especially valuable for scoping and prioritization.

Key Takeaway:
Clear incident categories reduce triage time and reveal intent. Subcategories expose reconnaissance, credential misuse, and propagation paths so IR and SOC teams can contain threats earlier and with higher confidence, even as AI accelerates attacker behavior.

What Is the Incident Lifecycle in ShadowPlex?

ShadowPlex transforms adversary interaction into structured incidents that move through a predictable lifecycle. Each stage adds context, validation, and routing so IR and SOC teams can act quickly and consistently across SIEM, SOAR, and EDR workflows. As attackers adopt AI to accelerate reconnaissance and exploit chains, an automated and continuously updated lifecycle becomes essential for keeping pace.

1) Event Creation
The lifecycle begins when an attacker interacts with a decoy, breadcrumb, or honeytoken. ShadowPlex interprets the behavior, identifies the event type, and determines the risk category based on the asset and interaction. AI-driven reconnaissance often produces rapid, multi-path probing, making these deterministic interaction points valuable for early detection.

2) Incident Generation
Events are merged into an incident when they share a common attacker action, endpoint, identity, or subnet. ShadowPlex assigns an incident category and subcategory that reflect the observed behavior. Automated merging prevents alert sprawl, especially when AI-powered tools generate high-frequency activity across multiple decoys.

3) Enrichment
Incidents are enriched with identity relationships, endpoint details, network context, MITRE ATT&CK mapping, and optional EDR or sandbox metadata. This gives analysts immediate clarity without additional manual data gathering.

4) Triage
Triage labels help determine priority. ShadowPlex assigns states such as New, In Progress, Suppressed, and Resolved. Suppression rules reduce noise by filtering benign probes while preserving activity relevant to investigations or correlation.

5) Notification and Routing
Response policies send incidents to SIEM and SOAR systems. Routing includes incident type alignment, field mapping, and any required transformation for downstream playbooks and case management tooling.

6) Response and Containment
Automated actions can be triggered through SOAR or EDR integrations. Typical actions include endpoint quarantine, process blocking, credential resets, or targeted forensic collection. All actions are logged and linked to the originating incident.

7) Resolution and Audit
Once contained, the incident can be closed with supporting evidence. Historical incidents remain available for auditing, reporting, and correlation with other enterprise security data.

Key Takeaway:
ShadowPlex delivers a complete incident lifecycle that converts deception activity into enriched, triaged, and routable incidents that support fast containment and consistent IR execution, even as AI increases attacker speed and path diversity.

Operational Behaviors in the ShadowPlex Incident Lifecycle

ShadowPlex manages incident progression automatically as new activity arrives. Related events are merged, enrichment is updated, and lifecycle states adjust to reflect the most current picture of attacker behavior. This keeps the incident record accurate and reduces duplicate case creation.

Lifecycle states such as Detected, Enriched, Triaged, Notified, Contained, and Closed help IR and SOC teams understand where the incident stands and what actions have occurred. States can complete out of sequence when new activity requires additional routing or containment, allowing operations to adapt without disrupting downstream workflows.

Operational behaviors

• Automatic enrichment: ShadowPlex attaches EDR detections, forensic results, reputation checks, and sandbox outcomes as they arrive, creating a continuously updated incident record.

• Incident merging: Related incidents are merged into the longest-running one. Lifecycle states and context are consolidated to maintain clarity and avoid duplicate case creation.

• Notifications: Slack, Teams, and email alerts are issued for key transitions. SIEM and SOAR systems receive structured updates with category, subcategory, quarantine status, new tactics, and other relevant metadata.

Key Takeaway:
ShadowPlex maintains an accurate and continuously updated incident record, so IR and SOC teams can focus on scoping, containment, and investigation rather than managing event noise or case drift.

What Is the Incident Response Workflow in ShadowPlex?

ShadowPlex supports IR and SOC operations with a structured workflow that turns deception signals into routed, enriched, and actionable incidents. Each phase improves clarity and accelerates containment by integrating with SIEM, SOAR, EDR, and other response systems.

1) Detection
Decoy or honeytoken interaction triggers a deception event and forms or updates an incident. Initial states such as Detected, Enriched, and Triaged are pre-completed to accelerate the handoff to downstream systems and analysts.

2) Notification
External Notification Policies stream incidents to SIEM, SOAR, email, Slack, Teams, or webhooks. Severity mapping based on incident category determines routing, on-call ownership, and the playbook that downstream systems will execute.

3) Correlation & Enrichment
SOAR or XDR systems fetch ShadowPlex incident payloads for correlation. ShadowPlex submits enrichment requests to EDR, retrieves forensic results, and runs reputation checks or sandbox detonation when configured. MITRE ATT&CK mapping and the relationship graph of endpoints, decoys, and identities guide pivoting and scoping.

4) Automated Response
Automated actions can be triggered through EDR, NAC, or pxGrid/ISE. These include endpoint quarantine, forensic collection, and quarantining assets marked as compromised. ShadowPlex also suppresses benign deception events to reduce churn and prevent duplicate incident creation.

5) Analyst Actions & Threat Hunting
IR and SOC analysts validate containment, expand scope using endpoint, identity, and subnet context, and run targeted hunts for related behavior. Analysts can reset or rotate deceptions and credentials to ensure the attacker no longer has viable paths or reused artifacts.

6) Closure & Reporting
The workflow ends with incident closure, including a summary of tactics, affected assets, and completed lifecycle states. Insights feed back into playbooks, deception placement strategies, and policy tuning so the next response cycle is more efficient.

Key Takeaway:
ShadowPlex turns deception interactions into enriched, routed, and actionable incidents, enabling IR and SOC teams to respond faster with verified signals rather than inferred behavior. This shortens containment time and allows human efforts to stay focused on verification, decision-making, and closing the window of opportunity for attackers.

How Does ShadowPlex Use Integrations and Automation to Enhance Incident Response?

ShadowPlex strengthens IR and SOC workflows by connecting verified deception signals with the platforms responsible for containment, enrichment, and cross-tool coordination. These integrations ensure that incidents move efficiently from detection to response and that automation fires only when attacker intent is confirmed.

ShadowPlex integrates with SIEM platforms (Sumo Logic, Splunk, QRadar, Generic Syslog), SOAR (Splunk Phantom, Cortex XSOAR), EDR/XDR (CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, Cortex XDR), AD/IdP, and sandbox/reputation services. The sharing of structured incidents and MITRE ATT&CK mappings gives correlation engines clear signals tied to confirmed attacker behavior rather than statistical anomalies.

SIEM Integrations
ShadowPlex exports structured incidents to SIEM platforms such as Splunk, Sumo Logic, and QRadar. Each incident includes category, subcategory, enrichment details, and MITRE ATT&CK mappings. This gives correlation engines clear signals tied to confirmed attacker behavior rather than statistical anomalies.

SOAR Integrations
SOAR platforms receive deception-driven incidents with consistent incident types, allowing playbooks to branch based on Discovery, Endpoint Compromise, or Network Compromise. SOAR can trigger containment actions, detonate files, orchestrate EDR or network controls, or manage deception resets when needed.

EDR and XDR Integrations
ShadowPlex partners with tools such as CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender, and Cortex XDR to quarantine endpoints, collect forensic data, and validate malicious activity observed through deception. This tightens containment while reducing manual steps for analysts.

Identity and Directory Integrations
Interaction with honeytokens or credentials surfaces identity misuse early. Directory or IdP integrations help route these events, enforce access policy updates, and drive credential resets when misuse is confirmed.

Notification Channels and Routing Controls
External Notification Policies determine what gets sent to SIEM, SOAR, email, Slack, Teams, or webhooks. These policies also manage severity mapping and enrichment toggles such as forensic capture, sandbox detonation, or reputation checks. This keeps routing predictable and tuned to site context.

Key Takeaway:
ShadowPlex connects verified deception events to the systems that drive containment, enrichment, and orchestration. This ensures automation fires only on confirmed attacker activity, reducing noise and accelerating IR outcomes.

Integration and Environment Coverage Architecture

ShadowPlex integrates with security platforms across SIEM, SOAR, EDR/XDR, identity, and network controls. Each integration strengthens incident fidelity, accelerates containment, and ensures that verified deception signals reach the appropriate tools for correlation and action.

Key Takeaway:
ShadowPlex strengthens the entire IR ecosystem by connecting verified deception events to the systems responsible for correlation, orchestration, containment, and identity decisions. This promotes consistent response and reduces analyst workload across environments.

Deployment Checklist for ShadowPlex

Deployment Checklist
A successful ShadowPlex deployment aligns deception assets with identity, endpoint, and network coverage. This checklist helps ensure consistent placement, routing, and validation across environments.

Environment Preparation

• Confirm network visibility and site boundaries.

• Reserve IP ranges for decoys and validate naming conventions.

• Identify high-value subnets and identity paths for targeted coverage.

Deception Placement

• Deploy decoys across representative systems, including server, workstation, and application tiers.

• Distribute breadcrumbs and honeytokens aligned with identity and endpoint usage patterns.

• Validate that deceptions reflect realistic asset and credential structures.

Routing and Policies

• Configure Notification and Response Policies for SIEM, SOAR, email, Slack, Teams, or webhook destinations.

• Map severity levels to downstream playbooks and routing queues.

• Enable suppression rules to filter benign scanning or validation traffic.

Enrichment and Integrations

• Enable enrichment sources such as EDR detections, sandbox results, and reputation checks.

• Validate SIEM and SOAR field mappings.

• Confirm NAC or identity controls for quarantine and credential reset workflows.

Verification and Maintenance

• Test deception engagement paths using controlled validation exercises.

• Confirm that incidents reach SIEM and SOAR with complete enrichment.

• Review coverage regularly to align with infrastructure changes and new identity or endpoint deployments.

Key Takeaway:
A structured deployment ensures that deception coverage, routing, and automation operate as intended, producing verified incidents that support fast and accurate IR action.

How Does the ShadowPlex Console Support Analyst Operations?

The ShadowPlex Administration Console provides analysts with an integrated workspace that consolidates detection, investigation, and response activities within a single interface. Every view in the console is designed to support a specific phase of the incident response process – from initial detection to detailed forensic analysis and closure, while minimizing manual effort and context switching across tools.

Incidents:
This is the primary dashboard where analysts begin their investigation. The screen provides a unified view of all ongoing deception-driven incidents, categorized as Discovery, Endpoint Compromise, or Network Compromise. It includes timeline filters, incident severity indicators, and MITRE ATT&CK mappings that help analysts understand which techniques were observed. Analysts can sort and filter incidents by site, subnet, or identity, allowing them to quickly prioritize threats that represent the greatest operational risk. Each entry provides direct access to detailed logs, affected assets, and related incidents, ensuring that analysts have full visibility into the progression of an attack.

Incident Details:
When an analyst selects an incident, the console opens a detailed view that shows the entire lifecycle of that incident, from detection to containment. It presents enriched metadata such as the incident category, subcategory, source and destination addresses, related identities, and current state.

A visual graph displays relationships between decoys, endpoints, and users, providing an at-a-glance understanding of lateral movement or identity misuse. The MITRE ATT&CK panel highlights the specific tactics and techniques used by the attacker, helping analysts align the observed activity with established threat models. From this view, the analyst can also trigger containment actions such as quarantining endpoints, initiating forensic data collection, or updating response policies.

Deception Events:
This view provides granular visibility into the individual events that make up each incident. Analysts can filter by source IP, decoy name, port, or timestamp to isolate relevant activity. Each deception event includes metadata such as network context, payload type, and associated deception element (for example, a honeytoken or decoy service).

The console supports event correlation and merging, enabling analysts to trace the chain of attacker actions from reconnaissance to compromise. Suppression rules can be applied to eliminate benign or repetitive events, reducing alert fatigue and ensuring that incident feeds remain focused on verified malicious activity.

Correlation and Contextualization:
ShadowPlex automatically correlates deception events with telemetry from connected systems such as SIEM, SOAR, and EDR tools. This unified context allows analysts to see how a deception-triggered alert relates to other events across the enterprise network. The topology view highlights affected subnets, hosts, and identities, enabling precise scoping of incidents and validation of containment measures. Cross-referencing with EDR and threat intelligence sources enhances situational awareness, allowing the SOC to respond faster and with greater accuracy.

Key Takeaway:
The operations views in ShadowPlex streamline the analyst workflow by combining detection, investigation, and response within a single environment. By correlating deception data with endpoint and identity telemetry, the console provides a complete operational picture that empowers analysts to make confident, timely, and well-informed response decisions.

What Are the Operational Benefits of ShadowPlex?

ShadowPlex improves IR and SOC effectiveness by converting attacker interactions into verified, high-fidelity signals that drive faster decision-making and more consistent containment. These operational gains reduce noise, lower analyst workload, and provide the context needed to understand intent and scope. Deterministic Signals

Every alert reflects a confirmed interaction with a decoy, breadcrumb, or honeytoken. This produces near-zero false positives and ensures analysts focus only on events tied to real attacker behavior.

Faster Time to Action
Early lifecycle states are pre-completed and incidents arrive enriched, routed, and ready for containment. Policy-driven automation streamlines quarantine, forensic capture, and identity resets, reducing manual steps and accelerating response.

Complete Context
Each incident includes MITRE ATT&CK mappings, relationships between identities, endpoints, and subnets, and any enrichment from EDR, sandbox, or reputation sources. This improves scoping and shortens the investigation cycle.

Analyst Efficiency
Incident merging, suppression rules, cross-tool correlation, and integrated hunt capabilities reduce repetitive work and keep attention on the events that matter.

Measurable Outcomes
Organizations see improvements in MTTD and MTTR, reduced case backlog, and deeper visibility into attacker behavior. Verified signals make it easier to prioritize threats, sequence response actions, and maintain operational consistency.

Key Takeaway:
Verified deception signals combined with structured routing and policy-driven automation deliver durable reductions in MTTR and analyst workload without adding staff.

Conclusion

Effective incident response and operations depend on speed, accuracy, and context. ShadowPlex strengthens these pillars by delivering verified, deception-driven signals that eliminate false positives and reduce time spent validating alerts. Automated enrichment, policy-based routing, and integration with SIEM, SOAR, and EDR platforms give analysts immediate insight into attacker intent and accelerate containment without increasing workload.

By aligning detection, investigation, and response within a single deception-powered framework, organizations gain measurable improvements in MTTD and MTTR while maintaining high analyst efficiency. The result is a more resilient and intelligence-driven security posture that stays ahead of adversary activity.