SIEM tools have existed for nearly two decades, helping businesses collect, aggregate, and analyze security data from one place. Microsoft Sentinel is one of the most popular SIEM tools, with a market share of over 12.9%. Despite not being the first to market, Microsoft Sentinel has been gradually growing in popularity, thanks to the many advantages it offers, including ease of use and seamless integration with other Microsoft products.
If your business is already using other Microsoft products, you might be considering moving to Sentinel to enjoy the full benefits of the Microsoft ecosystem. However, before making the switch, there are several factors that you need to consider to make the transition seamless. In today’s article, we will walk you through the benefits of Sentinel and key factors you must consider when migrating to it.
Benefits of Microsoft Sentinel
Easy to set up and use
Microsoft Sentinel is designed with a user-friendly interface that simplifies the setup process. It provides pre-built templates, rules, and analytics, which you can easily customize to meet the specific needs of your organization. This means you can quickly configure Sentinel to monitor your environment without needing to write complex queries or scripts. In addition to the ease of use, Sentinel also offers a unified view of the entire enterprise, making it easier for security teams to manage and respond to threats.
Uses Microsoft’s Robust Azure Infrastructure
Being built on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform, Sentinel inherits the robustness, scalability, and reliability of Azure. This means it can handle large volumes of data and scale as per the needs of your business without compromising performance and reliability. Also, Azure’s global presence ensures that Sentinel can provide security insights regardless of where the data resides or where the business operates.
Seamless integration with other Microsoft security tools
Microsoft Sentinel can integrate with a wide range of Microsoft solutions like Microsoft 365 Defender, Azure Defender, and more. This allows your business to bring together security data from across the organization into a central place when you analyze it and make crucial decisions. This unified approach not only enhances visibility but also improves threat detection and response times.
Sentinel Uses Machine Learning algorithms to detect anomalies
Microsoft is one of the market leaders in AI and machine learning, so it is no surprise that they are integrating these capabilities into their SIEM tool. Sentinel uses advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze data and identify patterns that might indicate a security threat. For example, it can detect unusual login attempts, suspicious data transfers, or changes in user behavior.
These capabilities allow Sentinel to provide proactive security alerts, helping your business to respond to potential threats before they can cause significant damage. Speaking of AI, Microsoft has also recently added Security Copilot to its arsenal of security tools, allowing users to query it and get deeper insights into the analysis provider by Sentinel. Check out this article to learn more about Security Copilot.
Built-in Azure Active Directory integration
Azure Active Directory (AD) is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service. Sentinel’s integration with Azure AD allows it to monitor user activities and detect potential threats like identity theft, insider threats, or compromised credentials. This integration also simplifies the process of managing user identities and access. Ultimately, this leads to a more secure and efficient way to protect business resources.
A per-user per-month pricing model
Unlike traditional SIEMs that charge based on the volume of data, Microsoft Sentinel follows a more favorable pricing model where businesses pay per user per month. This model provides more predictable costs, allowing your business to scale security operations according to your needs without worrying about the cost of data ingestion.
Frequent Updates
As they do with all their products, Microsoft also rolls out regular updates for Sentinel to make it a more robust and reliable SIEM tool. For instance, they recently rolled out new features that significantly improved the experience of migrating from other SIEM tools, integration with other cloud platforms like AWS and Google Cloud, and many more. Our article about new Sentinel features in 2024 covers all the major features rolled out in the last couple of months. Check it out to learn more.
What To Consider When Migrating to Microsoft Sentinel
These are the key factors that you must consider when migrating to Sentinel:
Planning Your Migration
Before you start the migration, it is crucial to have a clear plan of how each process will be executed. The key steps you must follow during the planning process include the following:
- Discover: In this phase, you assess your current environment, including your data sources, systems, and processes. You should also identify what needs to be migrated and any potential challenges you might face.
- Design: Here, you plan the architecture and design of your new system compared to your current one. It is at this phase that you also decide how Microsoft Sentinel will be configured to meet your organization’s security needs.
- Implementing: This is the phase where you determine how the actual process of migration will be executed. You should also choose the migration tools to use during your planning.
How to Migrate Detection Rules
Instead of blindly moving all your detection rules to Microsoft Sentinel, you should prioritize rules that are effective in identifying security threats accurately. This ensures that your new system isn’t cluttered with unnecessary rules and focuses on those that provide the most value in terms of security.
Migrating Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)
SOAR solutions help automate and streamline security processes, such as incident response. When migrating to Microsoft Sentinel, you need to plan how to incorporate any existing automation and response workflows into Sentinel’s framework to maintain or enhance your security capabilities.
Migrating Historical Data
This involves deciding how to handle your old data when transitioning to Microsoft Sentinel. Your historical data includes all the logs of events, alerts, incidents, and any other relevant data that may be valuable for analysis and investigation. You need to choose where to store this data, such as on the Azure cloud platform, and select tools to help you migrate it into Sentinel for analysis.
Converting Dashboards to Workbooks
Dashboards provide visualizations of security data in your current SIEM. Workbooks serve a similar purpose in Microsoft Sentinel but their format and functionality are slightly different. You’ll need to convert your existing dashboards to workbooks compatible with Sentinel to continue monitoring and analyzing security events effectively. Follow this Microsoft guide to learn more on how to convert dashboards to workbooks.
Training your Stuff
To ensure a seamless experience, your team needs to be familiar with Microsoft Sentinel and how it works. The good news is that Sentinel has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, so the learning process should be pretty straightforward if your team is already familiar with their current SIEM tool. Your team can also take advantage of Microsoft’s quick onboard guide for Sentinel.
Upgrading Security Operations Center (SOC) Processes
Moving to a new SIEM like Microsoft Sentinel often requires changes to how your SOC operates. This could include updating procedures, training staff on new tools and processes, and ensuring that the SOC is aligned with Sentinel’s capabilities to effectively detect and respond to security threats.
Key takeaways
This guide has covered all the key details you need to know as you transition from your current SIEM to Microsoft Sentinel. Here is a summary of the key takeaways:
- Microsoft Sentinel has several benefits, including ease of use, seamless integration with Microsoft products, robust Azure infrastructure, machine learning for proactive threat detection, and more.
- To ensure a smooth transition, plan in phases (discovery, design, implementation) and prioritize valuable detection rules.
- It is also crucial to maintain efficient security operations by integrating existing automation tools (SOAR) and converting dashboards on your current SIEM to Sentinel workbooks.
- Empower your team by providing training on Sentinel and updating SOC processes to leverage its full potential.
If you can’t handle the migration process internally, you should consider outsourcing this job. At WizardCyber, our experts will help you migrate from your current SIEM to the much more innovative Microsoft Sentinel. Our Microsoft Sentinel Migration service is available for most of the popular SIEM tools, including Rapid7, LogRhythm, Splunk, and FortiSIEM. You can reach out to our support team for more details about this service.
