Alerts & Destinations
Panther detections trigger alerts on suspicious behavior
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Panther detections trigger alerts on suspicious behavior
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Overview
Alerts are generated when your detect suspicious behavior. When an alert is triggered, it is routed to the appropriate using the . You can use to help gather information about an alert and decide what to do next.
Panther can generate three types of alerts:
Alerts: This classification includes rule matches, policy matches, and scheduled rule matches from enabled .
Detection errors: These are generated due to incorrect code or permissions issues. When this occurs, a rule returns an error and the rule does not complete its run successfully. This includes .
System errors: Panther's System Errors alert users when a part of the Panther platform is not functioning correctly. This includes log source inactivity, log classification failures, log source permission failures, alert delivery failures, and cloud account scanning failures.
To learn more about these errors, see .
You can also interact with alerts using the Panther and .
You can customize the content of the alerts you receive for detection matches by using the or .
These functions allow you to, for example, include the matching event (using or ) or add event values to the alert title (using or ).
The alert limiter functionality is intended to safeguard from "alert storms" arising from (likely) misconfigured detections.
If a single detection creates 1,000 alerts within one hour, its CreateAlert field (or Create Alert toggle in the Console) is set to False (or OFF in the Console), which stops the detection from creating additional alerts. (The detection will continue to generate on matches.) When this happens, you will receive a notification and alert notifying you of the change.
You can set the CreateAlert/Create Alert value back to True/ON when you are ready—perhaps after some detection tuning.
If you would like to set this alert limit lower than 1,000, please reach out to your Panther Support team.
When deciding how to receive an alert, consider the following options:
When you receive an alert to your configured destination, it’s time to investigate. Common investigation workflows include:
For more information on triaging, assigning, and managing alerts, see the following documentation pages:
Triage, use alert summaries, assign, un-assign, view alert history, and add comments to alerts.
For many Panther-managed detections, find recommended steps to remediate the issue that triggered the alert.
Log in to your Panther Console.
In the left-hand navigation bar, click Alerts.
By default, this page lists alerts from most recent to oldest and displays only Open and Triaged alerts.
While viewing the list of alerts as described above, click an alert title to view the alert details page:
The alert details page includes:
Basic information
A Start Panther AI Triage option
A list of event matches
For each event, you can view event time, event source, the associated p_log_type and p_source_label, and IP information.
External conversations
Alert history
This includes a history of all status changes and comments.
If the alert failed to deliver to one of the configured alert destinations, you will see an "Alert delivery failed" error above the history.
During its alert triage investigation and analysis, Panther AI will only perform read operations—unless you direct it to take a write action, such as by clicking Close alert and mark as Resolved.
To use Panther AI triage:
From an alert detail page, click Start Panther AI Triage:
A Panther AI Alert Triage slide-out panel will appear, where Panther AI will output its findings:
The status will be updated to Resolved or Invalid.
This is recorded in the alert's Activity log.
If the Assign alert to me upon closing toggle is set to ON, the alert assignee will be set as you.
This is recorded in the alert's Activity log.
Each generated alert in Panther is enriched with the following timestamps:
p_alert_creation_time
The first time an event matched this rule
p_event_time
The time the event reported itself as happening
p_parse_time
The time the event was processed by Panther
p_alert_update_time
The last time an event matched this rule (in the case of deduplication)
If a detection has set a , all events matching the detection that share the same deduplication string will be appended to the first alert created, for the length of the deduplication period. This can result in an alert with more than one event associated to it.
Any alert information generated dynamically from a detection (by the or ) is generated by the output of the first matching event. The output of the alert functions/keys for additional events attached to the alert does not alter the alert.
For example, if a detection uses to dynamically set the alert severity based on an event property and the first matching event dictates a LOW severity, the alert severity will be set to LOW indefinitely—even if an event later associated to the alert, run through the same severity() function, would dictate a HIGH severity.
To receive alerts outside of the Panther Console, set up an alert destination and ensure it's configured to receive alerts based on the .
Natively supported destinations: Panther supports a number of alert destinations natively, like Slack, Jira, and Amazon SNS. See the for a complete list of supported destinations.
Custom Webhook: If you'd like to route alerts to a destination that is not natively supported but that has an API, you can use the Custom Webhook option to send alert notifications—see the for configuration instructions.
Panther API: If you'd like to receive Panther alerts at a destination that is not natively supported and that does not have an API, you can receive alerts by polling the for alerts on a schedule. See the available API operations for fetching and manipulating alerts on (REST) and (GraphQL).
Using .
Using to investigate indicators of compromise (IoCs).
Using to search robustly using SQL.
Reviewing data from the .
See the for more information on Panther’s data analysis tools.
directly from alerts.
You can also when using the .
The landing page is the , where you can view alert metrics and a list of the alerts assigned to you. Continue on to the next steps to view a list of all alerts.
Near the top of this page, you can view the .
Filter the list as needed to narrow your results.
Click the tabs at the top of the list to filter by the alert type: Alerts, Detection Errors, or System Errors.
This includes the detection that triggered the alert, the associated log types, the assignee, the alert status, the , and the .
See .
If there is additional context in a , Jira ticket, or Asana task where an alert was delivered, you can click the links in this section to view that information.
You can also in this section.
The Summary tab on the alert details page is described in .
is in open beta starting with Panther version 1.112, and is available to all customers. Please share any bug reports and feature requests with your Panther support team.
Use of Panther AI features is subject to the .
alert triage performs an investigation and analysis on an alert. It can be helpful to gather more information about an alert and help you decide what to do next.
AI alert triage may provide a summary of the alert, judgement on whether the alert is a false or true positive, recommended follow-up actions, and an indication of its confidence level. The Panther AI analysis of certain alerts may include a diagram visualizing Panther AI's "thought process" and/or the events that lead to the alert. The analysis will include to Panther entities (such as alerts, detections, and searches) when appropriate.
If the alert's status is Open or Triaged, under Next Steps, optionally click Close alert and mark as Resolved or Close alert and mark as Invalid.
A comment with a high-level alert summary will be left in the alert's Activity log.
