How Microsoft Sentinel Makes SIEM Simpler for Cybersecurity Teams

What's Inside

Microsoft Sentinel overview
Microsoft Sentinel is a cybersecurity solution that collects and analyzes data from various sources to identify suspicious activities and protect against cyberattacks. It can carefully examine the logs and event data generated by these sources.
How Microsoft Sentinel can defend against a cyberattack
To illustrate how Sentinel could be useful, let’s look at how an attack can potentially compromise your environment.
4 Microsoft Sentinel best practices
For cybersecurity teams looking to get the most out of Sentinel while streamlining their threat analysis, investigation and response processes, it is a good idea to keep the following in mind.
Make stronger cyberdefence happen with CDW and Microsoft Sentinel
At CDW, we help clients create strong cybersecurity solutions to be ready, protect and react to threats effectively. Our services help organizations effectively implement and use Microsoft Sentinel to its fullest potential.

Cybersecurity teams in Canada have long realized the value of security automation to battle cyberattacks. Yet, CDW’s 2024 Canadian Cybersecurity Study revealed that less than 40 percent of Canadian organizations have adopted threat detection and response technologies. But with newer SIEM features and cloud-native offerings in the market, it is now easier to add automation to your security stack.

Microsoft Sentinel is one such cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) platform that provides SOAR capabilities with a subscription-based and affordable pricing model. The tool offers cross-environment threat detection, investigation and response capabilities with streamlined adoption.

Could Microsoft Sentinel be the right SIEM for your security posture? We explore the possibilities with David Izzard, Senior Manager of Executive Tech Strategy at CDW Canada, as he shares insights and best practices for a seamless transformation.

Microsoft Sentinel overview

Microsoft Sentinel is a cybersecurity solution that collects and analyzes data from various sources to identify suspicious activities and protect against cyberattacks. It can carefully examine the logs and event data generated by these sources to spot any unusual behaviour or signs of potential cyberthreats, helping keep your digital landscape safe and secure.

Think of it like a security radar for your company. It can detect potential threats and attackers if they get too close. Essentially, Sentinel combines two critical functions:

Security information and event management (SIEM): Collects and analyzes data from various sources to detect threats.
Security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR): Automates incident response tasks, making security teams more efficient.

Sentinel can be used for IT architecture across a whole company, giving a broad view of your digital operations. It can capture security data from your cloud infrastructure as well as on-premises and multicloud environments. Furthermore, it helps SecOps teams by providing valuable insights to stay ahead of threats and protect important assets.

What does Microsoft Sentinel offer?

Microsoft Sentinel’s core features help detect threats, facilitate investigations and enable timely responses for remediation and resolution. It offers a single solution for threat detection, visibility, proactive hunting and response. Microsoft Sentinel also leverages AI-driven analytics and Microsoft’s threat intelligence to detect previously undetected threats and minimize false positives. You can also swiftly respond to incidents with its built-in SOAR capabilities that allow for orchestration and automation.

Threat detection

Log collection and ingestion: Collects and ingests data from various sources, including security logs, cloud services and applications. This data forms the foundation for threat detection.
Analytical rules and machine learning: Uses custom or pre-built rules to detect suspicious activities. These rules analyze incoming data and generate alerts when they detect specific patterns or anomalies.
Threat intelligence integration: Enhances detection capabilities by integrating threat intelligence feeds. Correlates incoming data with known threat indicators, providing context for potential threats.

Incident investigation

Incident management and tracking: Organizes incidents, allowing analysts to track and manage investigations. The incident timeline captures all relevant activities, comments and actions taken during the investigation.
Entity mapping and enrichment: Automatically associates entities (such as users, IP addresses and hosts) with incidents. Analysts can explore these entities to understand their context and relationships.
Hunting and querying: Facilitates custom queries (using KQL) to hunt for suspicious behaviour beyond predefined rules. This allows users to explore logs, identify patterns and uncover hidden threats.

Remedial response

Automated playbooks: Executes automated playbooks in response to specific incidents. These playbooks perform predefined actions, such as blocking an IP address, notifying stakeholders or quarantining a device.
Manual actions and annotations: Allows manual actions within incidents, such as adding comments, assigning tasks or escalating to higher levels of investigation.
Threat intelligence sharing: Integrates with threat intelligence platforms, enabling analysts to share relevant threat information with other security teams or external partners.

Key Advantages

Scalability: Collects data at cloud scale across diverse environments.
Threat visibility: Provides a clear view of attacks and suspicious activities.
Efficiency: Alleviates stress from increasing alert volumes.
Azure integration: Natively incorporates proven Azure services.
Customization: Bring your own threat intelligence to enhance investigations.

Microsoft Sentinel pricing

Microsoft Sentinel follows a simplified subscription-based pricing model. Users benefit from clear pricing tiers, making it easier to understand costs.

There are two payment options:

Pay-as-you-go: Allows flexibility by billing per gigabyte (GB) of data analyzed.
Commitment tiers: Offers fixed fees based on selected tiers with volume discounts and predictable costs for a given tenure.

With flexible pricing, Microsoft Sentinel strikes a balance between functionality and affordability, while not being CAPEX heavy. Customers can optimize costs per their security needs without having to procure licensing upfront.

How Microsoft Sentinel can defend against a cyberattack

To illustrate how Sentinel could be useful, let’s look at how an attack can potentially compromise your environment. In the following example, an attacker tries to encrypt the local workstations of an organization by targeting the development web server.

The attacker charts the following attack path:

Looks for a vulnerability in a public-facing web asset
Exploits the vulnerability to instal an executable webshell on the development server
Exfiltrates password data using the webshell
Uses the service message broker protocol to upload malware onto an Admin workstation
Finds and leverages an active RDP session to gain access to Active Directory Domain Controller
Once inside the Domain Controller, it spreads out to connected workstations
Encrypts files on the target workstations

This kind of attack is usually hard to trace in manual security checks. Most malware types can go unnoticed and as the
attacker impersonates existing logged in users, they may not raise any red flags until it’s too late. In addition, each individual event when examined in isolation would not necessarily be identified as suspicious.

Conversely, if Sentinel is collecting all the threat signals, it can look for a chain of connected events that are
collectively indicative of suspicious activity and bring that activity to the attention of the security team.

For example, the attacker initially pivoting from the DMZ to the internal network using a legitimate account may go
unnoticed, as it may be viewed as legitimate activity on its own. However, when chained with the deployment of a credential harvester event, followed by a subsequent pivot to the domain controller with a domain admin account, it
becomes pretty clear that these events collectively represent suspicious behaviour. Sentinel can link these individual events to be viewed and analyzed collectively as a single incident.

Security analysts can see the incident in Sentinel’s incident dashboard and quickly determine where the attack originated.
They can then take any actions needed to contain and eradicate the threat.

4 Microsoft Sentinel best practices

For cybersecurity teams looking to get the most out of Sentinel while streamlining their threat analysis, investigation and response processes, it is a good idea to keep the following in mind:

1. Analyze current investigation processes first

Begin by assessing your existing investigation workflows. Understand how incidents are handled, what tools are used and where bottlenecks occur. Look for patterns across incidents. Are there recurring attack vectors, tactics or techniques? Identifying commonalities helps streamline investigations.

2. Identify pain points and user errors

Mapping out the areas where analysts struggle or make mistakes is helpful in reducing key pain points, improving the overall investigation process and improving efficiency. Creating visual models (diagrams) that map out investigation processes can help rapidly align your teams, standardize those processes and ensure consistency.

3. Don’t automate playbooks early on

Start with developing playbooks that outline and orchestrate an investigation rather than attempting to automate them out of the gate. These initial playbooks can serve as guides for analysts, standardizing your team’s investigation process, while providing the opportunity to validate the playbook workflow to ensure accuracy and effectiveness.

4. Automate common tasks first, response actions last

Start by automating repetitive tasks (e.g., enrichment, data collection) that have no direct impact on the environment and gradually automate more complex actions (e.g., blocking IPs, isolating hosts) once you’re confident the playbook workflow is accurate.

Make stronger cyberdefence happen with CDW and Microsoft Sentinel

At CDW, we help clients create strong cybersecurity solutions to be ready, protect and react to threats effectively. Our services help organizations effectively implement and use Microsoft Sentinel to its fullest potential.

We are a certified Azure Expert Managed Service Provider, which enables us to collaborate with our clients throughout the entire Sentinel implementation journey. Our Microsoft security experts can help your security team with setting up, testing and validating security measures.

Our service for managing Microsoft Sentinel helps customers reduce risk by adjusting false positives and providing consulting. This service also helps customers save money on third-party IT expenses alongside optimal Microsoft licensing options.

In today’s rapidly evolving cyberthreat landscape, organizations require robust, scalable and intelligent cybersecurity solutions. Microsoft Sentinel signifies a leap forward in streamlining SIEM for cybersecurity professionals. However, the deployment, optimization and management of advanced technologies, such as Sentinel, require expertise and a strategic approach that many organizations may find challenging.

With CDW’s comprehensive suite of services we wrap a layer of expertise and support around Microsoft Sentinel to ensure its maximum effectiveness by following Microsoft security best practices.

At CDW Canada, our approach to cybersecurity is holistic, covering preparation through risk advisory services, defence via security professional services and rapid response with 24/7/365 coverage. This comprehensive suite ensures that organizations are not just protected against cyberthreats but are also prepared to adapt and respond to them efficiently.

Prepare

Align Strategies to Enterprise Business Risk

Assess Risk
Align to Global Standard
Implement Controls

Defend

Deploy Strategies to Enterprise Business Risk

Design Solutions
Protect Critical Assets
Manage Project Risk

Respond

Rapid Remediation of Security Incidents

Advanced Analytics
Business Context
Continuous Validation

The integration of CDW’s services with Microsoft Sentinel provides a variety of cybersecurity strategies. From the outset, CDW’s Risk Advisory and Microsoft Security Architects can help organizations align their cybersecurity efforts with their business risks, ensuring that the deployment of Microsoft Sentinel is fully attuned to the specific needs and vulnerabilities of the organization. CDW’s technical security services, including penetration testing and vulnerability assessment, complement Microsoft Sentinel’s capabilities by identifying and mitigating potential security gaps.

Furthermore, CDW’s managed security services offer around the clock surveillance and incident response, leveraging the advanced analytics and threat detection capabilities of Microsoft Sentinel. This ensures that threats are not only identified in real time but are also acted upon, minimizing potential damages. CDW’s Canadian-based Security Operations Centre (SOC) and Network Operations Centre (NOC), backed by an extensive team of security professionals and solution architects, stand ready to support organizations in navigating the complex cybersecurity landscape.

As cyberthreats grow in sophistication and scale, the partnership between CDW and Microsoft, with its cutting-edge security capabilities, offers organizations a powerful defence mechanism. Together, CDW and Microsoft are redefining what it means to be secure in the digital age, offering a path forward for organizations to navigate the complexities of cybersecurity with confidence.