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Security Operations & Incident Response
Endpoint Detection & Response
High scrutiny and high blast radius; proof and governance matter.
Example organizations in this space:
CrowdStrike
SentinelOne
VMware Carbon Black
Cybereason
This interactive experience is the shipped product itself — the same application code customers run in production, mounted read-only in your browser over a real sample journey. Not a video, not a mockup: because the demo and the product are one codebase, it can never drift from the real thing.
Inside this journey
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Pre-Sales
Qualify and diagnose before investing in a full evaluation cycle.
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Outcome Discovery
Align on the breach or test findings, detection gaps, stakeholder owners, and measurable success signals for the evaluation.
Discovery Questions
Why we're here and what success looks like
- To align quickly, which single outcome would make this evaluation a clear success for your security leadership?
- Which stakeholders will need to sign acceptance at the end of the pilot?
- Who will act as the day-to-day owner for the 30-day side-by-side test?
- How quickly do you expect procurement or legal approval after pilot success, within 1 week, 2 weeks, or longer?
- How constrained is your standard desktop image in terms of permitted agents, boot-time impact, and compatibility with existing security tooling?
Where the current defenses break
- If the same living-off-the-land techniques happened again, how likely is your current stack to surface an alert before lateral movement?
- Describe the last penetration test or breach scenario that exposed a blind spot, including the technique used and the missed telemetry.
- When did you last run an adversary simulation that exercised in-memory execution, script cradles, or process lineage tracing?
- List the OS distributions and endpoint classes that must be represented in the 500-endpoint pilot, for example Windows 10, Windows Server, Linux servers, VDI pools.
- Which three failure modes from prior incidents caused the most operational pain for desktop or server teams?
- What single detection failure from recent tests would make you cancel or postpone a purchase?
How we will measure success during the bake-off
- If you could prove only one performance claim in the bake-off, which claim would shorten your procurement timeline most?
- Rank these metrics by influence on your final decision: detection coverage, false positive volume, mean time to investigation, containment speed.
- What rate of false positives per week is tolerable before desktop or server teams threaten to disable or quarantine the agent?
- Who will be responsible for running investigation playbooks and signing off that triage meets your internal SLAs during the pilot?
- A containment result under one second on ransomware tests, how would that change your internal approval path?
- Identify the minimum evidence set you need from the pilot for executive sign-off, for example example alerts, process lineage traces, or memory captures.
Scope, rollout, and risky moments
- Your biggest deployment risk is enabling automated blocking too early, what safety gates must exist before that switch?
- List the pilot boundaries you require, for example exact endpoint counts, OS families, business-critical apps to exclude, and maintenance windows.
- Rank the rollout phases in priority order, for example pilot, limited production, phased roll, full fleet.
- Name the team that will own configuration tuning during the find-fix-verify window and provide their contact role.
- Specify the rollback window and the person or role authorized to stop automated blocking immediately if a critical application fails.
Operational readiness and hard constraints
- Name any hard gate that would stop this project from starting, for example lack of API access, regulatory blocking, or no technical owner.
- Provide the integration points required for the pilot, including coexistence with existing AV/EDR, SIEM ingestion, SOAR actions, MDM, and vulnerability management connectors.
- State the number of engineers or full time equivalents you can commit weekly to deployment, tuning, and incident response during the pilot.
- Are there data residency, telemetry retention, or endpoint privacy rules that would limit the telemetry we can collect?
- Can procurement, legal, or compliance approve agent installation on servers and desktops within your target pilot window?
- Would read-only or blocked API integrations prevent a valid test, or can the pilot proceed without full integration?
Who else you're comparing us to
- Given the gap that triggered this evaluation, which vendor category or internal approach most threatens to keep you from switching?
- Identify the alternatives you are actively evaluating right now, and note which options are still in play.
- Has anyone on your teams proposed an internal, homegrown detection effort instead of buying, and if so, what is their proposed timeline?
- Describe the conditions under which you would retain your current solution instead of changing, for example measurable coverage improvements or a fix to a specific blind spot.
- Would an incumbent promise to patch the exact failure within 30 days be sufficient to keep you, or do you still need broader visibility and lineage?
Acceptance criteria and timeline to decision
- Assuming the pilot meets your top three metrics, what internal step takes us from pilot to signed contract?
- Select which acceptance criteria you require to sign: detection coverage threshold, false positive ceiling, containment SLA, time-to-investigation target.
- State the target timeline from pilot completion to full fleet rollout, for example 2 months, 3 months, or 6 months.
- Provide the role and budget cycle of the final budget holder that would fund a rollout if the pilot succeeds.
- Does a demonstrated 30% increase in detection coverage over the incumbent enable you to sign within your stated timeline?
Next practical steps and owners
- To shorten the timeline to two weeks, which individuals and roles must be available next week: security ops, desktop engineering, procurement, or legal?
- Select the non-negotiable timeline constraint: end of quarter, next security review, or infrastructure freeze windows.
- Share the dates of any blackout windows or change freezes during the proposed pilot dates that would block deployment.
- Assuming the side-by-side test replicates the detection results we claim, what remaining approvals or contracts would stop you from executing within four weeks?
- Do you want a joint runbook created that maps test steps, owners, and validation checks for the pilot?
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Technical Evaluation
Run a side-by-side agent evaluation (30-day, ~500 endpoints) with adversary simulations to measure detection coverage, false positives, and time-to-investigation.
- desired_state
- current_state
- stakeholders
- gaps
- success_criteria
- decision_readiness
- desired_state
- decision_readiness
- current_state
- success_criteria
- gaps
- stakeholders
- desired_state
- success_criteria
- stakeholders
- gaps
- current_state
- decision_readiness
- decision_readiness
- decision_readiness
- decision_readiness
- decision_readiness
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Solution Scope
Define what will be delivered: pilot boundaries, rollout phases, responsibilities, tuning period, and acceptance criteria.
Scope Configuration
- Deploy agent to pilot cohort
- Co-deploy agent alongside existing endpoint tool
- Configure detect-only tuning mode
- Enable kernel-level telemetry collection
- Capture process lineage and execution trees
- Monitor memory and network behavior
- Enable sub-second endpoint isolation
- Stage automated blocking ramp-up and tuning
- Validate image compatibility and boot performance
- Phased legacy agent removal and replacement
- Deploy agent to high-risk server workloads
- Generate red-team simulation telemetry and investigation report
Scope Questions
Deploy agent to pilot cohort
- How many endpoints will you include in the 30-day pilot (target 500 endpoints)?
- Which endpoint groups will be in the pilot (examples: finance workstations, remote sales laptops, engineering lab VMs)?
- When do you plan to start the pilot window and what is the target 30-day calendar range?
- Who will own day-to-day pilot validation and triage for alerts during the 30-day run?
- How will you provide target host lists (CSV with hostname and IP, AD group export, MDM tag)?
- What minimum detection coverage percentage against MITRE ATT&CK techniques during the 30-day 500-endpoint pilot will confirm success?
- Do you require exclusion of any business-critical hosts from the pilot (examples: vendor appliances, medical devices)?
Co-deploy agent alongside existing endpoint tool
- Which incumbent endpoint protection tool will remain installed during the side-by-side evaluation (provide product category or management console name)?
- Do you require the agent to operate in a compatibility mode to avoid conflict with signature-based AV processes?
- How will you measure boot-time impact on the pilot image (target metric: seconds increase to time-to-login)?
- What maximum acceptable increase in image boot-to-login time (seconds) will the desktop engineering team accept for the pilot image?
- What evidence will validate that co-deployment caused no application conflicts (example artifacts: vendor-signed boot logs, application startup time comparisons, kernel crash reports)?
- What false positive threshold during co-deployment will require rollback or further tuning (samples per 500 endpoints per day)?
- Who will approve temporary agent uninstall or image rollback if a conflict is detected during co-deployment?
Configure detect-only tuning mode
- Do you want the pilot deployed in detect-only mode for the full 30 days before any automated containment?
- How will you collect tuning feedback from IT operations (examples: daily false positive report, weekly review meetings, ticketed incidents)?
- What criteria will trigger moving from detect-only to staged isolation for a subset of hosts (examples: repeat detections, confirmed adversary simulation detections)?
- Who will be the designated tuning lead to review alerts and mark signatures/behaviors as false positive or true positive?
- Which telemetry artifacts will you require for tuning decisions (examples: process tree snapshot, memory dump, network connection log)?
- How long do you want the tuning period to run on production images after pilot (options in calendar days)?
- List any business-critical applications that must be excluded from automated actions during tuning (examples: Electronic Health Record client, SCADA console, payment processing endpoint).
Enable kernel-level telemetry collection
- Which operating system kernels are in scope for kernel-level telemetry (examples: Windows 10/11, Windows Server 2016/2019/2022)?
- Do you have any kernel-mode driver signing or kernel audit controls that could block telemetry collection?
- How will you validate kernel telemetry integrity (examples: hash of driver, kernel panic logs, ETW event counts)?
- Who will coordinate kernel-level agent installation with server owners for in-scope hosts that require maintenance windows?
- Which monitoring or SIEM endpoints will ingest kernel telemetry (examples: syslog collector, cloud ingestion API, on-prem SIEM connector)?
- Are there regulatory controls that restrict kernel-level collection on specific hosts (examples: PCI DSS cardholder systems, HIPAA protected systems)?
- Provide the expected retention period for collected kernel telemetry (days) for tuning and investigation needs.
Capture process lineage and execution trees
- Which process lineage artifacts do you require in investigation packets (examples: full parent-child chain, command line arguments, signed binary hash)?
- Do you need the platform to map lineage to specific MITRE ATT&CK techniques in the investigation report?
- How many process hops back should lineage capture for an investigation snapshot (examples: 3 hops, full session)?
- What evidence format do you require for process trees (examples: JSON event bundle, human-readable PDF, ELF/PE memory artifacts)?
- Who will own labeling of process lineage items as benign tooling versus suspicious living-off-the-land binaries (examples: sysadmins, security ops)?
- Are there corporate-signed binaries we should explicitly treat as trusted in process lineage (examples: internally built installers, signed management agents)?
- Describe the expected delivery SLA for an investigation packet containing process lineage after an alert (examples: immediate, within 15 minutes, within 1 hour).
Monitor memory and network behavior
- Which memory artifacts should be captured on suspicious events (examples: process memory snapshot, module list, stack traces)?
- Which network telemetry do you want collected for endpoint egress (examples: DNS queries, outbound connections, TLS SNI, IPflow summaries)?
- Do you require full packet capture (PCAP) for confirmed adversary simulations or are flow-level logs sufficient?
- How long should memory and network artifacts be retained in the investigation datastore (days)?
- Who will approve collection of memory artifacts on endpoints subject to data protection rules (examples: privacy officer, legal)?
- Are there network segments or destinations that must have telemetry redaction or masking applied (examples: payroll systems, partner IP ranges)?
- What format and delivery method do you prefer for memory/network artifacts in an investigation bundle (examples: secure upload to S3, encrypted email, SIEM ingestion)?
Enable sub-second endpoint isolation
- Do you require isolation actions that cut network egress within sub-second latency on supported hosts?
- Which isolation controls are acceptable in your environment (examples: block userland network, sever NIC at OS, drop at network switch)?
- What is the maximum acceptable collateral impact for an isolation action (examples: single user session only, whole VM reboot)?
- Who must approve enabling automated sub-second isolation for production hosts (examples: CISO, platform ops, change advisory board)?
- How will you verify isolation effectiveness during pilot (examples: synthetic egress test, simulated exfiltration during red-team exercise)?
- Are there hosts where immediate isolation is forbidden due to life-safety or production criticality (examples: OT workstations, medical imaging hosts)?
- What telemetry do you want logged when an isolation event occurs (examples: timestamp, initiating process, user session ID, pre/post network state)?
Stage automated blocking ramp-up and tuning
- Do you want a phased ramp from detect-only to selective automated blocking, and if so how many phases (examples: 3-phase - test group, pilot group, full roll)?
- What gating criteria must be met before advancing phases (examples: false positives below threshold, detection coverage met, successful rollback test)?
- Which test validations must pass in each phase (examples: containment test, end-to-end app smoke test, user acceptance sign-off)?
- How long should each ramp phase run before reassessment (days)?
- What maximum acceptable false positive rate across the phased fleet will halt ramp-up (examples: percent of endpoints generating false positives per day)?
- Who will own the phase-gate review and approval to advance from one ramp phase to the next?
- Describe rollback validation steps you require before enabling blocking at each phase (examples: timed rollback window, health checks, automated reinstatement test).
Validate image compatibility and boot performance
- Which base images must be validated (examples: corporate Windows 10 image vXX, server build image for SQL hosts)?
- Do you require automated boot performance metrics collection during validation (examples: boot to login time, service start latency)?
- What is the maximum allowed delta in boot-to-login time (seconds) compared to baseline image performance?
- Who signs off that an image passed compatibility testing (examples: desktop engineering image owner, application owner)?
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Mutual Commit
Finalize commercial and legal terms, access authorizations, SLAs, and sign-off on acceptance criteria and rollout gating.
Agreement Modules
- Subscription Agreement
- Order Form
- Service Level Agreement (SLA)
- Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
- Access Authorization and Credentials Addendum
- Acceptance Criteria and Rollout Gate Sign-off
- Change Order Agreement
- Termination and Exit Terms
- Implementation Addendum (conditional)
- Security and Compliance Rider (conditional)
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Deployment
Operationalize rollout with readiness checks, execution, and outcome validation.
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Pre-Deployment Readiness
Capture concrete readiness facts — target host lists, change windows, owners, network segmentation, and rollback plans before execution.
Pre-Deployment Questions
Environment and site access
- Is a finalized target host inventory provided per site and planned rollout batch (we need per‑site counts to build installation batches)?
- If the inventory is not finalized, what is the expected delivery date and who will provide it (name and role)?
Data and configuration
- Have the in‑scope endpoint OS families and baseline builds per site been documented and shared with the deployment team (this confirms compatibility and packaging needs)?
- What is the intended approach for existing endpoint/security agents during the pilot (this determines co‑existence and uninstall workstreams)?
- If a mixed or removal approach is planned, list which agent families require co‑existence checks or an uninstall plan (site + agent family) and the responsible owner (name and role).
People and ownership
- Are named owners assigned and authorized for these workstreams: Network, Desktop/Imaging, Security Operations, and Change Approval (we need single points of contact to advance approvals and troubleshooting)?
- Provide the primary owner (name, role, preferred contact method) for each assigned workstream listed above.
- Does the buyer require operational training, a playbook handoff, or a shadow run for Security Ops and Desktop teams before the pilot begins?
Timing, constraints, and rollback
- Are site‑level blackout or maintenance windows defined that will prevent installs or reboots (we will schedule batches around absolute no‑go windows)?
- Is there a documented rollback and remediation plan with an authorized approver and a maximum allowable recovery window (hours)?
- If a rollback plan exists or must be created, name the approver/executor (name, role) and state the maximum allowable recovery window in hours.
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Configuration Details
Lock exact configuration values the deployment team will use — policy settings, isolation thresholds, telemetry endpoints, and integration credentials.
Configuration Details
Agent build & target environment
- Agent installer artifact name or full HTTPS URL the deployment build will pull (enter exact filename or full URL). Default: latest-stable
- Target deployment group name as it appears in your endpoint management system (enter exact group name the build will assign this configuration to)
- Primary OS family for this deployment group (the deployment build uses this to choose the agent package)
Policy & containment settings
- Agent operational mode for initial rollout (Default: Detect-only — the deployment build sets this mode on installed agents)
- Detection sensitivity tier the deployment will apply to this group (Default: Balanced)
- Automated isolation threshold in seconds (numeric). The deployment will program this exact value into the isolation controller. Default: 1
- Isolation action to perform when containment triggers (Default: Network isolation only)
Telemetry & alert forwarding
- Primary telemetry upload endpoint URL (enter exact HTTPS URL the agent will send telemetry to — format: https://...) — the deployment build will use this endpoint verbatim
- Telemetry retention period in days the deployment will configure on the collector (Default: 90)
- SIEM / alert-forwarding integration type the deployment will enable (Default: Syslog over TLS)
- SIEM integration identifier (exact destination name or connector ID in your SIEM/orchestration system — do NOT paste credentials)
Integrations & credential handling (no secrets)
- Secrets manager identifier where integration secrets will be stored (enter the name or URL of your secrets manager — do NOT paste secret values). Default: your secrets manager
- Who owns the integration credential in your organization (enter full name and role of the secret owner who will approve secret access)
- Credential exchange method for non-secret identifiers (Default: Enter at deployment kickoff via the platform's secure vault)
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Rollout Execution
Execute the phased rollout and tuning plan with clear owners, sequencing, validation tests, and escalation paths.
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Go-Live Validation
Verify acceptance criteria, containment performance, false-positive tuning, and rollback readiness before enabling automated blocking across the fleet.
Checklist items
- Receive written UAT acceptance from the buyer
- Execute containment performance test using agreed simulation playbooks
- Validate false-positive tuning across pilot scope
- Perform rollback drill and confirm rollback procedures
- Confirm telemetry and alert integration with buyer SOC tooling
- Lock final host inventory and exclusion list for go-live
- Schedule and obtain change-control authorization for enablement
- Run a dry-run phased enablement on a controlled cohort
- Distribute operational runbooks and escalation roster
- Obtain final go/no-go sign-off to enable automated blocking fleet-wide
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Success
Confirm outcomes against success signals, maintain tuning and incident handoff cadence, and track issues and enhancement requests.
Success Reviews
- Go-live Health Check (weeks 1-4)
- First Measurement Review (weeks 4-10)
- Acceptance Gate Review (around day 90)
- Quarterly Success Review (ongoing)
Issues & Enhancements
- Schedule the next tuning window and list the specific policy changes or experiments to be validated.
- Confirm timeline and required evidence for the acceptance gate meeting.
- Implement the agreed tuning changes and document the configuration deltas and rollback steps.
- Schedule and run focused adversary simulation or purple team exercise to validate coverage for missed techniques.
- Produce an updated measurement packet (raw metrics, sample alerts, validation test results) for the acceptance gate review.
- Restate acceptance criteria and numeric targets recorded in Solution Scope
- Capture a documented acceptance decision by the buying owner with pass/fail status for each acceptance criterion recorded in Solution Scope.
- List remediation items for any failed criteria with target completion dates to close the loop.
- Confirm the incumbent wind-down status so the old endpoint agent is decommissioned or formally retained read-only.
- Publish the acceptance decision record and the pass/fail table for each acceptance criterion recorded in Solution Scope.
- If accepted, begin the incumbent decommission plan and produce an archive/migration report for retained data.
- Create a remediation tracker for any failed criteria with owners and completion dates for the follow-up review.
- Quarterly metric trends vs targets recorded in Solution Scope
- Confirm the solution continues to meet the operational targets recorded in Solution Scope or document drift and corrective plans.
- Prioritize and assign timelines for open enhancement requests and product issues.
- Ensure incident handoff SLAs are being met and reduce outstanding incident backlogs beyond SLA.
- Publish the quarterly metrics summary showing trends and notable incidents versus targets recorded in Solution Scope.
- Add prioritized enhancement requests to the product/work backlog with expected delivery windows or interim workarounds.
- Re-confirm acceptance criteria and owners
- Deployment completeness confirmed or a remediation plan with dates is in place.
- All critical agent health issues are triaged with resolution windows before measurement begins.
- Investigation handoff and escalation paths are documented and available to SOC and desktop teams.
- Publish a deployment health report including install counts, heartbeat coverage, and install failure list.
- Create a remediation plan for any endpoint groups that failed install, with target windows for retry and validation.
- Deliver access and runbook documentation for SOC and desktop engineering ahead of the first measurement.
- Present measurement data vs targets recorded in Solution Scope
- Determine whether detection coverage rate and median time-to-investigation are trending toward targets recorded in Solution Scope.
- Agree a prioritized list of tuning actions and validation tests with clear completion dates.
- Deployment completeness and agent health
- Incident handoff and open incident burn-down
- Present outcome data against each criterion
- Root-cause diagnosis for gaps
- Tuning and policy adjustments
- Enhancement requests and product issues backlog
- Early stability signals
- Document pass/fail per criterion and acceptance decision
- Onboarding and operational readiness
- Plan for validating corrective actions
- Tuning and policy maintenance window
- Remediation plan for failed criteria
- Blockers and remediation actions
- Short checklist for service health
- Confirm path and timeline to acceptance gate
- Incumbent wind-down check
- Agree ongoing success cadence
- Agree timeline to first measurement