The "Spike in Special Logon Events" detection rule by Elastic utilizes machine learning to monitor and identify unusual surges in special logon events for user accounts in a Windows environment. A trigger occurs when the anomaly threshold reaches 75, potentially indicating unauthorized access or malicious insider activity aimed at privilege escalation or lateral movement. This detection strategy is critical as it helps in recognizing patterns that deviate from normal user behavior, allowing for timely investigation and mitigation of threats. The setup requires the Privileged Access Detection integration and related Windows logs to be adequately configured. Security analysts should consider certain investigation steps to understand the context of detected spikes, such as reviewing associated user accounts for expected behavior and investigating correlated events that could provide additional context. Special logon event spikes can arise from legitimate administrative actions; thus, mechanisms for false positive management are outlined. These include creating exceptions for known administrative accounts and assessing scheduled processes or maintenance activities that might lead to legitimate elevated access. In incidents of confirmed misuse, recommended responses include isolating user accounts, conducting thorough reviews of access patterns, and escalating incidents to the SOC for further analysis.