Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-based SIEM and SOAR solution offered by Microsoft. Sentinel helps organizations detect and analyze security threats and respond to them. The solution utilizes artificial intelligence and automation, which helps organizations improve their overall security management. Sentinel is often used together with Microsoft Defender XDR services.
What Does Implementing Sentinel Require from an Organization?
Implementing Microsoft Sentinel does not require a high level of security maturity from an organization; even smaller organizations can benefit from Sentinel. Sentinel adds depth and response speed to security but is considerably lighter than, for example, purchasing SOC services from an external service provider.
Sentinel is worth implementing if an organization needs response speed and automation to take care of its own security. It can be used to automate security-related tasks, such as automatically disconnecting a vulnerable computer from the network.
There are also several important factors to consider when planning the implementation of Sentinel. Sentinel requires daily checks of alerts in order to respond to threats and better manage security risks. For many organizations, this means adding new processes and responsibilities to successfully maintain Sentinel.
Microsoft Sentinel Requires the Use of Microsoft Defender XDR Products
Often, before implementing Sentinel, organizations are already using Microsoft Defender XDR products, which are sufficient for some organizations to maintain their security.
Microsoft Defender XDR products are good for monitoring, but Sentinel adds extra depth, automation, and response speed to monitoring, which reduce risks. Monitoring can be built using only Microsoft Defender XDR products, but Sentinel takes monitoring and response to a deeper level. Defender enables, for example, monitoring of the M365 environment and workstations, but with Sentinel’s automation, alerts can be responded to quickly and automatically. Sentinel thus takes security deeper and further through automation, which also brings cost-efficiency to security.
Defender primarily offers monitoring features for Microsoft products, but Sentinel can also utilize log data from third-party products and even enables the addition of log data from self-developed applications and services. This data can be fed into Sentinel through data connectors, further improving monitoring capabilities.
Sentinel can also be used to build dashboards that allow for deeper analysis of security based on, for example, organizational and employee behavioral patterns. An example could be data and visualization provided by a dashboard that helps detect employee patterns in logins and anomalies in them. Based on these, alerts for unusual logins can be created and automation for responding to anomalies can be added, making security more reliable.
What Benefits Does Sentinel Bring to Business?
The benefits of Microsoft Sentinel for business are in its automation and faster response capability, which reduce costs and security-related risks.
Sentinel’s automation can reduce costs by decreasing manual work. Response speed reduces both security risks and costs. An example could be a situation where an attacker has obtained a password, downloads all customer data and perhaps emails. Sentinel notices this exceptional, non-normal chain and makes alerts about the anomalies and tells whose password was used in the download. Manually investigating this chain could take several days, during which risks would increase and costs would also rise significantly.
The business benefits of Sentinel can thus be summarized as improved cost-efficiency, response speed, and overall picture of security.
Added Value to the Implementation Process with a 2NS Consultant
In the implementation of Sentinel, 2NS brings added value to building the overall picture, as we understand the attacker’s perspective. This brings efficiency to the implementation because our experts can take into account different risks, threats, and attack methods. A 2NS consultant also brings understanding of what is possible to implement and what is worth doing. Thanks to our broad expertise, we are also able to take into account the organization’s special security needs during the implementation.
We bring added value to Sentinel implementation by building a functional foundation and solution for the organization, which is easy for the organization to maintain and develop on its own. There are good guidelines available for developing Sentinel, so when the groundwork is done well, Sentinel is relatively easy to maintain and develop. This is why it is worth considering a competent security partner especially during the implementation phase.