The SOC team found a suspicious document file on a user's workstation.

Static analysis is the correct approach when the requirement is to understand what the script is intended to do without executing it. For PowerShell embedded in documents, static analysis includes extracting the script content, de-obfuscating it (common techniques include base64 decoding, string reconstruction, and analyzing encoded commands), and reviewing functions, URLs/IPs, file paths, registry keys, and command-line arguments. This allows the SOC to determine likely behaviors such as downloading payloads, establishing persistence, credential theft, or disabling security controls—without risking system impact. Dynamic or behavioral analysis involves running code in a controlled sandbox to observe actions, which can be valuable but violates the constraint “without triggering it,” and can be risky if containment fails or the malware has evasive logic. Network traffic analysis can help once execution has occurred or in a sandbox run, but it cannot fully explain logic that never ran. Static analysis is also useful for creating detections (hashes, strings, YARA-like patterns, command-line indicators) and for scoping across the environment by searching for matching script fragments or document markers.