Overkill: Rapid Detection Engine
Turning emergent threats into systemwide defense in 24 hours or less.
By Bruce Johnson, Senior Director, Enterprise Security and Dave Cheever, Team Lead
Most MDR providers take days or weeks to detect what TekStream can identify and neutralize in hours. Overkill, our Rapid Detection Engine, is a system built to turn every emergent threat into a reusable, automated defense across all customer environments within a single day. Rather than simply being reactionary, TekStream seeks to operationalize proactive threat detection and prevention. Overkill shifts the equation to put time and scale back on the defender’s side.
The Problem
Modern threat response moves too slowly. By the time many vendors identify a new exploit, write a detection, and deploy it, the threat has already spread. TekStream designed Overkill to solve this gap, delivering high-quality, high-speed detection and response at enterprise scale.
Overkill is a detection propagation system that goes beyond typical incident response workflow to broadly leverage automation, analyst expertise, and federated intelligence on an ecosystem level. It gives TekStream, and any security organization leveraging this model, the ability to react to emerging threats in near real time and convert that reaction into enduring defense.
How It Works: The Overkill and Detection Propagation Process
The following steps illustrate how Overkill turns a single emerging threat into a full ecosystem response within 24 hours.
9:55 AM, September 16th – Threat Emerges via Open Source Intelligence
A member of the threat hunting team identifies a new threat through open-source channels: news feeds, social media chatter, or CVE publications. In one case, activity surfaced involving a JavaScript (JS) supply chain compromise via NPM.
Intent: Get ahead of vendor alerts by sourcing intelligence proactively. This shortens response time and keeps clients safer before threats become widespread.
9:55 AM, September 16th – Prioritization Based on Ecosystem Impact
The threat is flagged as potentially impacting multiple customers, especially where shared tools (like CrowdStrike) are in use. It’s immediately escalated as a high-priority supply chain incident.
Intent: Evaluate scope and potential blast radius early to ensure that high-impact threats get top-tier attention.
11:45 AM, September 16th – Initial IOC Collection and Snapshot Search with Overkill
Overkill’s federated query engine executes a rapid, centralized search across customer environments for known IOCs: hashes, filenames, domains, and behavioral indicators. It identifies which environments may be vulnerable based on toolsets, telemetry, and exposure.
Intent: Map exposure quickly and accurately across the ecosystem without waiting for isolated alerts.
11:45 AM, September 16th – Triage and Outcome Categorization
Analysts categorize results into one of four outcomes:
- Not Seen
- Seen but Blocked
- Seen and Needs Escalation
- Seen and Remediated
Intent: Standardize triage and communication to accelerate response and ensure consistent handling across all environments.
11:55 AM, September 16th – Deeper Analysis and Remediation
For impacted customers, analysts perform timeline analysis to understand entry vector and lateral movement. Automated playbooks, via SOAR or other orchestration tools, block IPs, isolate hosts, or trigger response bridges.
Intent: Contain threats rapidly while minimizing false positives and unnecessary disruption.
11:56 AM, September 16th – Standardization and Detection Engineering
Successful hunting logic is refined with detection engineers, rewritten with macros and index optimizations, and formalized as production-grade detections.
Intent: Convert ad hoc hunts into permanent, reusable detections that improve with each iteration.
5:05 PM, September 16th – Quality Assurance and Change Control
New detections are validated and, if urgent, prepared for an out-of-band (OOB) release. Change control ensures stakeholder visibility before deployment, with release notes for transparency.
Intent: Balance speed with safety, ensuring rapid rollout without sacrificing technical integrity.
9:05 AM, September 17th – Deployment and Operational Awareness
The finalized detection is deployed across environments. Operations and client-facing teams maintain heightened awareness and integrate monitoring into standard workflows.
Intent: Ensure continuity, transparency, and readiness across all teams involved.
(Ongoing): Feedback Loop and Iteration
Post-deployment, analysts monitor results and refine detection logic as new intelligence emerges. The Overkill engine remains available for additional hunts and ongoing trend analysis. Each iteration of Overkill shifts the equation further toward the defender: compressing time, codifying knowledge, and strengthening every response that follows.
Intent: Keep detections adaptive. Continuous iteration ensures defense evolves alongside the threat landscape.
The 24-Hour Advantage
That full chain, from intelligence to ecosystem-wide defense. takes place within a single 24 hour cycle.
It is performed consistently, operationally, on a regular basis. It combines TekStream’s shared threat intelligence and automation framework, enabling faster, ecosystem-wide defense
It’s a combination of tooling, process, and trust that defines TekStream’s operational maturity. While we deploy advanced automation and AI-assisted analysis, we view Managed Detection and Response as an ongoing trust relationship. That’s reflected in our 98% renewal rate and in the fact that each Overkill cycle strengthens every customer’s protection.
Why It Matters
Overkill is the operational proof point of how TekStream is evolving its security capabilities, demonstrating that detection and response can be systemized, automated, and scaled.
It represents the first tangible layer of TekStream’s next-generation security architecture, a foundation designed to integrate detection, automation, and intelligence into a single operational fabric.
It empowers analysts, reduces dwell time, and ensures no detection remains static. Every alert becomes a living artifact, improved through shared learning and refined through collaborative tooling.
It shifts the emphasis beyond reactive investigation towards continuous, intelligence-fed defense. It’s how modern security teams reclaim time, data, and initiative from attackers.
It signals TekStream’s broader trajectory toward unified, automated defense. By codifying analyst expertise into reusable detections and systemized intelligence, we’re evolving from service delivery to an automation-led managed service model powered by intelligence and integration, one capable of extending value well beyond traditional MDR.
As Overkill evolves, its principles (rapid detection, propagation, and shared intelligence) will continue shaping how defense scales across environments, partners, and technologies.
This positions TekStream as a company transforming expertise into scalable, automated intelligence that compounds value across every customer environment that we support.
That’s the real story of Overkill: a piece of a broader TekStream security framework that moves beyond reactive detections towards a smarter, highly leveraged, unified defense that tilts the equation back toward the defender.
If you’re curious how AI plays into cybersecurity, take a closer look.
About the Authors
Bruce Johnson has more than 38 years of experience in the information technology industry, including security, infrastructure architecture, software development, and management of multiple portfolios. He has experience in Splunk, security solutions, cloud migration, portal, content workflow, integration, and project management. As the senior director of enterprise security for TekStream, he works to implement security and compliance solutions leveraging Splunk for customers in a variety of environments and industries, as well as a variety of cloud migration and broader Splunk consulting solutions.
Dave Cheever is a seasoned cybersecurity professional with more than a decade of industry experience. Over the past six years he has specialized in Splunk, applying his expertise across both analysis and engineering roles. Beyond his civilian career, Dave serves part time in the Air Force National Guard, where he supports critical national cyber missions for organizations such as the NSA and USCYBERCOM. He holds a master’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of Massachusetts and maintains several respected certifications, including the CISSP. He is also a certified Splunk Core Consultant and holds accreditation in Enterprise Security implementations. Dave resides near historic Plymouth, Massachusetts, America’s hometown.
