IR-4(13): Behavior Analysis

IR-4(13) requires you to analyze anomalous or suspected adversarial behavior tied to your defined incident response scope (systems, networks, services, or environments) and to do that analysis in a repeatable, provable way. Operationalize it by defining what “behavior analysis” means for your environment, embedding it into IR triage, and retaining evidence that analysis occurred and influenced containment and eradication decisions. ¹

Key takeaways:

• Define the scope for IR-4(13) (your “where”) and the analysis methods (your “how”) so analysts don’t improvise under pressure.
• Build behavior analysis into incident response playbooks: intake → enrichment → hypothesis → validation → decision.
• Retain artifacts that show analysis happened, not just alerts: timelines, queries, analytic notes, and decision logs.

The ir-4(13): behavior analysis requirement is one of those controls that sounds “technical,” but auditors evaluate it like an operational discipline: when something looks suspicious, can you prove your team analyzed the behavior, formed a defensible conclusion, and used that conclusion to drive response actions? IR-4(13) sits inside Incident Response (IR) and strengthens IR-4 by making analysis explicit, not assumed.

In practice, teams often have good detection and even good containment, yet fail this requirement because they cannot demonstrate the analysis step. They have alerts, tickets, maybe a post-incident report, but no documented reasoning trail that connects observed behavior to an adversary hypothesis and to specific response decisions. That gap becomes more visible when you rely on outsourced SOC support, multiple tooling stacks, or when incidents span endpoints, identity systems, and cloud control planes.

This page gives you requirement-level implementation guidance: what the control is asking for, where it applies, what to implement, what evidence to keep, and the most common audit hangups. The goal is simple: make behavior analysis a consistent, testable part of incident response, with artifacts you can produce on demand. ²

Regulatory text

Control requirement (excerpt): “Analyze anomalous or suspected adversarial behavior in or related to {{ insert: param, ir-04.13_odp }}.” ¹

What the operator must do

• Identify the control’s scope placeholder (“organization-defined parameter”). The excerpt includes an organization-defined parameter (ODP) for what the behavior is “in or related to.” You must define that scope in your IR documentation (for example: production networks, endpoints, identity provider logs, cloud management plane, critical applications, or third-party managed environments). ¹
• Perform analysis, not just detection. An alert is an input. IR-4(13) expects an analytic activity that evaluates anomalies or suspected adversarial behavior and produces conclusions that inform response actions. ¹
• Make it repeatable and provable. The control is assessed through evidence. You need a defined procedure and retained artifacts showing that analysts performed behavior analysis during actual events or exercises. ²

Plain-English interpretation of the requirement

When something weird happens, you must look past the indicator and answer: “What is the actor doing, how are they doing it, and what does that mean for containment and eradication?” Behavior analysis includes:

• Pattern analysis: sequences of events that indicate tactics (example: impossible travel → MFA fatigue → new device registration → privileged role assignment).
• Context enrichment: correlating identity, endpoint, network, and cloud activity to determine whether behavior is benign, misconfiguration, or adversarial.
• Hypothesis and validation: stating a working theory (credential theft, lateral movement, data staging) and testing it with queries and endpoint validation.
• Decision output: translating the analysis into actions (disable accounts, rotate keys, isolate host, block egress, expand scoping).

Who it applies to

Entity scope

• Federal information systems and contractor systems handling federal data adopting NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 as a control baseline or contract requirement. ²

Operational context where auditors expect to see this

• SOC triage and incident handling: whether in-house or provided by a third party SOC.
• Hybrid environments: where anomalies cross SaaS, cloud infrastructure, endpoints, and on-prem networks.
• High-value assets and privileged access paths: identity systems, admin consoles, CI/CD, key management, and sensitive data stores.

If your incident response is partially outsourced, IR-4(13) still lands on you. You can delegate execution, but you must govern the requirement, define expectations, and retain evidence.

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

1) Define the IR-4(13) scope (fill the ODP)

Create a short “IR-4(13) Scope Statement” that answers:

• Which environments are in scope (production, corporate, OT, cloud tenants, SaaS)?
• Which telemetry sources are authoritative (SIEM, EDR, IdP logs, cloud audit logs)?
• What “related to” means (third party hosted apps, managed endpoints, outsourced logs)?

Deliverable: IR-4(13) scope statement referenced in your IR plan/playbooks. ¹

2) Define a minimum behavior analysis procedure

Write a standard procedure your responders follow during triage and investigation. Keep it short and enforceable:

Behavior analysis minimum steps

1. Describe the anomaly (what triggered; what system/user; why it’s suspicious).
2. Collect context (identity, device, network, cloud control plane, recent changes).
3. Build a timeline (first seen, last seen, key pivot points).
4. Form an adversary hypothesis (likely tactic/goal) and list alternatives (benign explanation, automation, admin activity).
5. Test the hypothesis with targeted queries and endpoint validation.
6. Decide and act (containment/eradication actions and scope expansion).
7. Record analytic outputs (conclusion, confidence rationale, remaining unknowns).

Deliverable: “Behavior Analysis SOP” embedded into IR playbooks and ticket templates. ²

3) Standardize analytic methods and query packs

Auditors do not require a specific tool, but they do look for consistency. Create “query packs” by log source:

• Identity: suspicious sign-ins, token use, MFA prompts, new device registrations.
• Endpoint: process trees, persistence artifacts, unusual parent-child process chains.
• Cloud: unusual role assignments, access key creation, API calls from new geos, disabled logging.
• Network/DNS: beaconing patterns, rare destinations, data exfil indicators.

Deliverable: Version-controlled query pack library with owner and review cadence defined as part of IR documentation. ²

4) Embed behavior analysis into your incident workflow and SLAs

Behavior analysis fails in practice when it is “optional.” Make it a required field set in your case management:

• “Hypothesis”
• “Timeline summary”
• “Key pivots / queries run”
• “Assessment: adversarial vs benign”
• “Actions taken and why”

If you use a third party SOC, put these fields into contractual deliverables or runbooks: what the SOC must provide back to you for every suspected incident.

Deliverable: Updated incident ticket template + SOC runbook requirements. ¹

5) Train and test with realistic scenarios

Tabletop exercises often stop at “detect and notify.” Add an explicit behavior analysis checkpoint:

• Provide ambiguous signals.
• Require analysts to disambiguate benign admin activity vs compromise.
• Force at least one pivot across data sources (IdP → EDR → cloud audit).

Deliverable: Exercise report showing behavior analysis steps and outputs, plus improvement actions. ²

6) Establish QA and metrics that don’t require made-up numbers

You don’t need to invent quantitative KPIs to show maturity. Use qualitative QA:

• Random case sampling for presence of required analysis artifacts.
• Peer review of investigation notes for reasoning clarity.
• Post-incident review check: “Was adversary behavior analyzed and documented? Did it change decisions?”

Deliverable: Investigation QA checklist and completed reviews. ²

Required evidence and artifacts to retain

Auditors typically accept evidence in the form you already generate, as long as it clearly shows analysis occurred.

Evidence type	What it should show	Where it lives
IR plan / playbook section	Defined scope (ODP) + required analysis steps	IR documentation repository
Incident tickets/cases	Hypothesis, timeline, queries run, conclusions, decisions	Case management / SOAR
Query outputs / screenshots / exports	The actual pivots and validations performed	SIEM/EDR exports, attachments
Analyst notes	Reasoning trail and alternative explanations considered	Case notes / investigation journal
Post-incident report	How behavior analysis informed containment/eradication and scoping	PIR template and completed PIRs
Exercise records	Evidence the team practices behavior analysis	Tabletop writeups

The most common evidence gap: teams keep alerts and containment actions but cannot show the “thinking” step that connects them.

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

1. “What is the defined scope for ‘in or related to’?” If you can’t point to a defined scope, assessments stall. ¹
2. “Show me two incidents where you analyzed suspected adversarial behavior.” Auditors want real cases or exercises with artifacts. ²
3. “How do you distinguish anomalous from adversarial?” Expect questions on hypotheses, validation steps, and decision criteria.
4. “What happens when a third party SOC investigates?” They will ask how you receive, review, and retain the analysis outputs.
5. “How do you ensure consistency across analysts?” This is where SOPs, templates, and QA checks matter.

Frequent implementation mistakes and how to avoid them

• Mistake: Treating behavior analysis as “the SIEM did it.” Alerts are not analysis. Require hypotheses, pivots, and conclusions in the case record.
• Mistake: No defined ODP scope. Write it down and tie it to your system boundaries and data flows. ¹
• Mistake: Analysis happens in chat and disappears. Move key reasoning into the ticket: what you believe, what you checked, what you ruled out.
• Mistake: Failing to connect analysis to actions. Document which containment/eradication steps were chosen and how the observed behavior drove that choice.
• Mistake: Outsourced SOC “black box.” Put minimum artifact requirements into the SOC runbook and require exportable evidence.

Enforcement context and risk implications

No public enforcement cases were provided in the source catalog for this specific requirement, so you should treat “enforcement” here as assessment and contractual risk rather than a specific penalty narrative. ²

Operationally, weak behavior analysis increases:

• Dwell time risk: you contain the symptom but miss the access path.
• Scope error risk: you under-scope the incident and leave persistence behind.
• Reporting risk: you cannot defend incident severity decisions if asked later by customers, regulators, or contracting officers.

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

Use phases so you can move fast without inventing time-to-implement claims.

First 30 days (Immediate)

• Assign a control owner for ir-4(13): behavior analysis requirement (usually IR lead/SOC manager) and name approvers in GRC.
• Define and publish the IR-4(13) scope statement (fill the ODP).
• Update incident ticket templates to include required analysis fields (hypothesis, timeline, pivots, conclusion).
• Identify your minimum log sources for analysis (IdP, EDR, cloud audit, SIEM) and document access paths.

Days 31–60 (Near-term)

• Publish a Behavior Analysis SOP and embed it into priority playbooks (identity compromise, ransomware, cloud key theft).
• Build and version-control initial query packs for each telemetry source.
• Run a short internal review of recent incidents to see whether artifacts would satisfy an assessor; fix template gaps.

Days 61–90 (Operationalize and prove)

• Run at least one exercise scenario that forces cross-source pivots and produces a complete analysis record.
• Start QA sampling of investigation cases and track findings to remediation tasks.
• If you use a third party SOC, update the runbook/SOW to require delivery of analysis artifacts with each escalated event.

Where Daydream fits (without changing your process)

Daydream is useful when you need to map IR-4(13) to a clear control owner, an implementation procedure, and recurring evidence artifacts, then keep that mapping current as your tooling and incident workflows change. That reduces the “we do this, but can’t prove it” failure mode during assessments. ¹

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as “behavior analysis” for IR-4(13) in a small team?

A documented hypothesis, a short timeline, and evidence of at least one validation pivot across your available logs is usually enough. The key is consistency and case artifacts, not advanced tooling. ¹

Can our SIEM/EDR vendor’s automated analytics satisfy IR-4(13)?

Automated analytics can be inputs and supporting evidence, but you still need a documented analysis outcome that drives response decisions. Capture the tool output and your analyst’s reasoning in the case record. ²

How do we handle IR-4(13) when incident response is outsourced to a third party SOC?

Require the SOC to provide investigation notes, queries run (or equivalent), timeline summary, and a clear conclusion with rationale. Store those artifacts in your system so you can produce them during assessments. ²

What should the “organization-defined parameter” scope include?

Define which environments and services are covered and what “related to” includes, such as third party managed infrastructure or SaaS tenants. Keep it aligned to your system boundaries and incident response coverage. ¹

Do we need a formal threat hunting program to comply with IR-4(13)?

No. IR-4(13) is satisfied through incident-driven analysis of anomalous or suspected adversarial behavior. Threat hunting can strengthen outcomes, but it is not required by the excerpt. ¹

What is the fastest way to improve audit readiness for this control?

Standardize your case template and require analysts to record hypothesis, timeline, pivots, and conclusions for every relevant incident. Then run a QA review on a small sample of cases to confirm the artifacts are consistently present. ²

Footnotes

1. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON

2. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5