Triage should make things easier. For many teams, the opposite is true.
If a confident verdict cannot be reached early, alerts turn into repeated confirmations, back-and-forth, and “just escalate” calls. The costs don’t stop within the SOC. It manifests itself in a lack of SLAs, higher costs per case, and more room for real threats to slip through.
So what’s wrong with triage? Here are five triage problems that turn investigations into costly guesswork, and how top teams are changing outcomes with evidence of action.
1. Decisions made without actual evidence
Business Risk: Triage failures are most difficult to detect when decisions are made before evidence exists. When responders rely on partial signals (labels, hash matches, reputations), they end up approving or escalating cases without seeing what the file or link actually does.
That uncertainty drives false positives, missed real threats, delayed containment, and increased costs per incident, all while lengthening the time it takes for attackers to be confident of a verdict.
Solution: Obtain evidence of executions early.
High-performing teams mitigate this risk by validating actions at the point of triage rather than later. Sandboxes make this practical by showing real-world execution, including process activity, network calls, persistence, and the entire attack chain.
For example, using ANY.RUN’s interactive sandbox, teams report that in approximately 90% of cases, they can see the entire attack chain within approximately 60 seconds, turning vague alerts into evidence-backed decisions early in the workflow.
Watch a complex hybrid attack exposed in 35 seconds.
Complete attack chain with fake Microsoft login page revealed within 1 minute in ANY.RUN sandbox
In this real-world hybrid phishing scenario combining Tycoon 2FA and Salty 2FA, most traditional controls failed to detect the threat because the attack combined multiple kits and evasive redirects. However, within the interactive sandbox, a complete malicious flow and clear verdict was visible in just 35 seconds.
Improve triage speed and certainty to reduce MTTR by up to 21 minutes per case, control escalation costs, and limit real business risk.
Consider faster triage
Business results:
Faster evidence-supported verdicts during triage Lower cost per case through reduced rework Reduced missed threats caused by “unclear” terminations
2. The quality of triage depends on the seniority of the analyst.
Business Risk: In many SOCs, the outcome of triage is determined by who touches the alert. Senior staff can get the job done faster because they recognize patterns. Junior staff escalate because they don’t have enough confidence or background. The result is inconsistent decisions, uneven response speeds, and workflows that don’t scale well as alert volumes increase.
Fix: Make triage repeatable per shift
Top teams reduce this gap by designing triage based on shared evidence and repeatable steps rather than individual experience. The goal is simple. The goal is to provide Tier 1 with sufficient clarity to reach the same conclusions as their senior counterparts using the same observable facts.
Auto-generated reports that can be easily shared among team members
ANY.RUN allows teams to share the same sandbox session and results through built-in teamwork features, so knowledge is never stuck in one person’s head. This consistency helps reduce “escalation to be safe” behaviors and stabilize triage results across shifts.
Business results:
Consistent triage across shifts Fewer senior reviews More predictable SLAs
3. Triage delays give attackers more time
Business risk: Even if a threat is detected, triage may take too long to see what’s going on. Manual checks and queued escalations slow action and increase dwell time, giving attackers more room to move laterally and leak data. The business impact manifests itself in a lack of SLAs and increased incident costs.
Solution: Reduce time to triage decisions
High-performing teams treat triage as a matter of speed, reducing the steps from detection to defensible verdict. This means you need to see the behavior quickly, before cases jump back and forth between queues or turn into long validation loops.
Complete visibility into attacks revealed in 35 seconds within ANY.RUN’s cloud sandbox
The interactive sandbox allows you to quickly detonate suspicious files and URLs, revealing the entire attack chain in less than a minute. Operational results often show up to 21 minutes less MTTR per case because teams spend less time waiting, rechecking, and escalating just to see what’s going on.
Business results:
Faster confirmation, reduced dwell time Reduced SLA misses under load Reduced impact of incidents
4. Over-escalation hides true priority incidents.
Business Risk: When evidence is unclear, Tier 1 escalates “just in case” and Tier 2 is a validation layer for borderline cases. This clogs queues, draws seniors’ time into “what ifs,” slows down response to high-impact incidents, increases cost per investigation, and increases the risk that critical cases are left waiting too long.
Solution: Use actionable evidence to solve more cases at Tier 1
If Tier 1 can independently prove or dismiss the alert, Tier 2 remains focused on the actual incident rather than acting as a validation desk.
Solutions like ANY.RUN make this practical because the sandbox is built for quick triage. Sandbox is intuitive to use, provides AI-assisted guidance during analysis, and generates auto-generated reports that capture important evidence without additional manual writing. A dedicated IOC tab also brings indicators together in one place, so Tier 1s can be escalated in context rather than just for confirmation.
AI-assisted guidance featured in ANY.RUN’s sandbox
The team believes this will reduce Tier-1 to Tier-2 escalations by up to 30% and maintain senior capabilities against high-risk threats.
Business results:
Reduce Tier 2 overload Speed up queues Reduce escalation volume
5. The limits of manual work are expanding and errors are increasing.
Business Risk: Much of triage is still repetitive manual work, such as tracking redirect chains, handling CAPTCHAs, or finding hidden links in QR codes. Increasing volume limits throughput, increases mistakes, and causes unnecessary escalation simply because your team is running out of time.
Solution: Reduce manual steps with interactive automation
Modern sandbox environments combine automation and human-like interactivity to safely open suspicious content, follow redirected flows, and automatically handle protection mechanisms such as CAPTCHAs and QR embedded links during analysis.
Malicious PDFs containing QR codes: ANY.RUN automatically extracts and opens embedded links to reveal the next stage of the attack.
ANY.RUN’s interactive sandbox allows these routine triage actions to be performed within a controlled environment, exposing hidden malicious behavior while removing repetitive effort from responders. In day-to-day operations, teams often see up to a 20% reduction in Tier 1 workload, fewer escalations, and more time for high-value investigations.
Business results:
Increased Tier 1 capacity Reduced manual errors More time for confirmed threats
Fix triage first to reduce business risk
Triage failures rarely seem dramatic. Instead, they quietly delay responses, increase pressure for escalation, and keep real threats open for longer than companies can tolerate.
Teams that have transitioned to evidence-based, execution-based triage consistently report measurable outcomes, including:
Up to 3x increase in overall SOC efficiency 94% of users report faster triage and clearer decisions Up to 58% more threats identified across investigations
Increasing speed, certainty, and scalability during the triage stage is one of the fastest ways to reduce MTTR, control operational costs, and reduce real business risk.
Consider evidence-based triage for your SOC and turn faster decision-making into measurable security performance.
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