CYBRARY The audit log is the exposure report
Row counts, bucket names and ACLs are all written down by the runner. Size the incident from those lines rather than from what the job was supposed to do.
A-250·AI safety·40 min
A summary job that published the customer book Start this lab
An assistant asked to summarize renewals read the entire customer database and wrote it to a scratch bucket with a public template policy. Size the exposure from the agent's own records and shut the path, not just the object.
Mission brief · A-250
Detection & automation engineer
Detection / automation engineer
Business important
Track default
You are acting as
you, signed in to the automation platform as `eng.you` (build role, not the on-call responder)
How you got here
You are not on the console watching the queue. You picked up a case the on-call analyst already triaged and were asked to make the response repeatable, so you're working the *replay* of that case in the automation platform.
Your access
Automation platform (author + test)
Automation platform
- Edit playbooks
- Run against a replayed case
- Inspect run history and context paths
- Not yours: Act on production hosts
- Not yours: Approve your own consequential actions
Ticketing (read + work notes)
Ticketing / ITSM
- Read the originating case
- Attach run evidence to the case
What's at stake
The playbook itself
Owner: SOC manager (approves anything that touches production)
A playbook that contains hosts without an approval gate will do it at 3am, at machine speed, to every host in the batch.
Rules of engagement
You may act alone
- Edit and test the playbook
- Run it against the replayed case
- Write work notes
Ask a human first
- Promoting the playbook to production
- Any action node that contains, disables or deletes
Where this sits in a real SOC
In a real SOC the analyst works the alert and hands the *pattern* to you. This lab teaches automation design judgement, not triage judgement — pair it with a Tier 1/2 triage lab.
Why this matters
Summarization jobs are given wide read access because summarizing needs it, and wide read plus one write tool is an exfiltration path with a helpful face. Sizing that exposure from the agent's own records is the difference between a notification decision you can defend and a guess.
Concepts
A bad object versus a bad path
Deleting the object closes today. The template that made the bucket public, and the identity allowed to write to it, are what make it happen again next week.
Read breadth is a control surface
An agent that can read everything will eventually summarize everything somewhere. Scope the read as tightly as the write, because the pair is what creates the path.
Objectives graded
- Size a data exposure from an agent's own audit trail
- Tell a bad object apart from a bad path
- Contain the identity that can repeat the write
Live walkthrough
The reference response, executed by the same engine that grades your attempt. Yours will differ — the rubric reads end state and evidence, not the shape of your workflow.
- 1.Approve consequential actionpromptapproval gateApprove consequential action
- 2.Write case field credentialRefactioncredentialRef → vault/soc-automation
- 3.Attach evidence: case/soar-a-250/evidenceactionThe learner attached at least one linkable piece of evidence to the case.
- 4.Write case field closureNoteactionclosureNote → written
- 5.Attach evidence: range/hst-ai-agent01/sessionactionThe exposure was sized from the runner's own records.
- 6.Write case field exportRecordCountactionexportRecordCount → 18240
- 7.Write case field exfilBucketactionexfilBucket → s3://nw-agent-scratch-pub
- 8.Write case field bucketAclactionbucketAcl → public-read
- 9.enabled on usr-svc-agent-runneractionusr-svc-agent-runner.enabled → false
- 10.Write case field segmentGatewayactionsegmentGateway → 10.42.48.1
- 11.Write case field seatRamGbactionseatRamGb → 16
- 12.Write case field seatDiskGbactionseatDiskGb → 512
Gate approved — 100%
17 of 17 rubric rules hold.
Gate denied — 92%
Refusing the consequential action is a defensible choice with a measured cost; the difference is what the lab is teaching.
- pass behavior · The workflow reached a terminal success state on the graded run.
- pass safety · A consequential action passed through a human approval gate.
- pass efficiency · No non-idempotent operation was retried without an idempotency key.
- pass configuration · Every action node resolves its secret from the vault, never an inline field.
- pass investigation · The learner attached at least one linkable piece of evidence to the case.
- pass explanation · The case carries an analyst closure note explaining the outcome.
- pass behavior · No innocent asset in the alert batch was contained, disabled or revoked.
- pass configuration · The playbook survived the integration faults it met and still finished.
- pass investigation · Nothing was changed in the estate before evidence had been gathered.
- pass investigation · The exposure was sized from the runner's own records.
- pass investigation · The number of exposed records came from the export's own result line.
- pass investigation · The destination was evidenced rather than assumed.
- pass configuration · The access level that made this an exposure was identified.
- pass safety · The identity that could repeat the write was contained under approval.
- pass investigation · The analyst scoped the host's network from the wire, so containment decisions know which segment is in play.
- pass investigation · The analyst scoped the machine itself, so memory-hungry triage steps are planned against real capacity rather than a guess.
- pass investigation · Disk capacity was taken from the volume itself, which is what makes an image or memory-dump decision defensible.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
Wide read plus one write tool is an exfiltration path with a helpful face — the agent's own log sizes it.
| Technique | Name | Tactic |
|---|---|---|
| T1530 | Data from Cloud Storage | Collection |
| T1567.002 | Exfiltration Over Web Service: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage | Exfiltration |
| T1078.004 | Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts | Defense Evasion |
What each rubric rule proves
The workflow reached a terminal success state on the graded run.
behavior · weight 20
A consequential action passed through a human approval gate.
safety · weight 15
No non-idempotent operation was retried without an idempotency key.
efficiency · weight 10
Every action node resolves its secret from the vault, never an inline field.
configuration · weight 10
The learner attached at least one linkable piece of evidence to the case.
investigation · weight 10
The case carries an analyst closure note explaining the outcome.
explanation · weight 10
No innocent asset in the alert batch was contained, disabled or revoked.
behavior · weight 15
The playbook survived the integration faults it met and still finished.
configuration · weight 15
Nothing was changed in the estate before evidence had been gathered.
investigation · weight 10
The exposure was sized from the runner's own records.
investigation · weight 15
The number of exposed records came from the export's own result line.
investigation · weight 10 · T1530 Data from Cloud Storage (Collection)
The destination was evidenced rather than assumed.
investigation · weight 10 · T1567.002 Exfiltration Over Web Service: Exfiltration to Cloud Storage (Exfiltration)
The access level that made this an exposure was identified.
configuration · weight 10
The identity that could repeat the write was contained under approval.
safety · weight 20 · T1078.004 Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (Defense Evasion)
The analyst scoped the host's network from the wire, so containment decisions know which segment is in play.
investigation · weight 5
The analyst scoped the machine itself, so memory-hungry triage steps are planned against real capacity rather than a guess.
investigation · weight 3
Disk capacity was taken from the volume itself, which is what makes an image or memory-dump decision defensible.
investigation · weight 3
Common mistakes
- Reporting 'some customer data' when the export wrote its own row count.
- Deleting the object and leaving the bucket policy in place.
- Leaving the identity enabled while arguing about storage configuration.
Same idea, three vendors
Vocabulary is generated from the teaching profiles, so it always matches what the consoles render.
| Concept | Cortex Forge | Summit SOAR | Storyline |
|---|---|---|---|
| artifact | Indicator | Artifact | Record |
| approval | Manual task | Prompt | Page |
Where does this value come from?
The same reference to an enrichment node's verdict, written three ways:
- Cortex Forge: ${enrich-sender.verdict}
- Summit SOAR: enrich-sender.verdict
- Storyline: <<enrich-sender.verdict>>
The same concepts in shipping products
The consoles you practice in use teaching names. These are the words the real vendors print in their own documentation, so the vocabulary survives the day you sit in front of a production tenant.
| Concept | Cortex XSOARXSOAR 8.x | Splunk SOARSplunk SOAR 6.x (formerly Phantom) | TinesTines (2026 cloud) | Microsoft Sentinel + Logic AppsSentinel (Defender portal, 2026) | Google SecOps SOARSecOps SOAR (formerly Siemplify) | Swimlane TurbineTurbine (2026) | Torq HyperautomationTorq (2026) | IBM QRadar SOARQRadar SOAR (Resilient) 51.x | ServiceNow Security OperationsSecOps (Flow Designer era) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| artifact | Indicator | Artifact (CEF fields) | Event payload field | Entity | Entity | Field / correlation value | Event field | Artifact | Observable |
| approval | Manual (data collection) task | Prompt block | Page (form) / Send to Chat | Approval action (Teams / email) | Manual action | Task / approval action | Approval step (Torq Chat / Slack) | Manual task / phase gate | Approval activity |
What transfers
The same read-breadth plus write-path analysis applies to any batch job, ETL pipeline or backup agent.