Definition
Monitoring platform components such as operating systems software, hardware devices, or firmware.
Knowledge-base article
Platform monitoring consists of the analysis and monitoring of system level devices and low-level components, including hardware devices, to detect unauthorized modifications or suspicious activity.
Monitored platform components includes system files and embedded devices such as:
- Kernel software modules
- Boot process code and load logic
- Operating system components and device files
- System libraries and dynamically loaded files
- Hardware device drivers
- Embedded firmware devices
Implementation perspective
Platform Monitoring should be treated as a technical defensive capability rather than a product checkbox. In practice, teams should define the protected scope, the conditions under which the technique acts, and the observable evidence that demonstrates the intended behavior. For this technique, likely engineering context includes Event Log, File, Firmware, Input Device.
Use the technique to identify suspicious, unauthorized, or abnormal activity through observable evidence and repeatable analysis.
Questions to ask
- Which events, states, or artifacts must be observed for the analysis to work?
- What analytic logic, threshold, comparison, or signature turns observations into a finding?
- How are expected false positives, blind spots, and environmental variations documented?
- Who receives the result, and what action is expected when the technique produces a finding?
Evidence and validation
- Telemetry and data-source configuration records
- Analytic logic, thresholds, signatures, and version history
- Test cases demonstrating expected positive and negative results
- Alert, triage, escalation, and tuning records
Common failure patterns
- Required telemetry is missing, delayed, or transformed in a way that invalidates the analysis.
- The technique produces alerts without an accountable triage and response process.
- Detection coverage is claimed from product deployment without testing the relevant analytic behavior.
This implementation perspective is original Bare Metal Cyber educational content. It does not replace the official D3FEND definition or establish that a specific product implements the technique.
Technique hierarchy
Top-level family
Parent techniques
None listed at this level.
Direct child techniques
- D3-APM Application Performance Monitoring
- D3-FIM File Integrity Monitoring
- D3-FBA Firmware Behavior Analysis
- D3-FEMC Firmware Embedded Monitoring Code
- D3-FV Firmware Verification
- D3-OMM Operating Mode Monitoring
- D3-OSM Operating System Monitoring
- D3-OPM Operational Process Monitoring
- D3-PUM Platform Uptime Monitoring
Artifacts and ontology entities
These relationships describe how D3FEND connects a defensive technique to artifacts or other ontology entities. They describe graph semantics, not a product certification.
Show inferred artifact relationship paths (17)
NIST SP 800-53 relationships
The relation label is preserved from the D3FEND ontology. It is not converted into a claim that the control automatically implements or validates this technique.
Offensive-technique relationships
These relationships are generated from D3FEND graph paths and are explicitly experimental. They should be treated as hypotheses for defensive analysis—not as proof that the technique prevents, detects, or removes an offensive behavior.
ATT&CK Enterprise (139)
Showing the first 60 of 139 source-derived relationships. Open the official D3FEND technique for the current graph view.
ATT&CK for ICS (27)
Authoritative sources
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