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OperationsOperationsTriage

Triage pipeline

Version 1.03 min readLast updated September 23, 2026

The states a submission moves through, how overlap is resolved, and how the SLA policy engine keeps response commitments visible.

Triage is where most security programs fail: reports arrive faster than a team can classify them, duplicates consume budget, and the reporter hears nothing for weeks. On AXUM SEC triage is a first-class workflow with explicit states, visible to everyone involved.

The pipeline

A submission moves through a defined sequence of states:

StateWhat it meansWho acts next
SubmittedReport received and acknowledged automaticallyTriage team
In reviewBeing classified, reproduced and checked for scopeTriage team, sometimes the reporter
Needs more informationBlocked on detail, reproduction steps or evidenceReporter
ValidatedConfirmed as a real, in-scope issue with an assigned severityProgram owner
Duplicate / mergedOverlaps an earlier or concurrent reportTriage team
RewardedReward approved and queued for paymentFinance / payout run
RemediationFix in progress, linked to the engineering ticketEngineering
Verified / closedFix confirmed; disclosure decision recordedProgram owner

Every transition is timestamped and attributable, so "what happened to this report" is answerable months later.

Working the queue

  • Severity, status and lifecycle filters let the team work the urgent set without reading the whole queue.
  • Reviewer guidance attaches internal notes and decision rationale to a report without exposing them to the reporter.
  • Task and milestone boards carry the work that follows validation — ownership, deadlines and completion state.
  • Report-to-remediation tracking keeps one record from submission to verified fix, rather than a report in one tool and a ticket in another.

Overlap and duplicates

Duplicate handling is a policy question as much as a technical one. The platform supports the policies programs actually use:

  • Merge — combine two reports of the same issue into a single record while preserving both reporters.
  • Duplicate marking with attribution — the earlier or more complete report is credited.
  • Reward segmentation between reporters — where a program's policy splits a reward, both sides of the decision are recorded.
  • Duplicate intelligence — semantic similarity, including across programs, flags likely repeats at submission time before effort is spent. See Duplicate intelligence.

The SLA policy engine

Response and resolution commitments are configured per program and enforced rather than remembered:

  • First response — the window in which a submission must be acknowledged.
  • Triage decision — the window in which a validated/duplicate/out-of-scope decision must be recorded.
  • Remediation target — the window in which a validated finding should be fixed, by severity.
  • Breach visibility — items approaching or past an SLA are surfaced to the program owner instead of silently ageing.

Contracted SLA response guarantees are Enterprise-tier; lower tiers use standard response windows.

Keeping reporters informed

Researchers disengage when they hear nothing. The pipeline is designed so that the reporter can always see the state of their own report, and so that the platform's own notifications do the chasing:

  • Automatic acknowledgement on submission.
  • State-change notifications through in-app notifications and email.
  • Requests for information that are explicit about what is missing.
  • A recorded reward decision with the calculation shown before payment.

Availability and limits

  • The triage pipeline, states, filters, merging and SLA configuration are available on all tiers.
  • AI-assisted classification and duplicate intelligence are Professional-tier.
  • Contracted SLA response guarantees and dedicated tester pools are Enterprise-tier.

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