The Power of Detection Engineering & Custom Parsers

In the fast-paced world of cybersecurity, detection engineering is a growing discipline that helps organizations stay ahead of threats. But success isn’t just about having the right tools or detection workflows in place—it’s about making sure those tools speak the same language to help you scale your efforts and better understand your overall security posture. This is where parsers play a critical role. 

In the blog below, we’ll explain what detection engineering is, how parsers help detection engineering programs reduce manual effort, and why a new user interface (UI) within the SafeBreach platform is making parser customization easier than ever before.

What Is Detection Engineering? 

Detection engineering is a cyclical process that helps to create, test, and maintain a security program’s ability to identify and respond to evolving threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).

Detection engineering programs typically include elements focused on:

• Threat detection: Implementing tools, processes, and procedures to identify unusual or suspicious behavior that may indicate a breach or the presence of concealed threats within computer networks and systems.
• Alert generation: Creating actionable alerts based on detected threats to prompt immediate response from concerned teams.
• Response actions: Implementing workflows and processes to mitigate identified threats and ensure that mitigation has not created additional security gaps in the network.

Where Do Parsers Fit In 

The security validation component of detection engineering is all about giving context to your security controls. When you run an attack simulation in the SafeBreach exposure validation platform, you’re able to understand how your controls responded to an attack. Specifically, was the attack prevented, detected, or merely logged? And which security control did the work?

To get that context from your security controls, however, you have to have something that translates their logs into something that is actionable. This is the job of parsers. When a simulation is run in the SafeBreach platform, which is basically an attack between an attacker and a target, the platform fetches events from different security controls. SafeBreach Parsers translate the various types of logs into something that the SafeBreach platform understands.

In short, SafeBreach Parsers acts as a universal translator. They take raw log data from any security tool—an EDR, a firewall, or a SIEM—and convert it into actionable insights that contribute to your overall security posture assessment. This defines how effective your defenses truly are.

The Problem SafeBreach Parsers Solve: Scaling Without Starting Over

Many enterprise organizations have sophisticated detection engineering teams with hundreds of detections in play. When they adopt a new tool, it can require all of their existing detections to be retroactively updated with specific code or tags to ensure the tool can recognize them. This is the result of the variety of log formats used, and can present a very time-intensive, often impossible, undertaking. 

That’s why SafeBreach Parsers are a game changer. They allow detection engineering teams to teach the SafeBreach platform exactly how to process and interpret their detections and any custom fields they have, exactly as their detections are. There are no restrictions for what SafeBreach can and can’t parse.

This customizable approach means large enterprises can integrate with any existing system and customize the log processing to their specific organizational needs without changing their established detection engineering program. And it’s something they can continue to update and maintain in a very easy way, allowing them to automate the analysis of logs and scale security validation, while ensuring things continue to run smoothly. 

A Must-Have, Not a Nice-to-Have

The flexibility offered by SafeBreach Parsers is critical for every organization, regardless of size. Even small organizations are dealing with so many different controls, all of which have logs in different formats. On top of that, organizations often use different log forwarders and other intermediary applications that connect different data. They can all have their own impact on changing the structure of a log, which can break some things in the detection chain. 

The ability to adapt to all these different formats within the SafeBreach platform is far superior to coordinating with every single tool or application owner to create special handling rules for all the different log types. To be able to process log data as it comes in and adapt it to exactly how you want it to be processed is critical for detection engineering programs to be successful at scale.

Introducing the Next Generation of Parser Management

SafeBreach has rolled out a new, guided workflow experience that empowers users of varying technical abilities to easily create and manage custom parsers in the SafeBreach platform in a simple and streamlined way. 

The UI walks users through:

1. Choosing the Log: Selecting the log that needs to be parsed.
2. Matching Conditions: Defining the rules for when the parser should be triggered.
3. Field Mapping: Mapping the fields from the raw log into the standard SafeBreach fields.
4. Status Definition: Clearly defining what in the log indicates a status of Logged, Reported, or Prevented.
5. Priority Setting: Determining the parser’s trigger hierarchy.

The new UI addresses previous sticking points by allowing users to check their work at each stage. This empowerment streamlines the workflow, making better use of security teams’ time and letting them maintain their parsers without constant support.

To learn more about how SafeBreach Parsers and the SafeBreach Exposure Validation Platform are empowering detection engineering teams to reduce manual effort and scale more effectively, check out our on-demand webinar on the topic, then schedule a customized demo.