Why should the underlying source events be examined?¶

Source events contain the observations from which an alert was built. They allow its simplified or correlated interpretation to be tested against what each originating system recorded.

Alert summaries can hide decisive detail¶

An alert may combine entries, rename fields, add severity and omit normal context. Source records can distinguish attempted, blocked, failed and completed actions, or reveal that an account is a service identity and an address belongs to a proxy.

Records before and after the trigger may show earlier authentication, automatic processing, remediation or the actual consequence outside the alert's window.

Test every link in the alert chain¶

Preserve raw or native records where available with field and event-code definitions. For multiple sources, verify that account, device, session, process and request identifiers refer to the same activity and that timestamps represent compatible stages.

One benign event does not necessarily invalidate the whole detection, just as one suspicious label does not prove it. The evidential conclusion should emerge from the complete linked sequence and its documented gaps.