It is a Cloud SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and Security Orchestration and Automated Response (SOAR) system in Microsoft's public cloud platform. It can provide a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. It collects data from different data sources, performs data correlation, and Data Visualisation of the processed data in a single dashboard. It helps to collect, detect, investigate and respond to security threats and incidents. Thus delivering intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence all across the enterprise ecosystem. It natively incorporates Azure Logic Apps and Log Analytics which enhances its capabilities. It also has built-in advanced machine learning capabilities that can detect actors of threats and suspicious behaviours that can significantly help security analysts to analyse their environment. It can detect threats and minimizes false positives by using analytics and threat intelligence drawn directly from Microsoft. Azure Analytics plays a major role in correlating alerts into incidents identified by the security team. It provides built-in templates directly out-of-the-box to create threat detection rules and automate threat responses. Apart from this, it also provides the feasibility to create custom rules. The four available build-in templates are below: Get the automation you need to stop sophisticated, cross-domain attacks across your organization with SIEM and XDR solutions from Microsoft. Xenonstack Managed Services for Azure Sentinel Azure Sentinel is a scalable cloud-native tool that helps detect, investigate, and respond to threats if any are found. It enables users to catch potential issues more quickly. It uses Machine learning to reduce threats and capture unusual behaviours. Also, IT teams save time and effort for maintenance. It helps to monitor an ecosystem from cloud to on-premise, workstation, and personal devices.What is Microsoft Sentinel - Cloud Native SIEM?
With the growing intelligence of edge devices, capable of making real-time and near-real-time determinations, security can be built into every transaction. Source: How AI Is Revolutionising Fraud Detection And Risk Assessment.
It is easy to deploy in single and multi-tenant scenarios. In the case of a multi-tenant scenario, It will be deployed on each tenant, and Azure Lighthouse will be used to have a multi-tenant visualisation of all tenants.Four Stages of Microsoft Sentinel
Collect Data
It can collect data on all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure both on-premises and across multiple cloud environments. It can easily connect to security sources out of the box. There are several connectors available for Microsoft solutions that provide real-time integration. It also includes built-in connectors for third-party products and services (non-Microsoft Solutions). Apart from this, Common Event Format (CEF), Syslog, or REST-API can also connect the required data sources with it.
It supports both Fluentd and LogStash to connect and collect data and logs.Detect Threats
How an analyst can leverage the Investigation and Log Search capabilities in Azure Security Center to determine whether an alert represents a security compromise, and understand the scope of that compromise. Source- How Azure Security Center Analyze Attacks
Investigation Suspicious Activities
It can investigate and hunt suspicious activities across the environment. It helps reduce noise and hunt for security threats based on the MITRE framework. Use Artificial Intelligence to proactively identify threats before an alert trigger across the protected assest to detect suspicious activities. When you are using it for hunting and investigation, you can make use of the following capabilities:Respond
It can react smoothly and respond quickly to built-in orchestration incidents, and common and frequent tasks can easily be converted into automation. It is capable of creating simplified security orchestration with playbook. It can also make tickets in ServiceNow, Jira, etc. when an event occurs.IAM is a combination of processes and policies to manage the identity of individuals or groups and access to the resources within an organization. Click to explore, How Identity and Access Management Work?
Key Components of Microsoft Sentinel?
As shown in the figure below, there are nine significant Azure Sentinel components.
A Log Analytics workspace provides the following features:Azure provides tools and capabilities for security to create a secure Azure platform. Click to explore, Azure Security Services Checklist
How to deploy Microsoft Sentinel?
It uses a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) authorization model that enables administrators to set up a granular level of permissions based on different requirements and permissions. Ithas three built-in roles available.
To deploy it, one needs contributor permissions to the subscription in which the Azure Sentinel workspace resides. To provide access to different teams based on their work with it, leverage the RBAC model to assign granular permissions to various groups.What is Azure Sentinel Center?
Azure Security Center is a cloud workload protection platform that targets server workload protection's unique requirements in today's hybrid data centre architectures. In contrast, it is a cloud-native SIEM that analyses event data in real-time for early detection of targeted attacks and data breaches and to collect, store, investigate and respond to security events.What is Azure Security Center?
Azure Security Center deals with your Azure assets' configuration following the best practices in simpler terms. It deals with detecting bad actors and preventing unauthorised access to data. Suppose you want to deploy Azure Security Center and it simultaneously. In that case, you must then make sure not to use the default workspace created by Azure Security Center to deploy it as you can't enable it on this default namespace.According to the U.S. State of Cybercrime Report, 50% of data breaches and information leakage happened unintentionally due to employees' negligence. Click to explore the Impact of Insider Threats on Cyber Security
How to Hunt for Security Threats?
When using Azure Sentinel, there are four different ways to hunt for security threats.
It allows you to use Log Analytics' REST API to manage hunting and Livestream queries. Such queries display in Azure Sentinel UI.Microsoft Azure Sentinel Pricing
Note: The data ingested into Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace can be retained free of charge for the first 90 days. After which you will be charged ₹9.254 per GB per month. By default, the collected data is available for 90 days but can be extended to 730 days. Ingest Azure Activity Logs, Office 365 Activity Logs, and alerts from Microsoft Threat Protection in it at no cost.Conclusion
What's Next?
FAQs
Is Microsoft Sentinel a SIEM solution? ›
Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) platform that uses built-in AI to help analyze large volumes of data across an enterprise—fast.
What are the 4 primary capabilities of Microsoft Sentinel? ›Azure Sentinel, now known as Microsoft Sentinel, centralizes your threat collection, detection, response, and investigation efforts.
Are Microsoft Sentinel and SentinelOne the same? ›One is owned by Microsoft, while the other is a standalone solution by SentinelOne. They provide different solutions regarding data protection and threat intelligence. Both are robust security solutions to help protect data. The way they protect against threats vary.
What is cloud-native SIEM? ›Cloud-native SIEM features and capabilities
Cloud SIEM can help organizations to centralize event data from multiple sources, including on-premises and cloud assets. This is especially beneficial for hybrid deployments, which need to combine information on activities and events occurring in multiple data centers.
Microsoft Sentinel is generally rated as being easier to use, set up, and administrate. Splunk generally gets better ratings for quality of support and ease of doing business. Most people trust Microsoft's products more, including its Network Management, Incident Management, and Security Intelligence.
What do you dislike about Microsoft Sentinel? ›What do you dislike about Microsoft Sentinel? It integrates well with other microsoft products but users find challenges when they have to integrate with non-microsoft products. Users with non technical background finds it difficult to use Microsoft Sentinel.
Is SentinelOne a SIEM? ›While it does not replace SIEM, the functionality of SentinelOne XDR can render legacy SIEM solutions redundant by offering advanced automation, integration, and customization capabilities that surpass traditional SIEM solutions.
What is the difference between Microsoft Sentinel and defender for cloud? ›Whereas MDC is aimed at most members of an Azure administration and development team, Sentinel is intended for use by full-time information security professionals. Specifically, Sentinel goes head-to-head with SIEM/SOAR competitors such as: Splunk Enterprise.
Is CrowdStrike better than SentinelOne? ›CrowdStrike provides the most comprehensive detection coverage and delivers the fastest threat detection.
What is better than SentinelOne? ›Cynet 360: the Ultimate SentinelOne Alternative
Cynet 360 is a security solution that includes a complete Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP), with built-in EDR security, a Next-Generation Antivirus (NGAV), and automated incident response.
Is Microsoft Sentinel a SOC? ›
Our Security Operations Center (SOC) is an external center for monitoring and analysis of our clients' IT infrastructure and systems, which provides the people, technology, and experience to help you get the most out of your Microsoft Sentinel deployment.
What are the 4 C's of cloud-native security? ›The Four C's of Cloud-Native Security. To help you organize your cloud-native security strategy, you can divide the security infrastructure into four categories—the cloud layer, the container layer, the cluster layer, and the code layer.
Why is it called cloud-native? ›The term cloud native refers to an application that was designed to reside in the cloud from the start. Cloud native involves cloud technologies like microservices, container orchestrators, and auto scaling.
What is Microsoft's cloud-based SIEM system? ›Microsoft Sentinel is a modern, cloud-native SecOps platform that provides next-generation SIEM and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) to help you proactively protect your digital estate.
Is Sentinelone a SIEM solution? ›Empowering the Autonomous SOC
By leveraging AI and automation, our SIEM solution enables you to: Detect and respond to threats faster. Improve overall security posture.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint supports security information and event management (SIEM) tools ingesting information from your enterprise tenant in Microsoft Entra ID using the OAuth 2.0 authentication protocol for a registered Microsoft Entra application representing the specific SIEM solution or connector installed ...
Does Azure provide SIEM? ›Azure Sentinel and SIEM
Sentinel can be used to obtain security analysis and alerts on corporate threats (which can be prioritized and displayed in lists), as well as to respond to them. This is the purpose of SIEM systems, which detect, analyze and respond to threats.
Here are some key differences: Purpose: Microsoft Sentinel is a SIEM service that provides security analytics and threat intelligence. Azure Security Center, on the other hand, is a security management system that provides advanced threat protection and helps strengthen your security posture.