diff --git a/core/03-detection-requirements/README.md b/core/03-detection-requirements/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a45f973 --- /dev/null +++ b/core/03-detection-requirements/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,235 @@ +# Detection Requirements + +## Overview + +Covers deciding what to detect and in what order: where detection ideas come from, how to turn them into actionable requirements, and how to prioritize them against threats and the organization's actual risk and exposure. + +## Learning Objectives + +By the end of this module, learners should be able to: + +- Write a detection requirement that states the behavior, required data, triggering conditions, context, and success criteria. +- Identify where detection ideas come from, and evaluate an idea's relevance to the environment. +- Extract detection requirements from a detection threat model. +- Use asset criticality, exposure, and vulnerability state to shape the priority and scope of a requirement. +- Determine whether a requirement can be met with available telemetry within organizational constraints. +- Prioritize requirements and communicate the decisions in terms of risk reduction. + +## Prerequisites + +- Module 01: Detection Engineering Foundations +- Module 02: Telemetry & Data + +## Lessons + +### 1. What A Detection Requirement Is + +**Learning Objectives** + +- Explain why requirements come before design, and why a blocked requirement is a valid outcome. +- Scope a vague detection request into a defined problem. +- Write a requirement that states the behavior, data, conditions, context, and success criteria. + +**Key Topics** + +- Starting from the problem, not a query +- Scoping questions (who, which systems, what data, what priority, what response) +- Visibility problems vs. detection problems +- Minimum contents of a requirement +- Verify, don't assume +- Requirements vs. hypotheses and designs + +**Out of scope** + +- Sources of detection ideas (Lesson 2) +- Feasibility in depth (Lesson 5) +- Hypotheses and design (Module 04) + +### 2. Sources of Detection Ideas + +**Learning Objectives** + +- Identify the sources detection ideas come from. +- Evaluate an idea's relevance to the environment. +- Explain why every request goes through the same intake. + +**Key Topics** + +- Threat intelligence +- Incidents and post-incident reviews +- Red team, penetration test, and purple team findings +- Threat hunting +- ATT&CK as a source +- Compliance and stakeholder requests +- News driven requests + +**Out of scope** + +- Researching a behavior (Module 04) +- Running a threat intelligence or threat hunting program +- Prioritizing ideas (Lesson 6) + +### 3. Threat-Informed Requirements + +**Learning Objectives** + +- Build a detection threat model. +- Translate threat scenarios into expected behaviors and required telemetry. +- Use ATT&CK to provide structure and find gaps without using it as a checklist. +- Derive requirements from a threat model. + +**Key Topics** + +- Why "detect everything" fails +- Threat modeling for detection +- Who attacks, what they want, how they get in, what they do next, and what they leave behind +- Threats to behaviors to telemetry to gaps to requirements +- ATT&CK as a tool +- Living threat models + +**Out of scope** + +- Asset and exposure context (Lesson 4) +- Coverage analysis of existing detections (Module 04) +- Researching a behavior in depth (Module 04) + +### 4. Risk & Exposure Context + +**Learning Objectives** + +- Explain how asset criticality, exposure, and vulnerability state change the priority of a detection requirement. +- Use vulnerability intelligence (KEV, EPSS, CVSS) as inputs to detection requirements and describe the limits of each. +- Identify when detection should act as a compensating control for risk that cannot be remediated in the near term. +- Scope a compensating detection requirement to the asset's exposure and its remediation timeline. + +**Key Topics** + +- Asset criticality: business impact, crown-jewel systems, and why the same technique warrants different priority on different assets +- Attack surface and exposure: internet-facing versus internal, identity exposure, and third-party or vendor access +- Vulnerability state as a detection input: + - CISA KEV: confirmed exploitation in the wild + - EPSS: likelihood of exploitation + - CVSS: severity rather than risk, and why it should not drive priority alone +- Detection as a compensating control: + - End-of-life and end-of-support systems the business depends on, such as point-of-sale systems and legacy reporting applications or databases + - Why remediation is often deferred: upgrade cost, operational downtime, and vendor dependencies + - Treating detection as an interim control while remediation remains a long-term goal +- Missing or failed preventive controls: where prevention is absent, detection carries more weight +- Requirement expiry: re-evaluating or retiring exposure-driven requirements when the exposure is remediated or the asset is decommissioned +- Sources of exposure context: vulnerability scanning, asset inventory and CMDB data, attack surface management, and cloud posture management + +**Out of scope** + +- Operating a vulnerability management program (scanning cadence, patching workflows, SLAs) +- Combining risk factors into a final priority (Lesson 6) +- Telemetry required to observe exploitation (Module 02) +- Building exploitation detections (Module 05) + +### 5. Feasibility + +**Learning Objectives** + +- Map a requirement to the log sources, events, and fields it needs. +- Rate a requirement's feasibility. +- Identify platform, organizational, and compliance constraints. +- Record an unsupported requirement as a telemetry gap. + +**Key Topics** + +- Environment assessment (Module 02) vs. per-requirement feasibility +- Field level data source mapping +- Whether the requirement needs a baseline +- Platform, organizational, and compliance constraints +- Whether the SOC can act on the result +- Tracking blocked requirements + +**Out of scope** + +- Assessing log source quality (Module 02) +- Closing telemetry gaps (Module 02) +- Detection design (Module 04) + +### 6. Prioritization + +**Learning Objectives** + +- Combine threat, impact, exposure, feasibility, and effort into a defensible priority for a detection requirement. +- Evaluate the strengths and failure modes of common prioritization approaches. +- Decide when a risk should be addressed through detection, prevention, or explicit acceptance. +- Communicate prioritization decisions to stakeholders in terms of risk reduction. + +**Key Topics** + +- Prioritization inputs: threat relevance, potential impact, asset exposure, telemetry feasibility, and engineering effort +- Prioritization approaches: + - Qualitative tiers (high / medium / low) + - Weighted scoring models + - Threat-driven ranking (for example, prevalence of techniques in relevant threat activity) + - Coverage-gap-driven ranking +- Failure modes: + - Headline-driven priority: high-profile news creating pressure to act on threats with little relevance to the environment + - Severity over exposure: letting a single input such as CVSS outrank actual exposure and exploitability + - Remediation-only planning: relying on a long remediation effort that later stalls on an undiscovered dependency, with no interim detection in place + - False precision in scoring models, and prioritizing what is easy to build over what matters +- Detect, prevent, or accept: when detection is the right investment and when the better answer is a preventive control or documented risk acceptance +- Re-prioritization triggers: new threat intelligence, incidents, environment changes, and remediated exposure +- Explaining priority to stakeholders: tying decisions to risk reduction rather than rule counts, and grounding responses to headline threats in actual exposure + +**Out of scope** + +- Detailed treatment of exposure and asset risk inputs (Lesson 4) +- Assessing telemetry availability (Lesson 5) +- Program-level backlog management, capacity planning, and metrics (Module 10) + +## Boundaries + +| Topic | This module | Adjacent module(s) | +| --- | --- | --- | +| ATT&CK coverage | Using coverage gaps to prioritize | 04 Detection Design (mapping and coverage analysis) | +| Telemetry feasibility | Whether a specific requirement can be met | 02 Telemetry & Data (assessing and improving sources) | +| Threat research | Intake and turning research into requirements | 04 Detection Design (researching the behavior to detect) | +| Backlog and intake process | Per-requirement intake and prioritization | 10 Detection Program Engineering (program level) | +| Vulnerability management | Vulnerability state as a detection input | Operating a vulnerability management program is not covered in Core | +| Baselines | Identifying when a requirement needs one | 02 Telemetry & Data (establishing baselines); 04 Detection Design (using them) | +| Hypotheses and design | Not covered | 04 Detection Design | + +## Labs + +N/A + +## Datasets + +N/A + +## References + +### Detection Requirements and Sources + +- [Alerting and Detection Strategies Framework](https://github.com/palantir/alerting-detection-strategy-framework), Palantir Incident Response Team, 2017. +- [SP 800-61 Rev. 3: Incident Response Recommendations and Considerations for Cybersecurity Risk Management](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/61/r3/final), Alexander Nelson, Sanjay Rekhi, Murugiah Souppaya, and Karen Scarfone, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2025. DOI: 10.6028/NIST.SP.800-61r3. +- [The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0](https://www.nist.gov/publications/nist-cybersecurity-framework-csf-20), National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2024. DOI: 10.6028/NIST.CSWP.29. + +### Threat-Informed Requirements + +- [MITRE ATT&CK, v20.0](https://attack.mitre.org/), The MITRE Corporation, 2026. Retrieved 2026-11-01. +- [The Design and Philosophy of MITRE ATT&CK](https://attack.mitre.org/docs/ATTACK_Design_and_Philosophy_March_2020.pdf), Blake E. Strom et al., The MITRE Corporation, 2020. +- [ATT&CK Detection Strategies](https://attack.mitre.org/detectionstrategies/), The MITRE Corporation, n.d. Retrieved 2026-11-01. +- [Top ATT&CK Techniques](https://ctid.mitre.org/projects/top-attack-techniques), MITRE Center for Threat-Informed Defense, 2024. Retrieved 2026-11-01. + +### Risk and Exposure Context + +- [NIST SP 800-30 Rev. 1: Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/30/r1/final), Joint Task Force Transformation Initiative, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2012. DOI: 10.6028/NIST.SP.800-30r1. +- [NIST IR 8286A Rev. 1: Identifying and Estimating Cybersecurity Risk for Enterprise Risk Management](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/ir/8286/a/r1/final), Stephen Quinn et al., National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2026. +- [Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog](https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, n.d. Retrieved 2026-11-01. +- [Exploit Prediction Scoring System](https://www.first.org/epss/), Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, n.d. Retrieved 2026-11-01. +- [Common Vulnerability Scoring System, Version 4.0](https://www.first.org/cvss/v4.0/specification-document), Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, 2023. +- [Stakeholder-Specific Vulnerability Categorization Guide](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/cisa-ssvc-guide%20508c.pdf), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, n.d. Retrieved 2026-11-01. + +### Feasibility and Prioritization + +- [Top ATT&CK Techniques Methodology](https://center-for-threat-informed-defense.github.io/top-attack-techniques/), MITRE Center for Threat-Informed Defense, 2024. Retrieved 2026-11-01. +- [CISA Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals](https://www.cisa.gov/cross-sector-cybersecurity-performance-goals), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, n.d. Retrieved 2026-11-01. + +## AI Assistance + +Research diff --git a/core/03-detection-requirements/module-metadata.yml b/core/03-detection-requirements/module-metadata.yml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d1572eb --- /dev/null +++ b/core/03-detection-requirements/module-metadata.yml @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +title: Detection Requirements +slug: detection-requirements +status: draft # draft | in-review | reviewed | stable | needs-update | deprecated +version: 0.1 + +summary: > + Covers deciding what to detect and in what order: where detection ideas + come from, how to turn them into actionable requirements, and how to + prioritize them against threats and the organization's actual risk and + exposure. + +learning_objectives: + - Write a detection requirement that states the behavior, required data, triggering conditions, context, and success criteria. + - Identify where detection ideas come from, and evaluate an idea's relevance to the environment. + - Extract detection requirements from a detection threat model. + - Use asset criticality, exposure, and vulnerability state to shape the priority and scope of a requirement. + - Determine whether a requirement can be met with available telemetry within organizational constraints. + - Prioritize requirements and communicate the decisions in terms of risk reduction. + +prerequisites: + - Module 01 Detection Engineering Foundations + - Module 02 Telemetry & Data + +authors: + - Treyrob3 + - mndtrcks + +reviewers: [] # GitHub handles (without @) of independent approving reviewers + +maintainers: + - mndtrcks + - Treyrob3 + +ai_assistance: > + research + +last_reviewed: null # YYYY-MM-DD, set by a maintainer on approval + +related_tracks: [] + +related_labs: [] + +related_datasets: []