PAGES
← all tools
◆ Detection Engineering

sysmon-modular

open-source

Modular repository and Go CLI for building, validating, analysing, and comparing Microsoft Sysmon XML configurations from composable modules.

source ↗ rss ↗ What is a cyber toolchain? last repo push Sep 18, 2026

Summary

sysmon-modular is an open-source configuration repository that builds Sysmon configs for Windows endpoint monitoring, split into modules so each detection area can be tuned or swapped independently. It costs nothing to use, and it runs as files on disk plus a PowerShell or Python script that merges selected modules into a single sysmonconfig.xml, which you then load into Sysmon itself; there is no service or agent beyond that. It is aimed at detection engineers and SOCSOCA security operations center, the team or function that monitors threats, investigates alerts and coordinates incident response. Its work can be internal, outsourced or shared. teams building or tuning Windows logging rather than at those wanting a turnkey policy, since the README stresses every config is a starting point needing per-environment tuning. It sits in the detection-engineering space alongside other Sysmon config projects, providing commands to list, merge, include, or exclude specific rule files rather than a single fixed ruleset. First committed in 2018 and still active, with 62 contributors and 9 commits in the past year.

Modular repository and Go CLI for building, validating, analysing, and comparing Microsoft Sysmon XML configurations from composable modules.

How sysmon-modular helps

Which parts of Windows activity does this endpoint currently have no visibility into?

generates an ATT&CK Navigator coverage layer from the merged modules, so gaps show up as uncovered techniques rather than missing log lines you'd only notice during an investigation

Which of these detection modules actually apply to our environment versus generate noise?

ships each detection area as its own file so you include or exclude modules individually rather than accepting or discarding one fixed ruleset

Did tuning a module break the resulting configuration?

validates all modules with strict warnings before merge, catching malformed rules rather than letting Sysmon fail to load them silently

What changed in effective coverage between two versions of our config?

compares two configurations semantically and reports the differences in what they actually detect, not just the text diff

Can we turn our existing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint detections into Sysmon modules?

generates modules directly from an MDE configuration, converting and analysing it into the same modular format as the rest of the repository

Is a generated config safe to load onto an endpoint as-is?

analyses the generated configuration for issues, flagging problems before it reaches a production Sysmon instance

Languages

Not documented

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for sysmon-modular, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

Score cards are part of every paid plan.

See plans →

Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail sysmon-modular puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

Checking release-note history…

Explore the full chart →

Releases

1 entry

  1. September 20261

    1 entry

    1. changes since 2026-08-19 Sep 18, 2026 · issue 078

      sysmon-modular tooling gains MDE config loading, path normalization, deduplication, AI/agent coverage, and versioning⁠︀︄︇︀︅︉︀︅︀︀︃︀︀︅︅︀︅︊︀︄︆︀︃︄⁠

      • Adds AI and agent coverage to the detection rule set.⁠︀︄︇︀︅︉︀︅︀︀︃︀︀︅︅︀︅︊︀︄︆︀︃︄⁠
      • Adds versioning to the sysmon-modular tooling.
      • Adds path normalization, config areas, and deduplication to tooling processing.
      • Adds high-level duplicate tagging to MDE processing output.
      • Moves configs to releases for reproducible reporting and distribution.
      +3 more show less
      • Improves MDE config loading with hardened conversion and analysis.
      • Improves navigator layer rendering.
      • Improves CLI output.
      • Adds AI and agent coverage to the detection rule set.⁠︀︄︇︀︅︉︀︅︀︀︃︀︀︅︅︀︅︊︀︄︆︀︃︄⁠
      • Adds versioning to the sysmon-modular tooling.
      • Adds path normalization, config areas, and deduplication to tooling processing.
      • Adds high-level duplicate tagging to MDE processing output.
      • Moves configs to releases for reproducible reporting and distribution.

      3 more in Everything

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in olafhartong/sysmon-modular, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 1 +1 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 1 +1 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close < 1 day first maintainer reply 13 hours
    6. Open backlog 34 of 107 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 0 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 34
    3. Contributors / month 1
    4. Commits / month 7
    5. Stars 3,130
    Issue themes, last 12 months
    • other 100%

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

    Threat coverage

    Content for the last year of exploited CVEs and attack reports.

    sysmon-modular has content for 181 of the 982 threats tracked in the last year, 0 of them exact.

    exact0names the CVE
    related181names the technique or product
    tracked982threats in the last year

    See the threats, and how similar tools compare threat by threat, with Researcher and Business.

    See plans → Already subscribed? Sign in →

    Add the badge to your README

    Maintain this project? The badge links readers straight to this page, so they can follow every release here.

    Tracked by Cyber Toolchain Choose a badge style and copy the code →
    compare.md

      Free the public facts, no sign-in Any paid plan all other sections Researcher & Business pricing history and category rank

      my-toolchain — 0 tools

        Betas, release candidates and previews. Turn it off to see final releases only. It also applies to changes you ask for over MCP when you're signed in.
        browse all tools → score card for your toolchain →
        cyber-toolchain / feedback

        Send us feedback