Step 2. Assign Respond View Permissions

Add users with the required permissions to investigate incidents and alerts in NetWitness Respond. Users with access to the Respond view need both Incidents and Respond-server permissions. Users with access to configure incident email notification settings need additional Integration-server permissions.

The following pre-configured roles have permissions in the Respond view:

  • Analysts: The Security Operations Center (SOC) Analysts have access to Alerting, NetWitness Respond, Investigate, and Reporting, but not system configurations.
  • Malware Analysts: Malware Analysts have access to investigations and malware events.
  • Operators: Operators have access to configurations, but not Investigate, ESA, Alerting, Reporting and NetWitness Respond.
  • SOC_Managers: The SOC Managers have the same access as Analysts plus additional permissions to handle incidents and configure NetWitness Respond.
  • Data_Privacy_Officers: Data Privacy Officers (DPOs) are like Administrators with additional focus on configuration options that manage obfuscation and viewing of sensitive data within the system. See the Data Privacy Management Guide for additional information. Go to the NetWitness All Versions Documents page and find NetWitness Platform guides to troubleshoot issues.
  • Respond_Administrator: The Respond Administrator has full access to NetWitness Respond.
  • Administrators: The Administrator has full system access to NetWitness and has all permissions by default.

The NetWitness Respond default permissions are shown in the following tables. You need to assign user permissions from both the Incidents and Respond-server tabs, which are the Permissions tab names in the netwitness_adminicon_25x22.png (Admin) > Security view Add or Edit Roles dialogs. You may want to add additional user permissions for Alerting, Context Hub, Investigate, Investigate-server, and Reports.

Caution: It is very important that you assign equivalent user permissions from BOTH the Respond-server tab AND the Incidents tab.

Users who configure incident email notification settings also need permissions in the Integration-server tab.

Respond-server

Permissions

Analysts

SOC
Mgrs

DPOs

Respond
Admin

Operators

MAs

respond-server.alert.delete

Yes*

Yes*

respond-server.alert.manage Yes Yes Yes* Yes* Yes
respond-server.alert.read Yes Yes Yes* Yes*

Yes

respond-server.alertrule.manage

Yes

Yes*

Yes*

respond-server.alertrule.read Yes Yes* Yes*

respond-server.configuration.manage

Yes*

Yes*

respond-server.health.read Yes* Yes*

respond-server.incident.delete Yes* Yes*

respond-server.incident.manage

Yes

Yes

Yes*

Yes*

Yes

respond-server.incident.read Yes Yes Yes* Yes* Yes
respond-server.journal.manage

Yes

Yes

Yes*

Yes*

Yes

respond-server.journal.read Yes Yes Yes* Yes* Yes

respond-server.logs.manage

Yes*

Yes*

respond-server.metrics.read Yes* Yes*
respond-server.notification.manage
(Available in 11.1 and later)
Yes Yes* Yes*
respond-server.notification.read
(Available in 11.1 and later)
Yes Yes* Yes*
respond-server.process.manage Yes* Yes*

respond-server.remediation.manage Yes Yes Yes* Yes* Yes
respond-server.remediation.read

Yes

Yes

Yes*

Yes*

Yes

respond-server.risk.manage Yes Yes* Yes*
respond-server.risk.read Yes Yes* Yes*
respond-server.security.manage Yes* Yes*

respond-server.security.read

Yes*

Yes*

* Data Privacy Officers and Respond Administrators have the respond-server.* permission, which gives them all of the Respond-server permissions.

Incidents

Permissions

Analysts

SOC
Mgrs

DPOs

Respond
Admin

Operators

MAs

Access Incident Module

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes

Configure Incident Management Integration

Yes

Yes Yes

Delete Alerts and Incidents

Yes

Yes

Manage Alert Handling Rules

Yes

Yes Yes

View and Manage Incidents

Yes Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

The Respond Administrator has all of the Respond-server and Incidents permissions.

Integration-server

Note: The Integration-server permissions are available in NetWitness version 11.1 and later.

Users who configure incident email notification settings also need Integration-server permissions. The following table lists the incident notification permissions in the Integration-server tab assigned to each role.

Permissions

Analysts

SOC
Mgrs

DPOs

Respond
Admin

Operators

MAs

integration-server.notification.read

Yes

Yes

Yes

integration-server.notification.manage Yes Yes Yes

Investigate-server

Users who view Event Analysis in Respond also need Investigate-server permissions. The following table lists the Respond Event Analysis permissions required in the Investigate-server tab and the permissions assigned to each role.

Permissions

Analysts

SOC
Mgrs

DPOs

Respond
Admin

Operators

MAs

investigate-server.event.read

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

investigate-server.content.reconstruct Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
investigate-server.content.export

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Incident Email Notification Settings Permissions

Note: Incident email notification setting permissions are available in NetWitness version 11.1 and later.
If you are updating from NetWitness version 11.0 to 11.1 or later, you will need to add additional permissions to your existing built-in NetWitness user roles. For all upgrades to 11.1 or later, you will need to add additional permissions to custom roles.

The following permissions are required for Respond Administrators, Data Privacy Officers, and SOC Managers to access incident email notification settings [ netwitness_configureicon_24x21.png (Configure) > Incident Notifications].

Incidents tab:

  • Configure Incident Management Integration

Respond-server tab:

  • respond-server.notification.manage
  • respond-server.notification.read

Integration-server tab:

  • integration-server.notification.read
  • integration-server.notification.manage

Respond Event Analysis Permissions

Note: The Event Analysis panel in the Respond view is available in NetWitness version 11.2 and later.

The Events panel in the Respond view, formerly known as the Event Analysis panel, shows the Events view from Investigate for specific indicator events. The following permissions are required to view the Events panel in the Respond view. These permissions are provided by default for users with the Analysts role.

Investigate-server tab:

  • investigate-server.event.read
  • investigate-server.content.reconstruct
  • investigate-server.content.export

Administration tab:

  • Access Administration Module

Note: Migrated incidents from NetWitness versions before 11.2 will not show the Events panel in the Respond Incident Details view Indicators panel. Likewise, if you use alerts that were migrated from versions before 11.2 to create incidents in 11.2, you will also not be able to view the Events panel in the Respond view for those incidents.

Respond Saved Filter Permissions

Note: Saved filters for the incidents and alerts lists in Respond are available in NetWitness version 11.5 and later.

The following permissions are required for the incidents and alerts filters (Respond > Incidents and Respond > Alerts). The Analysts role has the required Respond filter permissions by default.

Respond-server tab:

  • respond-server.incident.manage

  • respond-server.incident.read

  • respond-server.alert.manage

  • respond-server.alert.read

Respond Role Permission Examples

The following figure shows Respond-server permissions for the default Respond Administrator role. The Respond Administrator role contains all of the NetWitness Respond permissions.

netwitness_respadminrole_480x425.png

The following figure shows the Incidents permissions for the default Analysts role:

netwitness_respanalyrole_480x425.png

For more information, see "Role Permissions" and "Manage Users with Roles and Permissions" in the System Security and User Management Guide. Go to the NetWitness All Versions Documents page and find NetWitness Platform guides to troubleshoot issues.

Restrict Access to Incidents

By default, analysts can view all of the incidents, alerts, and tasks in the Respond view. If you have sensitive or restricted information that should not be shared, you can restrict what analysts and other users can see in the Respond view.

If you restrict access to incidents:

  • Analysts can only see incidents assigned to them as well as the alerts and tasks associated with those incidents. Likewise, they can only change the status of and add journal entries (notes) to their own incidents.
  • Analysts cannot see the Alerts and Tasks tabs in the Respond view (Respond > Tasks and Respond > Alerts are hidden), so they cannot view all alerts and tasks.
  • Analysts cannot see the Assignee button or change the assignee of an incident.
  • Analysts cannot see the Related Indicators (alerts) panel (Incident Details view > Find Related tab in the left-side panel).
  • When adding events to incidents from the Investigate views, users can only add events to incidents to which they have access. The list of incidents to which users can add events only shows incidents that the user can access.
  • When creating incidents from the Investigate views, users must have access to those incidents to view them in the Respond view. For example, when creating incidents from the Investigate view, Analysts must assign the incidents to themselves to view them in the Respond view.

Caution: These restrictions apply to all NetWitness users, except users with the Administrators, Respond_Administrator, and SOC_Managers roles. However, you can adjust the list of user roles whose access to incidents should not be restricted.

To restrict access to incidents:

  1. Go to netwitness_adminicon_25x22.png (Admin) > Security and click the Settings tab.
  2. In the Restrict Access to Incidents section, select Restrict access to incidents for all users, except for users with the roles listed below.
    netwitness_12.1_restrictaccesstoinc_1122_768x382.png
  3. In the list, add the user roles whose access to incidents should not be restricted.
  4. Click Apply.
    Changes take effect on the next log in to NetWitness.