Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, and robust Security Information Event Management (SIEM) service that provides intelligent security analytics for your enterprise. It allows you to monitor your network for security events, triage alerts, and respond swiftly to active cybersecurity threats. One of the key features of Microsoft Sentinel involves the ability to investigate incidents. This is an essential topic for Security Operations Analyst exam SC-200, and in this article post, we will delve further into it.

Table of Contents

The Incident Investigation Process with Microsoft Sentinel

Incidental investigation in Microsoft Sentinel involves several steps:

  1. Incident Creation: Incidents are created when pre-set analytic rules are stimulated/triggered by the occurrence of suspected behavior or unusual data patterns.
  2. Incident Triage: Once an incident is created, it is triaged. This is the process of assessing the incident using rule and event data to determine its severity, impact, and urgency.
  3. Incident Investigation: If required, further investigation of the incident is undertaken to identify its root causes and potential impacts. This involves examining the underlying alerts, associated entities, and timelines of various activities.
  4. Advanced Hunting: If the incident warrants more extensive investigation, analysts can perform advanced hunting for deeper insights into the anomalies and their relation to other security events.
  5. Incident Resolution: Upon concluding the investigation, the incident is either dismissed as a false positive or actioned for resolution.

Understanding and Navigating the Incidents Page in Microsoft Sentinel

The Incidents page is the primary place for tracking and investigating incidents. It provides a list of all the incidents in your environment. You can sort, filter, and group incidents to help you prioritize and manage them effectively. You also have the capability to tag incidents, add bookmarks, and even automate part of your response using playbooks.

Using the Investigation Graph

The Investigation Graph in Microsoft Sentinel helps to visualize and investigate entities (like users, hosts, IP addresses, etc.) associated with an incident. It enables analysts to explore and understand relationships between entities, alert events, and incidents, thereby making it simpler to identify malicious patterns and take appropriate action.

For example, if an incident has a ‘user’ as an associated entity, clicking on the user will show details such as related alerts, actions performed by the user, connections with other entities, etc. This visual interface aids in understanding the entire scope and context of potential threats.

Using Advanced Hunting

Advanced Hunting allows you to run complex queries over your data. It is particularly useful for investigating incidents that require deep data dives. By using Kusto Query Language (KQL), you can sift through your data.

For instance, if you want to investigate an incident related to a potentially anomalous login activity, you can use KQL to query the SigninLogs data table as per your specific criteria, like location, time, user, etc.

kusto
SigninLogs
| where Location == 'Australia' and TimeGenerated > ago(7d)
| project TimeGenerated, UserPrincipalName, Location

Above KQL code returns logins from Australia in the past 7 days.

Conclusion

Microsoft Sentinel provides powerful tools and features to investigate incidents effectively and efficiently. The comprehensive understanding of these aspects is beneficial for SC-200 exam and real-world application. As with any other skill, practice and hands-on experience with the tool will significantly enhance your ability and confidence in investigating incidents using Microsoft Sentinel.

Practice Test

True or False: Microsoft Sentinel is an AI-based service in Azure that provides security insights to help protect your environment.

  • True
  • False

Answer: True

Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution.

What is the role of Kusto Query Language (KQL) when investigating incidents in Microsoft Sentinel?

  • A. To format log data
  • B. To collect log data
  • C. To analyze log data
  • D. To delete log data

Answer: C. To analyze log data

Explanation: KQL is used in Azure Monitor, Azure Data Explorer, and Microsoft Sentinel for complex analysis of data.

Single select: When investigating incidents in Microsoft Sentinel, which of the following can be considered as an alert tactic?

  • A. Credential theft
  • B. Asset discovery
  • C. Forensics
  • D. Both A and B

Answer: D. Both A and B

Explanation: In Microsoft Sentinel, an alert tactic can include things like “Initial Access”, “Execution”, “Persistence”, “Privilege Escalation”, “Defense Evasion”, “Credential Access”, “Discovery”, etc.

True or False: You can use Microsoft Sentinel to convert data into actionable security insights across your enterprises?

  • True
  • False

Answer: True

Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel collects data from all sources, including users, applications, servers, and devices running on-premises or in any cloud, letting you reason on that data and detect threats quickly.

Multiple select: Which of the following actions can be performed in the Incident Page of Microsoft Sentinel?

  • A. View incident details
  • B. Assign incidents
  • C. Status update
  • D. Organize protests

Answer: A. View incident details, B. Assign incidents, C. Status update

Explanation: In the Microsoft Sentinel Incidents page, you can open incidents, view their details, bias them, assign them, change their status, and more.

True or False: One cannot bookmark interesting or suspicious entities, as Microsoft Sentinel doesn’t support it.

  • True
  • False

Answer: False

Explanation: The ‘Bookmarks’ feature enables analysts to save interesting findings that they see during an investigation.

Microsoft Sentinel supports the use of which query language to explore incidents?

  • A. SQL Query Language
  • B. Oracle Query Language
  • C. Kusto Query Language
  • D. Python Query Language

Answer: C. Kusto Query Language

Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel supports Kusto Query Language (KQL) to retrieve, filter, and interpret the log data.

Multiple select: Who among the following can use Microsoft Sentinel?

  • A. Security analysts
  • B. Security administrators
  • C. System operators
  • D. All of the above

Answer: D. All of the above

Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel can be used by security analysts, security administrators, system operators, and various others as it provides insightful and comprehensive security details.

True or False: In Microsoft Sentinel, the severity of an incident cannot be changed.

  • True
  • False

Answer: False

Explanation: The severity of an incident in Microsoft Sentinel can be changed to reflect its importance to your organization.

Single select: The graph in Microsoft Sentinel represents _________.

  • A. Relations between entities
  • B. Relations between alerts
  • C. Relations between incidents
  • D. All of the above

Answer: D. All of the above

Explanation: The graph in Microsoft Sentinel helps to represent the relations between entities, alerts, and incidents.

Interview Questions

What is Microsoft Sentinel?

Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution.

What is the main purpose of Microsoft Sentinel?

Microsoft Sentinel provides intelligent security analytics at cloud scale for your entire enterprise. It makes it easy to collect security data across your entire hybrid organization from devices, to users, to apps, to servers on any cloud.

How does Microsoft Sentinel aid in investigating incidents?

Microsoft Sentinel helps you detect, investigate, and respond to security threats. With AI on your side, it helps identify real threats quickly, respond swiftly, and automatically adjust protection to changing threats.

What is an incident in Microsoft Sentinel?

An incident in Microsoft Sentinel represents an aggregation of related alerts and additional context to assist in the examination of the full scope of a potential attack.

What are the main steps to investigate an incident in Microsoft Sentinel?

The main steps to investigate an incident in Microsoft Sentinel are: Identifying the incident, assessing its impact, determining its scope, understanding the kill chain, examining entities involved, researching the alert, and taking response actions.

What does the “Investigation Graph” in Microsoft Sentinel illustrate?

The “Investigation Graph” in Microsoft Sentinel provides a visual representation of the relationships between entities involved in an incident such as users, hosts, files, and alerts, to help in analyzing and investigating the incident.

How can you leverage the Threat intelligence in Microsoft Sentinel for incident investigation?

Threat intelligence in Microsoft Sentinel helps you better understand the threats detected by providing detailed information about known bad actors, their methods, and can help in prioritizing incident investigations.

How can Playbooks automate tasks in Microsoft Sentinel?

Playbooks in Microsoft Sentinel, powered by Azure Logic Apps, can help in automating tasks such as closing false positive incidents, notifying on-call teams about high-severity incidents, or blocking suspected IP addresses.

Is it possible to customize Analytics rules in Microsoft Sentinel?

Yes, you can customize Analytics rules in Microsoft Sentinel to better fit your environment and use case, which can help in reducing false positives and increasing accuracy of incidents.

What role does Microsoft Security Graph play in Microsoft Sentinel?

Microsoft Security Graph provides a unified view of security data across your organization which can be leveraged by Microsoft Sentinel to detect and investigate threats, providing better visibility into security posture.

In Microsoft Sentinel, what purpose does the “Hunting” feature serve?

The Hunting feature in Microsoft Sentinel enables proactive searching over historical data. It is designed to help security analysts track down entities related to known threats and uncover new threats.

How does Unified Security Operations help in incident investigation in Microsoft Sentinel?

Unified Security Operations in Microsoft Sentinel provides a centralized place to view and manage alerts, making it easier to identify critical alerts and take appropriate actions quickly.

How do you use notebooks for incident investigation in Microsoft Sentinel?

Notebooks in Microsoft Sentinel, built on top of Azure Notebooks and Jupyter, provide a collaborative environment to run complex queries, build machine learning models, and create rich visualizations for deep threat exploration and knowledge sharing.

Can you integrate Microsoft Sentinel with other solutions and services?

Yes, Microsoft Sentinel can be integrated with other solutions and services including third-party solutions for extended visibility, collaboration, and improved security posture.

How does the Investigation feature assist in threat hunting?

The Investigation feature in Microsoft Sentinel helps in threat hunting by providing a platform to proactively search, identify, and understand sophisticated threats before they cause harm. It leverages vast amounts of data from across your digital estate.

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