What exactly does Watch Cortex do?

Watch Cortex monitors Linux servers for process creation and termination, network connection changes, file integrity violations, SSH brute-force attacks, persistence techniques (cron mutations, systemd unit additions, authorized_keys changes), and behavioral anomalies. The Cortex AI correlates these signals across processes, network activity, and file writes — then generates a plain-language investigation summary explaining what is happening and why it is suspicious. In Autopilot or Sovereign mode, Watch acts on confirmed threats immediately: banning the attacker IP via iptables or nftables, killing the unauthorized process, reverting unauthorized file changes, and broadcasting the threat intelligence to every other agent in the fleet. In Watch or Assist mode, it surfaces prioritized suggestions for one-click human approval.

How does Watch Cortex differ from Datadog, Wazuh, and CrowdStrike?

Datadog is primarily an observability and APM platform — it alerts, but humans must investigate and act. Wazuh is an open-source SIEM and rule-based detection tool that fires alerts but does not respond or explain. CrowdStrike Falcon is an enterprise EDR built primarily for Windows environments, ported to Linux. Watch Cortex is purpose-built for autonomous Linux server defense: the AI runs on the agent (no cloud latency), it responds without human approval, it explains in plain language what is happening rather than just firing an alert, and fleet immune memory means a threat caught on one server instantly protects all others. Watch also includes built-in compliance automation, a hardware-backed secret vault, and legal-grade chain-of-custody evidence packaging — all in one platform without requiring a separate SIEM, EDR, and compliance tool.

How does Cortex AI work?

Cortex is Watch's on-agent AI classification and reasoning engine. It runs entirely locally on each monitored Linux server — no cloud call, no latency, no dependency on backend connectivity. Cortex correlates signals across processes, network connections, file activity, and time to identify known attack patterns (brute force, persistence, lateral movement, privilege escalation, cryptominer deployment) and behavioral anomalies that have never been seen before. It generates a plain-language investigation summary: what triggered, what it correlates to, what the likely intent is, what confidence level was assigned, and what action was taken or recommended. When operators override a Cortex decision, that correction is recorded and propagated fleet-wide — future classifications on similar patterns align with operator judgment. Cortex Hive broadcasts new threat signatures from one server to all others in real time.

What automation modes does Watch support?

Watch has four automation modes that can be set per-server, per-policy, or org-wide. Watch mode: Cortex AI observes and generates alerts — humans decide every action. No automated responses run. Assist mode: Non-destructive responses (logging, alerting, threat enrichment) run automatically. Destructive actions (IP bans, process kills, lockdown) are surfaced as one-click suggestions for human approval. Autopilot mode (Business and above): Confirmed threats are acted on immediately without waiting for human approval. Uncertain threats queue as one-click overrides. Sovereign mode (Empire tier only): AI acts on all confirmed threats and notifies after the fact. Humans override rather than approve — the system never waits.

How do I install the Watch agent on a Linux server?

Run one command on any supported Linux server: curl -fsSL https://watch.alsopss.com/install-agent.sh | sudo bash -s -- --token YOUR_TOKEN. Replace YOUR_TOKEN with your agent token from the Watch dashboard. The installation completes in under 60 seconds. The agent installs as a systemd service, connects outbound over WSS (port 443 — no inbound firewall changes required), and begins monitoring immediately. Supported distributions: Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+, CentOS 7+, RHEL 8+, Fedora 36+, Arch Linux.

Does Watch Cortex work when the backend is offline?

Yes. The Cortex AI engine runs entirely on the agent and does not require backend connectivity to classify threats or execute responses. Threat signatures, contingency response plans, and zero-trust policy bundles are pre-synced to the agent. When the backend is unreachable, Watch continues detecting threats and executing autonomous responses according to the last-synced policy. All actions taken offline are recorded locally and sync to the audit log when connectivity is restored.

What compliance frameworks does Watch Cortex support?

Watch supports automated compliance reporting and remediation for: CIS Benchmark Level 1 and Level 2, SOC 2 Type II (control mapping and evidence collection), PCI-DSS v4 (control mapping), HIPAA (audit controls and access monitoring), ISO 27001 (control mapping), NIST 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture, and GDPR audit controls. The Business plan includes automated compliance reports. Enterprise and Empire tiers add automated compliance remediation — continuously closing configuration gaps without manual intervention — and a continuous compliance forge that maintains certification posture across all frameworks simultaneously.

How does fleet immune memory work?

Fleet immune memory is Watch's mechanism for sharing threat intelligence across all agents in real time. When one agent detects and confirms a threat — for example, a brute-force attack from a specific IP address — it broadcasts the threat signature to every other agent in the fleet via Cortex Hive. That IP is pre-banned on all other servers before the attacker has a chance to pivot. This means an attacker who successfully compromises one server to extract credentials and then attempts to use those credentials on a second server will be blocked before the second login attempt completes. Fleet immune memory operates at the process, network, and behavioral signature level — not just IP addresses.

How much does Watch Cortex cost?

Watch Cortex has four plans. Developer: $39/month — 5 servers, 3 users, 30-day log retention, full Cortex AI and autonomous response, 14-day free trial. Business: $149/month — 25 servers, 20 users, 90-day log retention, Autopilot mode, Cortex Hive, compliance automation, Intelligence Center, 14-day free trial. Enterprise: contact sales (sales@alsopss.com) — unlimited servers, SSO, sovereign response engine, zero-trust policy engine, dedicated infrastructure option. Empire: contact empire@alsopss.com — highest tier, includes proactive threat hunting, Ghost mode, dedicated Watch analyst add-on, white-label deployment, and air-gap / sovereign cloud deployment. No per-host licensing fees on any plan.

What is Watch's Ghost Mode?

Ghost Mode is an Empire-tier capability that makes a server invisible to attacker reconnaissance. When Ghost Mode is active, Watch deploys active camouflage at every layer: masking running services in network scans, altering banner responses to present a deceptive profile, and deploying honeypot elements to detect and profile intrusion attempts. Legitimate operators retain full access and visibility through the Watch dashboard. Ghost Mode is designed for high-value targets — financial systems, critical infrastructure, executive servers — where discovery by an attacker creates unacceptable risk.

Can Watch take harmful actions on my servers?

Watch can only take actions within the automation mode you configure. In the default Watch mode, it observes and alerts — no automated actions run. In Assist mode, only non-destructive actions (logging, enrichment) run automatically; destructive actions require your one-click approval. Autopilot mode allows autonomous responses on confirmed threats — uncertain threats still queue for override. Every action is reversible from the dashboard. Every action is logged with a cryptographic chain-of-custody that cannot be altered. Watch cannot act beyond your configured policy, cannot approve its own destructive actions in Assist mode, cannot read vault contents (encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM), and cannot access your data without your authorization credentials.

Who is Watch Cortex designed for?

Watch Cortex is designed for engineering and security teams running Linux server infrastructure who need autonomous security without a full Security Operations Center (SOC). It is most valuable for: small to mid-size teams with limited security headcount who cannot staff 24/7 monitoring, on-call engineers who need to know about threats immediately rather than discovering them in morning log reviews, high-stakes infrastructure (payment processing, healthcare, financial services, API backends) where a slow human response is not acceptable, and regulated industries that need continuous compliance automation alongside threat detection.

Watch Cortex — Autonomous Linux Security Monitoring & AI Threat Detection

What is Watch Cortex?

Watch Cortex is an autonomous Linux security platform built by AL'S-OPS LLC. A lightweight agent — under 8 MB — deploys on any Linux server in under 60 seconds with a single curl command and immediately begins monitoring processes, network connections, file integrity, and SSH authentication events in real time. The Cortex AI reasoning engine runs locally on the agent with no cloud round-trip and classifies threats in under 8 milliseconds. When a threat is confirmed, Watch responds immediately without waiting for a human: banning the attacker IP via iptables or nftables, killing the unauthorized process by PID, reverting unauthorized file changes from a pre-change snapshot, and broadcasting the threat signature to every other agent in the fleet via Cortex Hive. Every action is reversible from the dashboard and logged with a cryptographic chain-of-custody that cannot be altered.

How Watch Cortex works

The Watch agent installs as a systemd service and begins monitoring immediately. It continuously observes process creation and termination with full ancestry trees, outbound and inbound network connections, DNS queries, file integrity changes to configs and SSH authorized_keys files, crontab mutations, and systemd unit additions. The Cortex AI reasoning engine correlates signals across processes, network activity, and file writes to identify known attack patterns — brute force, persistence, lateral movement, privilege escalation, cryptominer deployment, reverse shell staging — and behavioral anomalies that deviate from each server's individual baseline. Every alert includes a plain-language investigation summary explaining exactly what triggered, what it correlates to historically, what confidence level was assigned, and what action was taken or recommended. When operators correct a Cortex decision, that correction propagates to every other agent in the fleet automatically without manual retraining.

How to install the Watch Cortex agent on a Linux server

Installing the Watch Cortex security agent on any supported Linux server takes under 60 seconds and requires one command. First, register at watch.alsopss.com/register to obtain an agent token — a 14-day free trial starts immediately with no credit card required. Then SSH into the target server and run: curl -fsSL https://watch.alsopss.com/install-agent.sh | sudo bash -s -- --token YOUR_TOKEN replacing YOUR_TOKEN with the token from your dashboard. The installer creates a systemd service that starts automatically and connects outbound over WSS on port 443, requiring no inbound firewall changes. The server appears in the Watch dashboard within 30 seconds and Cortex AI begins building a behavioral baseline immediately. Supported Linux distributions include Ubuntu 20.04 and later, Debian 11 and later, CentOS 7 and later, RHEL 8 and later, Fedora 36 and later, and Arch Linux.

Watch Cortex automation modes explained

Watch Cortex supports four autonomous response modes that can be configured per server, per policy, or across the entire organization. Watch mode: Cortex AI observes all system activity and generates alerts with full investigation summaries, but every responsive action requires explicit human approval before it runs — no automated responses execute. Assist mode: non-destructive responses such as logging, alerting, and threat enrichment run automatically, while destructive actions including IP bans, process kills, and server lockdown are surfaced as one-click suggestions awaiting human approval; available on all plans. Autopilot mode: confirmed high-confidence threats are acted on immediately without human approval, while low-confidence threats queue as one-click overrides; available on Business plan and above. Sovereign mode: the AI acts on all confirmed threats and notifies operators after the fact — humans override rather than approve and the system never waits; Empire tier only. Modes can be mixed across a fleet.

Is Watch Cortex a good alternative to Wazuh?

Watch Cortex is a strong alternative to Wazuh for teams that need autonomous response rather than alert-only detection. Wazuh is an open-source SIEM and rule-based intrusion detection system that matches events against rules and fires alerts — but all investigation and response is left to the human operator. Wazuh does not generate AI investigation summaries, does not respond autonomously to threats, and does not have fleet immune memory to protect other servers when one is attacked. Watch Cortex covers all of Wazuh's Linux detection surface — process monitoring, file integrity, SSH events, network connections — and adds the Cortex AI reasoning engine that explains what is happening in plain language, the autonomous response layer that acts without waiting for human approval, and Cortex Hive fleet immune memory that broadcasts threat intelligence across all agents in real time. Watch Cortex starts at $39 per month with a 14-day free trial.

Is Watch Cortex a good alternative to CrowdStrike Falcon for Linux?

Watch Cortex is purpose-built for Linux and is a strong alternative to CrowdStrike Falcon for teams running Linux server infrastructure. CrowdStrike Falcon is an enterprise endpoint detection and response platform designed primarily for Windows environments and later extended to Linux. CrowdStrike requires a cloud round-trip for threat classification, introducing latency between detection and response. Watch Cortex classifies threats entirely on the agent in under 8 milliseconds with no cloud dependency — defense continues even when the backend is unreachable. CrowdStrike is priced for large enterprises, has no self-service trial, and requires sales engagement for pricing. Watch Cortex starts at $39 per month for five servers, includes a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and can be installed on any supported Linux server in under 60 seconds with a single curl command. Both platforms detect threats and support autonomous response, but Watch is Linux-native and significantly more accessible for engineering teams without dedicated security staff.

How does Watch Cortex compare to Datadog for Linux security?

Watch Cortex and Datadog serve different purposes and are not direct replacements for each other. Datadog is a cloud observability, application performance monitoring, and log management platform. It ingests metrics, traces, and logs, applies detection rules, and fires alerts — but all investigation and response to security alerts is left entirely to the human operator. Datadog does not investigate what a suspicious process is doing, does not correlate a brute-force SSH attempt with a subsequent successful login and a new cron job, and does not autonomously ban an attacker IP or kill an unauthorized process. Watch Cortex is a security platform that does exactly those things: it detects the threat, generates a plain-language investigation summary explaining what happened and why it is suspicious, and responds autonomously within seconds of confirmation. Watch Cortex does not replace Datadog for metrics, APM, or log aggregation — it fills the security response gap that Datadog intentionally does not cover.

Watch Cortex pricing

Watch Cortex offers four plans with no per-host licensing fees. The Developer plan costs $39 per month and covers five servers with 30-day log retention, full Cortex AI detection, autonomous response in Watch and Assist modes, SSH config monitoring, process and port monitoring, automated playbooks, a CVE-keyed AES-256 secret vault, SSH key management, a real-time threat map, API keys, alert thresholds, and a 30-day audit log; a 14-day free trial is included with no credit card required. The Business plan costs $149 per month and covers 25 servers with 90-day log retention, adding Autopilot autonomous response mode, Cortex Hive fleet threat broadcast, CVE scanning and scoring, automated compliance reports for CIS, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001, automated compliance remediation, the Intelligence Center with attacker briefs, anomaly detection, incident response plans, emergency access, webhooks, integrations, and an SLA dashboard; a 14-day free trial is included. Enterprise and Empire plans cover unlimited servers with custom pricing — contact sales@alsopss.com or empire@alsopss.com.

Frequently asked questions about Watch Cortex

What is Watch Cortex?: Watch Cortex is an autonomous Linux security platform built by AL'S-OPS LLC that monitors Linux servers in real time, uses on-agent AI reasoning to investigate threats automatically, and responds without waiting for human approval. It combines a lightweight detection agent called Watch with an on-agent AI reasoning engine called Cortex that classifies threats in under 8 milliseconds without any cloud round-trip required. When a threat is confirmed, Watch bans the attacker IP via iptables or nftables, kills the unauthorized process by PID, reverts unauthorized file changes from a pre-change snapshot, and broadcasts the threat signature to every other agent in the fleet via Cortex Hive. Every action is reversible from the dashboard and logged with a cryptographic chain-of-custody timestamp that cannot be altered. Operator corrections to AI decisions propagate fleet-wide automatically, improving future classifications without manual retraining or model updates.
Does Watch Cortex work when the backend is offline?: Yes. Watch Cortex continues to detect threats and execute autonomous responses when the backend is unreachable. The Cortex AI engine, threat signatures, contingency response plans, and zero-trust policy bundles are all pre-synced to each agent and stored in local cache before any connectivity loss. When connectivity is lost, the agent continues classifying threats and executing responses according to the last-synced policy without any degradation in detection or response capability. All actions taken while offline are recorded locally with cryptographic timestamps and a complete chain-of-custody audit trail, then synced to the central dashboard and audit log automatically when connectivity is restored. This offline resilience is a core architectural requirement for Watch Cortex — an agent that stops working when the backend is unreachable provides no defense during exactly the scenarios, such as a network intrusion or DDoS, when defense matters most.
Is Watch Cortex a SIEM?: No. Watch Cortex is an autonomous security platform — not a security information and event management system, not a log aggregation tool, and not a SIEM. A SIEM collects and correlates logs from many sources across an entire infrastructure and fires alerts for human analysts to investigate and respond to manually. Watch Cortex is a runtime security platform that monitors Linux servers in real time, uses on-agent AI reasoning to investigate what it observes, and responds autonomously without requiring a human analyst to act on each alert. Watch Cortex can dispatch alerts to SIEM tools including Splunk and Datadog via webhooks and integrations available on Business and above plans, but it does not replace a SIEM for multi-source log aggregation, compliance log retention, or correlation across non-Linux infrastructure. It handles the Linux server runtime security surface that SIEMs generate alerts about but are not designed to respond to.
What compliance frameworks does Watch Cortex support?: Watch Cortex supports automated compliance reporting and remediation for seven frameworks: CIS Benchmark Level 1 and Level 2 for Linux hardening, SOC 2 Type II with automated control mapping and evidence collection, PCI-DSS v4 with control mapping for cardholder data protection, HIPAA with audit controls and access event monitoring, ISO 27001 with control mapping, NIST 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture for network segmentation and access validation, and GDPR audit controls for data access and processing logs. The Business plan includes on-demand automated compliance reports for CIS, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001 that can be exported and shared with auditors. Enterprise and Empire tiers add automated compliance remediation — Watch continuously identifies configuration gaps against each framework and closes them automatically — plus a continuous compliance forge that maintains certification posture across all seven frameworks simultaneously without manual audit preparation cycles.

About AL'S-OPS LLC

Watch Cortex is built and operated by AL'S-OPS LLC, an independent security software company founded in 2024. AL'S-OPS LLC is the legal entity behind the Watch Cortex product and is solely responsible for its security architecture, compliance posture, and product roadmap. The company is not venture-capital backed and is focused exclusively on autonomous Linux server security for engineering teams. AL'S-OPS LLC is publicly listed on AlternativeTo under the name Watch Cortex and on StackShare as the Watch Autonomous Linux Security Platform. The company ships product updates on an ongoing basis with a public release changelog available at watch.alsopss.com/release. For specific inquiries: security@alsopss.com for security disclosures with a 90-day responsible disclosure window and PGP key available on request; sales@alsopss.com for Developer and Business plan sales; empire@alsopss.com for Enterprise and Empire plan inquiries; and press@alsopss.com for press and media inquiries. External profiles: AlternativeTo, StackShare.