Overview#
The difference between a contained breach and a catastrophic one is usually measured in minutes. A financial services firm that detects credential theft, isolates the affected account, and revokes active sessions within ten minutes faces a fundamentally different outcome than one that discovers the same breach three days later through a routine log review. Speed matters, but so does documentation: every containment action, every piece of evidence collected, and every decision made must be traceable for regulators, insurers, and courts.
Argus provides a structured framework for detecting, investigating, containing, and resolving security incidents. Automated response playbooks, forensic analysis tools, timeline reconstruction, and chain-of-custody evidence management give security teams the speed they need without sacrificing the audit trail they cannot afford to lose.
Key Features#
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Automated Incident Detection: Real-time threat identification and classification from multiple detection sources, including automated scanning, anomaly detection, threat intelligence feeds, and user reports.
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Response Playbooks: Pre-configured and customisable workflows for common incident types guide responders through proven containment and resolution procedures. Playbooks support full automation, semi-automation, or manual execution with guidance.
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Forensic Analysis: Deep investigation tools enable root cause analysis through network forensics, system log analysis, transaction tracing, and indicator-of-compromise identification.
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Timeline Reconstruction: Automated event correlation across multiple data sources produces chronological attack chain visualisations mapped to industry-standard frameworks, enabling rapid understanding of incident progression.
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Chain-of-Custody Evidence Management: Every piece of evidence is tracked with cryptographic integrity verification, custodian records, and purpose documentation to maintain admissibility for compliance and legal requirements.
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Post-Incident Analysis: Structured post-mortem workflows capture root causes, contributing factors, lessons learned, and prevention measures, driving continuous improvement of your security posture.
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Incident Reporting: Automated report generation for multiple audiences including initial notifications, status updates, executive summaries, technical analyses, and compliance reports.
How It Works#
Incident Lifecycle#
Security incidents progress through a structured lifecycle:
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Detection: Threats are identified through automated scanning, anomaly detection, threat intelligence correlation, or manual reporting. Each detection includes severity classification and confidence scoring.
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Investigation: The assigned responder gathers evidence, analyses forensic data, and reconstructs the incident timeline. Automated tools correlate events across data sources and map activities to known attack techniques.
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Containment: Response actions isolate affected systems, block malicious actors, and prevent further damage. Actions can be executed automatically through playbooks or manually with documented approval.
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Eradication: The root cause is eliminated through patching, configuration changes, credential rotation, or other remediation measures.
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Recovery: Affected systems are restored to normal operation with enhanced monitoring to verify the threat has been fully addressed.
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Post-Mortem: A structured analysis captures what happened, why it happened, what was done, and what will be improved. Lessons learned feed back into detection rules, playbooks, and security controls.
Incident Categories#
The platform handles a broad range of incident types including:
- Unauthorised access and data breaches
- Malware infections and denial-of-service attacks
- Insider threats and social engineering
- API abuse and account compromise
- Supply chain attacks and zero-day exploits
- Configuration errors with security impact
Response Automation#
Playbooks define step-by-step response procedures that can include:
- System and account isolation
- Credential revocation
- Evidence collection and preservation
- Log analysis and threat hunting
- Stakeholder notification
- System restoration and monitoring
Each playbook step tracks execution status, duration, evidence generated, and success criteria, providing a complete audit trail of the response effort.
Impact Assessment#
Every incident includes an impact assessment covering financial exposure, operational disruption, reputational risk, compliance implications, affected assets, impacted users, and system downtime. This assessment informs severity classification and resource allocation decisions.
Open Standards#
- OASIS STIX 2.1: Incident indicators and threat intelligence are ingested, stored, and exported as STIX 2.1 bundles (Structured Threat Information eXpression), enabling interoperability with external threat-sharing platforms.
- OASIS TAXII 2.1: The platform polls and receives threat intelligence from external feeds over TAXII 2.1 (Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information), feeding detected indicators into incident correlation.
- OASIS CACAO v2.0: Response playbooks are authored and executed as CACAO v2.0 JSON documents, submitted to the SOARCA orchestrator for structured, automated containment and remediation steps.
- CNCF CloudEvents 1.0: Every incident state-change, detection, containment, eradication, closure, is wrapped in a CloudEvents 1.0 envelope and persisted to the unified incident timeline, enabling standards-compliant event streaming and audit.
- RFC 9562 (UUIDv7): Timeline event identifiers use time-ordered UUIDv7 as defined in RFC 9562, providing monotonic, globally unique keys that preserve chronological ordering without a central counter.
- MITRE ATT&CK: Timeline reconstruction maps detected activities to MITRE ATT&CK tactic and technique identifiers, giving analysts a shared vocabulary for describing and comparing attack progression.
- ISO 19005 (PDF/A): Incident reports and evidence packages are exported in PDF/A archival format across ISO 19005 parts 1, 4 (PDF/A-1B through PDF/A-4F), ensuring long-term admissibility for court and regulatory submissions.
- EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model): Evidence packages can be exported in EDRM XML format, supporting structured handover to legal counsel and e-discovery workflows.
Compliance#
Incident response capabilities support compliance with:
- SOC 2: Incident management controls and response documentation
- ISO 27001: Information security incident management (A.16)
- PCI-DSS: Incident response plan and breach notification requirements
- HIPAA: Breach notification and incident documentation requirements
- GDPR: 72-hour breach notification and incident record-keeping
- NIST CSF: Respond and Recover function requirements
Availability#
- Enterprise Plan: Full incident response platform included
- Professional Plan: Core incident management; advanced forensics and automated playbooks available as add-on
Last Reviewed: 2026-02-05 Last Updated: 2026-04-14