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Investigation · SOC Analyst

User clicked phishing link. What's your investigation flow?

Time-bounded investigation in 30 minutes: (1) Identify what they clicked — pull email from M365, extract URL. (2) Reputation check — VirusTotal, urlscan.io. (3) If credential phishing: did they enter credentials? Check ADFS/M365 sign-in logs for that user — any new sign-ins from unusual IPs/locations? (4) Force password reset + revoke active sessions immediately. (5) Check MFA status — if MFA enabled, attacker can't login with stolen creds (high-confidence containment). (6) Search inbox rules — common attacker action is creating auto-forward rule to exfil emails. (7) Check OAuth grants — attacker may have granted OAuth tokens to bypass password change. (8) Search M365 audit log for any other user activity from attacker IP. (9) Detection improvement — add the URL/domain to blocklist, search org-wide for other clicks.
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