Managed Azure Sentinel for Cloud Security and Compliance

Managed Azure Sentinel is a cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) solution that provides real-time threat detection and incident response capabilities. It's designed to help organizations improve their cloud security and compliance posture.

With Azure Sentinel, you can collect, analyze, and visualize security-related data from various sources, including Azure resources, third-party services, and on-premises systems. This helps identify potential security threats and reduce the risk of data breaches.

Azure Sentinel's automated incident response capabilities enable you to respond quickly to security incidents, minimizing the impact on your organization. It also provides a unified view of security-related data, making it easier to investigate and respond to security incidents.

For another approach, see: Azure Sentinal

Managed Azure Sentinel is a cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) solution that helps you detect and respond to threats across your organization's entire Microsoft ecosystem.

It's designed to work seamlessly with other Microsoft security products, such as Azure Active Directory and Microsoft 365 Defender.

Managed Azure Sentinel is a cloud-based service that provides real-time threat detection and incident response capabilities.

It collects and analyzes data from various sources, including Azure resources, Microsoft 365, and third-party solutions.

This comprehensive view of your organization's security posture enables you to identify and prioritize potential threats more effectively.

Managed Azure Sentinel also provides automated incident response playbooks that help you respond quickly and effectively to security incidents.

These playbooks can be customized to fit your organization's specific security needs and policies.

By leveraging the power of Azure Sentinel, you can reduce the time and effort required to detect and respond to security threats.

Explore further: What Is Azure Sentinel

Managed Azure Sentinel offers numerous benefits, including reducing alert fatigue and accelerating threat detection and response. This is achieved through its cloud-native SIEM capabilities, which provide a cost-effective solution for monitoring both on-prem and cloud environments as your business scales.

One of the key features of Azure Sentinel is its ability to harness the power of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) to hunt and respond to threats. This is made possible through its integration with other Microsoft products and solutions, such as Azure AD and Office 365.

Here are some of the key features and benefits of Managed Azure Sentinel:

These features and benefits make Managed Azure Sentinel an attractive solution for businesses looking to improve their security posture and reduce costs. By leveraging the power of cloud-native SIEM and integrating with other Microsoft products and solutions, Azure Sentinel provides a comprehensive and cost-effective solution for threat detection and response.

Microsoft Sentinel offers a range of features that make it a powerful security solution. Its cloud-native design allows for seamless integration with Azure and other Microsoft services.

Activity Monitoring, Asset Management, and Log Management are just a few of the key features of Azure Sentinel Services. These features provide a comprehensive view of your security posture.

Threat Intelligence, Vulnerability Assessment, and Advanced Analytics are also key features of Azure Sentinel Services. These features help identify potential threats and vulnerabilities, and provide advanced analytics to help you make sense of the data.

Data Examination is another key feature of Azure Sentinel Services. This feature allows you to examine data from various sources and identify potential security threats.

Microsoft Sentinel has built-in connectors to facilitate data ingestion from Microsoft products and solutions, as well as partner solutions. This makes it easy to get started with the platform.

The platform also offers a range of tools for security analysts and threat analysts, including Hunting and Notebooks. These tools allow you to perform proactive threat analysis and analyze security threats.

Here are some of the key components of Microsoft Sentinel:

Microsoft Sentinel also offers a range of advanced features, including geographic location for data storage, data isolation, and a scope for configuration settings. These features help ensure the security and integrity of the platform.

Recommended read: Describe Features and Tools for Managing and Deploying Azure Resources

SOC automation plays a crucial role in analyst engagement. Analysts need to be able to triage and understand alerts or incidents quickly, and perform measured actions to address threats.

Alerts are presented to analysts through common platforms like Email, Teams, and Slack, giving them clear options to respond to the alert. These options are based on user input or set conditions.

Analyst decisions are dependent on their roles and responsibilities, and the automation system provides them with the necessary tools to make informed decisions. This ensures that analysts can take appropriate actions to address the threat(s) faced.

The automation system includes features like Analyst Decisions, which provide clear alerts and response options to analysts. This enables them to address threats quickly and effectively.

Here are some examples of how Analyst Decisions work:

Deploying Azure Sentinel involves integrating it with your Azure subscription and configuring its components.

You can enable Azure Sentinel from the Azure portal, which involves clicking on the "Create" button and selecting the "Azure Sentinel" option.

The Azure Sentinel workspace is the central hub for managing your security data, and it's where you'll configure data connectors to send data from your Azure resources and on-premises systems.

Data connectors are used to collect and forward security data from various sources, such as Azure Active Directory, Azure Storage, and Azure Virtual Machines.

Deploying Microsoft Sentinel requires understanding the different roles you can assign to users. The role you assign determines what actions they can take on incidents and data.

Reader users can only view incidents and data, but can't make any changes. This is a good role for users who need to stay informed but shouldn't have the power to alter anything.

Responder users have more privileges, allowing them to view incidents and data, and perform actions like assigning incidents to another user or changing the severity of an incident.

Contributor users can view incidents and data, perform some actions on incidents, and even create or delete analytic rules. This role is suitable for users who need to take more proactive steps in managing incidents.

Here's a quick summary of the roles and their permissions:

Hybrid deployments offer a great way to get started with Microsoft Sentinel. KEEP provides the deployment of Microsoft Sentinel, pre-configured alerts, playbooks, automations, and watchlists to assist with a smooth deployment.

We'll tune these capabilities to meet your organisational risk appetite, cost requirements, and incident management processes. This ensures your Microsoft Sentinel deployment is efficient from the outset.

Our consultants and analysts will provide triage and response services in line with agreed SLAs and/or support to your own in-house team(s).

Expand your knowledge: Checkpoint Cloudguard Azure Deployment Guide

Data collection is a crucial aspect of managed Azure Sentinel, and it starts with gathering data from various sources. This includes logs, devices, users, applications, and network traffic.

Microsoft Sentinel has an extensive range of data connectors that facilitate this data collection, allowing organizations to import security data from Microsoft products, cloud environments, and third-party services. These connectors enable real-time integration and accelerate the process of recognizing and responding to security threats.

Data connectors are categorized into three types: out-of-the-box connectors, custom connectors, and data normalization. Out-of-the-box connectors include Microsoft sources and Azure sources, such as Azure Activity, Azure Storage, and more. Custom connectors can be created for non-Microsoft solutions, and data normalization translates various sources into a uniform, normalized view.

Here's a summary of the key data connector capabilities:

Once the data is collected, analytics in Microsoft Sentinel use advanced algorithms and machine learning to identify threats and anomalies in real-time. This enables organizations to detect unusual activities and potential security breaches swiftly.

Log retention is a crucial aspect of data collection and analysis. Microsoft Sentinel offers configurable log retention policies, allowing organizations to store security logs and data for a defined period.

These policies ensure that crucial security information is retained long enough to comply with regulatory requirements. This is essential for organizations that need to maintain compliance with industry standards.

The flexibility in log retention policies helps organizations balance between operational needs and storage costs. This means that valuable security insights can be preserved without unnecessarily increasing storage expenses.

Organizations can effectively manage log data using these policies, making it easier to facilitate thorough investigations when needed.

A different take: Azure Storage Lifecycle Management

Collecting data is a crucial step in the data collection and analysis process. You can connect directly to various services through out-of-the-box integrations, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Activity, and Office 365.

Microsoft Sentinel supports a wide range of data connectors that enable organizations to import security data from various sources. These connectors include Azure sources, Microsoft sources, and third-party services.

For another approach, see: Azure Managed

To connect to other data sources, you can use API integrations with appliances like Okta SSO, Orca Security, and Qualys VM. You can also use the Azure Sentinel Agent to connect to any other data source through an agent.

Syslog protocol is usable for real-time log streaming, and the Azure Sentinel Agent can convert CEF-formatted logs into a format ingested by Log Analytics. This enables organizations to collect logs and data from across their digital environment.

Microsoft Sentinel supports over 100 data connectors, including connectors for threat intelligence providers, firewalls, proxies, and endpoints. Some examples of supported connectors include MISP Open Source Threat Intelligence Platform, Anomali ThreatStream, and Palo Alto Networks MineMeld.

Here are some examples of data sources that can be connected to Microsoft Sentinel:

Analytics play a crucial role in identifying threats and anomalies in real-time, allowing organizations to detect unusual activities and potential security breaches swiftly.

Advanced algorithms and machine learning are used to continuously learn from the evolving threat landscape, improving detection accuracy over time.

Security teams can focus on validated threats, reducing the volume of false positives and streamlining the response process.

This targeted approach enhances the overall efficiency of the security operations center (SOC), making it easier to manage and respond to security incidents.

By leveraging analytics, organizations can improve their security posture and make data-driven decisions to protect their assets and data.

Our fully managed Microsoft Sentinel service provides a full outsourced security monitoring and response capability. This service can be provided in business hours or as a 24/7 capability with associated costs and SLAs aligned to either option.

You'll receive all the capabilities as described in the service, alongside service credits for specific playbook(s) and automation requirements to further enhance your capabilities.

Our analysts are experts with Kusto Query Language (KQL) and can provide tailored queries, dashboards, alerts, and reports for managed clients or adhoc engagements.

Microsoft Sentinel SOC Automation is key to reducing noise and response times to actual threats, focusing on two key pillars.