Building Incident Response Dashboard
When to Use
Use this skill when:
- IR teams need real-time dashboards during active incidents for coordination and tracking
- SOC leadership requires operational dashboards showing incident status and analyst workload
- Post-incident reviews need visual timelines and impact assessments
- Executive briefings require high-level incident metrics and trend analysis
Do not use for day-to-day SOC monitoring dashboards (use Incident Review instead) — IR dashboards are designed for active incident coordination and management reporting.
Prerequisites
- SIEM platform (Splunk with Dashboard Studio, Elastic Kibana, or Grafana)
- Notable event and incident data in SIEM (Splunk ES incident_review index)
- Ticketing system integration (ServiceNow, Jira) for remediation tracking
- Asset and identity lookup tables for context enrichment
- Dashboard publishing access for SOC team and management distribution
Workflow
Step 1: Design Active Incident Dashboard Layout
Build a Splunk Dashboard Studio dashboard for active incident tracking:
<dashboard version="2" theme="dark">
<label>Active Incident Response Dashboard</label>
<description>Real-time tracking for IR-2024-0450</description>
<row>
<panel>
<title>Incident Summary</title>
<single>
<search>
<query>
| makeresults
| eval incident_id="IR-2024-0450",
status="CONTAINMENT",
severity="Critical",
affected_hosts=7,
contained_hosts=5,
iocs_identified=23,
hours_elapsed=round((now()-strptime("2024-03-15 14:00","%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"))/3600,1)
| table incident_id, status, severity, affected_hosts, contained_hosts, iocs_identified, hours_elapsed
</query>
</search>
</single>
</panel>
</row>
</dashboard>
Step 2: Build Real-Time Affected Systems Panel
Track affected systems and their containment status:
| inputlookup ir_affected_systems.csv
| eval status_color = case(
status="Contained", "#2ecc71",
status="Compromised", "#e74c3c",
status="Investigating", "#f39c12",
status="Recovered", "#3498db",
1=1, "#95a5a6"
)
| stats count by status
| eval order = case(status="Compromised", 1, status="Investigating", 2,
status="Contained", 3, status="Recovered", 4)
| sort order
| table status, count
--- Detailed host table
| inputlookup ir_affected_systems.csv
| lookup asset_lookup_by_cidr ip AS host_ip OUTPUT category, owner, priority
| table hostname, host_ip, category, owner, status, containment_time,
compromise_vector, analyst_assigned
| sort status, hostname
Step 3: Build IOC Tracking Panel
Monitor IOC spread across the environment:
--- IOCs identified during incident
index=* (src_ip IN ("185.234.218.50", "45.77.123.45") OR
dest IN ("evil-c2.com", "malware-drop.com") OR
file_hash IN ("a1b2c3d4...", "e5f6a7b8..."))
earliest="2024-03-14"
| stats count AS hits, dc(src_ip) AS unique_sources,
dc(dest) AS unique_dests, latest(_time) AS last_seen
by sourcetype
| sort - hits
--- IOC timeline
index=* (src_ip IN ("185.234.218.50") OR dest="evil-c2.com")
earliest="2024-03-14"
| timechart span=1h count by sourcetype
--- New IOC discovery tracking
| inputlookup ir_ioc_list.csv
| stats count by ioc_type, source, discovery_time
| sort discovery_time
| table discovery_time, ioc_type, ioc_value, source, status
Step 4: Build Response Timeline Panel
Create chronological incident timeline:
| inputlookup ir_timeline.csv
| sort _time
| eval phase = case(
action_type="detection", "Detection",
action_type="triage", "Triage",
action_type="containment", "Containment",
action_type="eradication", "Eradication",
action_type="recovery", "Recovery",
1=1, "Other"
)
| eval phase_color = case(
phase="Detection", "#e74c3c",
phase="Triage", "#f39c12",
phase="Containment", "#e67e22",
phase="Eradication", "#2ecc71",
phase="Recovery", "#3498db"
)
| table _time, phase, action, analyst, details
Example timeline data:
_time,action_type,action,analyst,details
2024-03-15 14:00,detection,Alert triggered - Cobalt Strike beacon detected,splunk_es,Notable event NE-2024-08921
2024-03-15 14:12,triage,Alert triaged - confirmed true positive,analyst_jdoe,VT score 52/72 on beacon hash
2024-03-15 14:23,containment,Host WORKSTATION-042 isolated,analyst_jdoe,CrowdStrike network isolation
2024-03-15 14:35,containment,C2 domain blocked on firewall,analyst_msmith,Palo Alto rule deployed
2024-03-15 15:00,eradication,Enterprise-wide IOC scan initiated,analyst_jdoe,Splunk search across all indices
2024-03-15 15:30,containment,3 additional hosts identified and isolated,analyst_msmith,Lateral movement confirmed
2024-03-15 16:00,eradication,Malware removed from all affected hosts,analyst_tier3,CrowdStrike RTR cleanup
2024-03-15 18:00,recovery,Systems restored and monitored,analyst_msmith,72-hour monitoring period started
Step 5: Build SOC Operations Dashboard
Track overall SOC performance metrics:
--- Incident volume by severity (last 30 days)
index=notable earliest=-30d
| stats count by urgency
| eval order = case(urgency="critical", 1, urgency="high", 2, urgency="medium", 3,
urgency="low", 4, urgency="informational", 5)
| sort order
--- MTTD (Mean Time to Detect)
index=notable earliest=-30d status_label="Resolved*"
| eval mttd_minutes = round((time_of_first_event - orig_time) / 60, 1)
| stats avg(mttd_minutes) AS avg_mttd, median(mttd_minutes) AS med_mttd,
perc95(mttd_minutes) AS p95_mttd
--- MTTR (Mean Time to Respond/Resolve)
index=notable earliest=-30d status_label="Resolved*"
| eval mttr_hours = round((status_end - _time) / 3600, 1)
| stats avg(mttr_hours) AS avg_mttr, median(mttr_hours) AS med_mttr by urgency
--- Analyst workload distribution
index=notable earliest=-7d
| stats count by owner
| sort - count
--- Alert disposition breakdown
index=notable earliest=-30d status_label IN ("Resolved*", "Closed*")
| stats count by disposition
| eval percentage = round(count / sum(count) * 100, 1)
| sort - count
Step 6: Build Executive Briefing Dashboard
Create a high-level dashboard for leadership during major incidents:
--- Executive summary panel
| makeresults
| eval metrics = "Business Impact: 1 file server offline (Finance dept), "
."Estimated Recovery: 4 hours, "
."Data Loss Risk: Low (backups verified), "
."Customer Impact: None, "
."Regulatory Notification: Not required (no PII exposure confirmed)"
--- Trend comparison (this month vs last month)
index=notable earliest=-60d
| eval period = if(_time > relative_time(now(), "-30d"), "Current Month", "Previous Month")
| stats count by period, urgency
| chart sum(count) AS incidents by period, urgency
--- Top threat categories
index=notable earliest=-30d
| top rule_name limit=10
| table rule_name, count, percent
Step 7: Automate Dashboard Updates
Use Splunk scheduled searches to maintain dashboard data:
--- Scheduled search to update affected systems lookup (runs every 5 minutes)
index=* (src_ip IN [| inputlookup ir_ioc_list.csv | search ioc_type="ip"
| fields ioc_value | rename ioc_value AS src_ip])
earliest=-1h
| stats latest(_time) AS last_seen, count AS event_count,
values(sourcetype) AS data_sources by src_ip
| eval status = if(last_seen > relative_time(now(), "-15m"), "Active", "Dormant")
| outputlookup ir_affected_systems_auto.csv
Key Concepts
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Situational Awareness | Real-time understanding of incident scope, affected systems, and response progress |
| MTTD | Mean Time to Detect — average time from threat occurrence to SOC alert generation |
| MTTR | Mean Time to Respond — average time from alert to incident resolution or containment |
| Containment Rate | Percentage of affected systems successfully isolated relative to total compromised systems |
| Burn-Down Chart | Visual tracking of remaining open investigation tasks over time during an incident |
| Executive Briefing | Non-technical summary dashboard showing business impact, timeline, and recovery status |
Tools & Systems
- Splunk Dashboard Studio: Modern dashboard framework with drag-and-drop visualization and real-time data
- Elastic Kibana Dashboard: Visualization platform with Lens, Maps, and Canvas for security dashboards
- Grafana: Open-source visualization platform supporting multiple data sources including Elasticsearch and Splunk
- Microsoft Sentinel Workbooks: Azure-native dashboard framework with Kusto-based analytics visualization
- TheHive: Open-source incident response platform with built-in case tracking and metrics dashboards
Common Scenarios
- Active Ransomware Incident: Dashboard showing encryption spread, containment status, backup verification, recovery progress
- Data Breach Investigation: Dashboard tracking affected data stores, exfiltration volume, notification requirements
- Phishing Campaign Response: Dashboard showing recipient count, click rate, credential exposure, remediation status
- Monthly SOC Report: Leadership dashboard with incident trends, MTTD/MTTR metrics, analyst performance
- Compliance Audit: Dashboard demonstrating detection coverage, response SLA compliance, and incident closure metrics
Output Format
INCIDENT RESPONSE DASHBOARD — IR-2024-0450
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
STATUS: CONTAINMENT PHASE (6h 30m elapsed)
Affected Systems: Containment Progress:
Compromised: 2 [==========----------] 71%
Investigating: 1 5 of 7 systems contained
Contained: 3
Recovered: 1
IOC Summary: Response Timeline:
IPs: 4 14:00 — Alert triggered
Domains: 2 14:12 — Confirmed malicious
Hashes: 3 14:23 — First host isolated
URLs: 5 15:00 — Enterprise scan started
Emails: 1 15:30 — 3 more hosts isolated
Key Metrics:
MTTD: 12 minutes
MTTC: 23 minutes (first host)
Analysts Active: 3 (Tier 2: 2, Tier 3: 1)
Business Impact: LOW — Finance file server offline, no customer-facing systems affected
