Using Microsoft Sentinel

The previous chapter covered recipes for enabling and using Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

This chapter will teach you how to implement Microsoft Sentinel, collect data, set up security alerts through analytics, and create automated responses.

By the end of this chapter, you will have learned the following recipes to make the most effective use of Microsoft Sentinel:

• Reviewing the components of Microsoft Sentinel
• Enabling Microsoft Sentinel
• Creating automation
• Setting up a data connector and analytics rule

Technical requirements

This chapter assumes that you have an Azure AD tenancy and an Azure subscription from completing the recipes in previous chapters of this cookbook. If you skipped straight to this section, the information needed to create a new Azure AD tenancy and an Azure subscription for these recipes is included in the following list of requirements.

For this chapter, the following are required:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal https://portal.azure.com.
• An Azure AD tenancy and Azure subscription; you may use existing or sign up for free: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free.
• An Owner role for the Azure subscription.
• A Global Administrator or Security Administrator role on the Tenant Azure AD.

Terminology reference

We will start with the terminology used with Microsoft Sentinel:

• Security operations (SecOps): This function deals with managing the incorporation of day-to-day security monitoring...

Enabling Microsoft Sentinel

Sentinel is Microsoft’s cloud-based SIEM and SOAR tool; it is a complete solution that can provide security and event data aggregation, threat analysis, and response across public cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.

This recipe will teach you to enable Microsoft Sentinel in your environment.

Getting ready

This recipe requires the following:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com
• Access to an Azure subscription, where you have access to the Owner role

How to do it…

This task consists of the following step:

• Enabling Microsoft Sentinel

Task – enabling Microsoft Sentinel

Perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com.
2. In the search bar, type Microsoft Sentinel; select Microsoft Sentinel from the list of services shown.

Figure 9.1 – Search...

Reviewing Microsoft Sentinel components

Now that we have learned how to enable Microsoft Sentinel in your environment, this recipe will provide you with a high-level overview of its capabilities and components.

As a cloud-based SIEM and SOAR solution, Sentinel can act as the tooling to support a SOC and SOC-as-a-Service approach.

Getting ready

This recipe requires the following:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com
• Access to an Azure subscription, where you have access to the Owner role
• The subscription should have Microsoft Sentinel enabled

How to do it…

This task consists of the following step:

• Review the Microsoft Sentinel components

Task – Microsoft Sentinel

Perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com.
2. From the search bar, type Microsoft Sentinel; click Microsoft Sentinel from the list of services...

Creating automation

Now that we have learned how to enable Azure Sentinel in your environment, this recipe will teach you how to set up playbooks so that you can automate responses to incidents that we will trigger from data connector signal data and alert log rules that we will set up in the following recipe in this chapter.

Getting ready

This recipe requires the following to be in place:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com
• Access to an Azure subscription, where you have access to the Owner role
• The subscription should have Microsoft Sentinel enabled

How to do it…

This task consists of the following step:

• Creating a playbook

Task – creating a playbook

Perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com.
2. From the search bar, type Microsoft Sentinel; click Microsoft Sentinel from the list of services shown.

...

Set up data connectors

Now that we have learned how to enable Azure Sentinel in your environment, this recipe will teach you how to set up data connectors so that you can start collecting signal information for analysis and alerting.

Getting ready

This recipe requires the following to be in place:

• A device with a browser, such as Edge or Chrome, to access the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com
• Access to an Azure subscription, where you have access to the Owner role
• The subscription should have Microsoft Sentinel enabled

How to do it…

This task consists of the following steps:

• Gather signal data using a data connector
• Create an analytics rule

Task – gather signal data using data connectors

Perform the following steps:

1. Sign in to the Azure portal: https://portal.azure.com.
2. In the search bar, type Microsoft Sentinel; click Microsoft Sentinel from the list of services shown.

...