Notable events

When the Splunk App for Enterprise Security correlation rules are triggered by the raw event stream, they create notable events. Notable events are hashed for data protection, see "Configure data protection" in the Installation and Configuration Manual for more information. Notable events, event IDs, and rule IDs can also be used for identification purposes.

Notable events are generated by correlation searches from the raw events in Splunk. As a correlation search recognizes a notable pattern from these raw events, it will create a new notable event in the notable event index. The notable event is hashed at this time and cannot be further changed. Modifying the attributes of a correlation search will not affect notable events that have already been generated and stored.

Event ID management

The event_id field identifies the original event that triggered a rule to alert. All events (whether notable or raw) can have an event_id associated with them. For notable events that fire on single original events, the event_id of the original event is represented in the notable event as "orig_event_id".

This field can be used to associate the original event to the event in the notable index. The event_id field will not be included for correlation searches that look at an aggregate set of events, such as a brute force rule that triggers when a certain number or pattern of log in failures occur.

The rule_id field uniquely identifies all notable events. It is populated by the get_rule_id macro. This macro will populate rule_id with event_id if it exists. However, event_id is not always included and thus you should always use the rule_id field to identify a notable event.

	event_id	orig_event_id	rule_id
Purpose:	Unique identifier for all events (notable or otherwise). Will also become "rule_id" if rule_id doesn't exist.	Match a notable event to a particular original event	Uniquely identify a notable event
Included when:	When `get_event_id` macro is used to generate it.	When a notable event is associated with a single original event	For all correlation searches
Always included:	Yes	No	Yes

Managing notable event history

Notable events are associated with users, statuses, and comments. Changing the name of a status will cause the display of previously generated notable events to use the new status name. The stored notable event is associated with a status ID, which is separate from the status name. Changes to the status name flow throughout the user interface without affecting hashed notable events.

Working with notable events from search

Notable events cannot be reviewed from the search tool, but they can be searched for auditing and awareness. To search the existing notable events, use the macro:

  `notable`

The following fields are returned:

field	description
_time	local time when the notable event occurred
host	the ES search head that recorded the notable event
sourcetype	the notable event sourcetype (always stash)
source	the correlation search that generated the notable event
src_user	the user that created the correlation search, if applicable
dest	the affected destination system, if applicable
tag::action	the recorded action, if applicable (same as action)
tag::app	the affected app, if applicable
tag::eventtype	the type of event, if applicable
src	the affected source system, if applicable
TaskCategory	the task category, if applicable
vendor	the affected vendor, if applicable
product	the affected product, if applicable
dest_is_expected	a flag indicating if the system is supposed to report to Splunk regularly
action	the recorded action, if applicable (same as tag::action)
_raw	the raw detail of the notable event

These fields can be used in the Splunk search pipeline to evaluate and report on generated notable events.

You can also use the `incident_review` macro to see incident review events. Note that this is not the same thing as listing notable events, the output will not include notable events that have not yet been reviewed:

  | `incident_review`

The returned listing shows any incident review activity. Notable events that have not been reviewed will not be shown in this output.

The following fields are returned:

field	description
_time	local time of the incident review event
comment	the reviewer's comment on the notable event at the time of the incident review event
owner	the assigned owner of the notable event at the time of the incident review event. This is the account name, to convert to a full name use the `notable_owners` macro.
reviewer	the user who performed the incident review event
rule_id	the unique event identifier
rule_name	the correlation search that generated the notable event
status	the numeric status code of the notable event at the time of the incident review event
status_default	true/false, whether the notable event is in its default status at the time of the incident review event
status_description	the long form description of the notable event status at the time of the incident review event
status_end	true/false, whether the notable event is in an end status at the time of the incident review event
status_group	Open, New, or Closed
status_label	the short form description of the notable event status at the time of the incident review event
time	GMT time of the incident review event
urgency	the urgency of the notable event at the time of the incident review event

These fields can be used in the Splunk search pipeline to evaluate and report on notable event incident review activity.