What is Sentinel?
Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) solution. It’s a comprehensive offering within the Microsoft Azure cloud platform that empowers organisations to centralise their security operations.
Benefits_
- Unified security management: Microsoft Sentinel acts as a central hub, ingesting security data from various Microsoft services, on-premises systems and cloud workloads. This provides a holistic view of your organisation’s security posture, streamlining threat detection, investigation and response efforts.
- Enhanced threat detection and analytics: Microsoft Sentinel leverages advanced analytics, machine learning, and threat intelligence to identify potential security threats and anomalies within the collected data. This proactive approach helps to detect and respond to threats before they can cause significant damage.
- Improved security automation and orchestration: Microsoft Sentinel allows you to automate routine security tasks and workflows. This frees up security analysts to focus on more complex investigations and threat-hunting activities.
Use cases_
- Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Microsoft Sentinel collects, aggregates, analyses and stores security data from various sources. This consolidated view allows security teams to identify potential threats and investigate security incidents effectively.
- Threat hunting: Security analysts can leverage Microsoft Sentinel to proactively hunt for potential threats within the organisation’s network and systems. The platform’s advanced analytics and threat intelligence capabilities can help identify even the most sophisticated threats.
- Security Incident Response (SIR): During a security incident, Microsoft Sentinel facilitates a faster and more efficient response. You can automate tasks, collaborate with team members and track the progress of the incident within a centralised platform.
Key components_
- Data connectors: These connectors allow Microsoft Sentinel to ingest security data from a wide range of sources, including Microsoft 365 Defender, Azure Security Center, firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and more.
- Log analytics: This powerful analytics engine within Azure Sentinel processes and analyses the collected security data, providing insights and identifying potential threats.
- Workbooks and hunting queries: Microsoft Sentinel offers pre-built workbooks and allows creating custom queries to simplify threat hunting and investigation tasks.
- Playbooks: These automated workflows can be used to automate routine security tasks, such as isolating infected systems or escalating high-priority alerts.
Microsoft Sentinel integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft security products and services like Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Defender XDR, and Microsoft 365 Defender. This tight integration offers a unified security experience and leverages the vast security data within the Microsoft ecosystem for more effective threat protection.
