Getting Started with Defend
This guide walks you through enabling The One Defend on your endpoints and running your first threat investigation.
Step 1: Enable the Defend Module
- Open Hub and navigate to your organization's Billing page
- Add the Defend subscription (standalone or as part of an Endpoint bundle)
- Once activated, the Defend module automatically enables on all RMM-enrolled devices
ℹ️There is no separate agent to install. Defend runs as a module of the unified RMM agent. Devices with an active RMM agent will begin collecting EDR telemetry within minutes of activation.
Step 2: Verify Device Enrollment
- Open the Defend console from the waffle menu
- Navigate to Devices
- Confirm your endpoints show Defend: Active in the status column
Each device goes through a certificate-based enrollment that establishes a secure, tamper-resistant identity. You'll see devices transition from Enrolling to Active as their device certificate is issued.
Step 3: Understand the Detection Dashboard
The detection dashboard is your primary workspace. It shows:
- Active Detections — New detections awaiting triage, sorted by severity
- Detection Trend — 30-day chart of detection volume by severity
- MITRE ATT&CK Heatmap — Visual coverage of which techniques you're detecting
- Top Devices — Endpoints with the most detections this period
- Behavioral Anomalies — Devices deviating from their established baseline
Step 4: Your First Detection
When Defend detects a threat, you'll see a detection card with:
- Severity — Critical, High, Medium, Low, or Informational
- MITRE Technique — The ATT&CK technique ID and name (e.g., T1059.001 — PowerShell)
- Device — Which endpoint triggered the detection
- Process — The suspicious process name, path, and command line
- Timestamp — When the event occurred
Click any detection to open the full investigation workspace.
Step 5: Run Your First Investigation
The investigation workspace gives you four tabs:
- Process Tree — Parent-child process relationships at the time of detection, with IOC indicators on known-bad hashes or IPs
- Event Timeline — Full sequence of process, network, and file events ±30 minutes around the detection
- Lateral Movement — Cross-device connections showing potential spread
- AI Narrative — Jarvis-generated attack summary explaining what happened in plain English
From here you can:
- Mark the detection as True Positive, False Positive, or Under Investigation
- Take a response action (isolate device, kill process, quarantine file)
- Escalate to PSA as a ticket or page On-Call
- Add investigation notes for team handoff
Step 6: Configure Auto-Response
Navigate to Settings → Response Automation to configure:
- Auto-isolate on critical — Automatically cut network access (except the management channel) for critical-severity detections
- Auto-kill on high — Automatically terminate the malicious process for high-severity detections
- Approval requirements — Which response actions require dual-control approval before execution
- Active hours — Time window during which auto-response is active
ℹ️New organizations start with auto-response disabled. We recommend running in monitoring mode for the first 7 days while behavioral baselines are established, then enabling auto-response for critical detections.
What to Expect in the First Week
- Days 1–7: Devices are in learning mode. Behavioral AI collects baseline data on process execution, network connections, file access patterns, and login timing. You may see informational alerts as the system calibrates.
- Day 7+: Devices graduate to active scoring. Anomaly detection begins flagging deviations from the established baseline.
- Ongoing: Detection rules run continuously (critical rules every 1 minute, standard rules every 5 minutes). IOC feeds refresh every 6 hours.
Next Steps
- Agent Installation — How the unified agent works
- Detection Rules — Understanding rule types and severity
- Behavioral AI — How baselines are built and scored
- Response Actions — Available response types and approval workflows