Overview
At this level, administrators fine-tune their incident management process and begin using Sentry’s data to guide long-term improvements. While earlier stages focused on visibility and control, Level 4 emphasizes efficiency, consistency, and data-informed decisions.
The objective is to move from reactive response to proactive refinement—reducing noise, improving prioritization, and preparing the foundation for future automation.
Operational Consistency
Organizations that reach this level maintain disciplined incident-handling routines. Each detection follows a clear and repeatable path from creation to resolution, ensuring accountability and high-quality documentation across the board.
Best practices include:
- Reviewing the Incidents board at regular intervals
- Confirming that each incident includes accurate severity, notes, and final resolution status
- Establishing shared definitions for “contained” and “resolved” to prevent ambiguity
- Periodically verifying that closed incidents reflect the true end of a threat rather than a premature dismissal
Consistency across users improves the accuracy of historical metrics and builds trust in the system.
Trend Analysis
Sentry’s historical data enables administrators to track recurring detection types, device hotspots, and long-term security trends. Metrics such as:
can reveal bottlenecks in response or highlight where preventive measures are succeeding. Use these insights to adjust network policies, training priorities, and future risk mitigation strategies.
Process Improvement
Optimization is as much about people and process as it is about technology. Teams at this level typically:
- Conduct periodic reviews of major incidents to identify root causes and prevention opportunities
- Maintain an internal incident response guide with lessons learned and examples of effective containment
- Share anonymized summaries with leadership to demonstrate value and security posture maturity
These reviews strengthen institutional knowledge and help drive measurable improvement over time.
Preparing for Automation
Even without automation today, documenting desired trigger conditions and response actions now will ease future adoption. For example, outline:
- Which detections should automatically escalate to “Investigating”
- What circumstances justify quarantining a device
- How notifications or external integrations might operate once implemented
Establishing these criteria in advance ensures that when automation features become available, they align perfectly with your existing workflow.
Maturity Progress
By standardizing response, analyzing trends, and planning for automation, the organization reaches Level 4 — Optimization 🔵. Sentry now supports a disciplined, data-informed security operation that continuously improves without additional complexity.