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When a potential security threat is detected, it’s essential to assess, investigate, and respond swiftly to mitigate any potential damage. Microsoft Sentinel provides an integrated solution for security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR), which can be leveraged to enhance incident response activities.
An incident in Microsoft Sentinel is an aggregation of related alerts that may represent an attack or a security threat. These alerts are triggered by analytics rules that detect suspicious activities. The incident page in Sentinel provides a comprehensive overview, including the summary, alert details, and investigation insights.
Microsoft Sentinel creates incidents based on predefined or custom analytics rules. These rules have associated severities:
Playbooks in Microsoft Sentinel are collections of automated tasks or workflows that can respond to incidents. These tasks are powered by Azure Logic Apps and can range from simple actions like sending notifications to complex operations such as gathering data from other security tools, orchestrating changes across systems, and creating tickets in a third-party IT service management solution.
Threat intelligence in Microsoft Sentinel helps enrich the incidents with context and indicators of compromise (IoCs). It allows analysts to better understand the threat actor’s motives, methods, and tactics.
The ‘Incidents’ blade in Sentinel includes multiple functionalities:
Functionality | Description |
---|---|
List View | Provides a list of incidents ordered by severity or time. |
Incident Details | Shows specific information such as alerts and entities. |
Investigation | Graphical view to see relationships between entities. |
Timeline | Chronological visualization of incident-related events. |
Metrics | Insights into incident trends and patterns. |
Assign to User | Incident assignment to team members for accountability. |
Status Update | Update the status (Active, Closed, False Positive, etc.). |
When an incident is resolved, it must be properly closed in Sentinel with a status that reflects the outcome (e.g., Resolved, False Positive). Documentation is key for accountability and future reference.
In summary, responding to incidents in Microsoft Sentinel involves a structured approach that encompasses triage, investigation, automated responses with playbooks, incident handling, leveraging threat intelligence, and closure documentation. Each step is crucial in ensuring that the security threat is addressed promptly and effectively to minimize the impact on the organization.
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel supports automated responses using playbooks, which are collections of automated tasks or workflows.
Correct Answer: D) Entity behavior
Explanation: Entity behavior provides context by gathering related information from different data sources during incident investigation.
Correct Answer: False
Explanation: In Microsoft Sentinel, playbooks can be triggered manually or automatically in response to specific alerts or incidents.
Correct Answer: D) Remotely wiping a compromised device
Explanation: Remotely wiping a device is not a native functionality within the Microsoft Sentinel incident interface.
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel allows you to run queries across multiple workspaces, which is useful in large or complex environments.
Correct Answer: B) Severity
Explanation: The severity level (Informational, Low, Medium, High) of an incident helps in prioritizing responses based on potential impact.
Correct Answer: A) True Positive, B) False Positive, C) Benign Positive, D) Inconclusive
Explanation: These classifications are used to categorize the nature of incidents once they have been investigated.
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: Bookmarks in Microsoft Sentinel are used to flag and add notes to hunting search results, making them easily accessible for later use or further investigation.
Correct Answer: B) Creating tickets in ITSM tools
Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel’s SOAR capabilities include the ability to create tickets in ITSM tools as part of an orchestrated response to incidents.
Correct Answer: True
Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel can be integrated with Azure Defender (now part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud) to correlate data and provide comprehensive security management.
Correct Answer: C) To schedule queries to run at certain intervals and look for potential threats
Explanation: Analytics rules in Microsoft Sentinel are used to run scheduled queries against the data to identify threats and generate alerts or incidents.
Correct Answer: False
Explanation: Microsoft Sentinel integrates with threat intelligence providers and can automatically update indicators to help you stay current with emerging threats.
Automation rules in Microsoft Sentinel help automate incident handling by defining the actions to take based on the information in the incident.
You can create an automation rule in Microsoft Sentinel by defining the trigger conditions, actions, and logic.
A trigger condition in an automation rule is the criteria that must be met for the rule to be triggered. For example, it could be a specific event ID or log entry.
The available actions in an automation rule include running a playbook, sending an email notification, creating a ticket, and updating a status field.
You can configure the logic of an automation rule by using logical operators such as AND, OR, and NOT to define the conditions for triggering the rule.
You can test an automation rule before deploying it by using the Test action to simulate the trigger conditions and verify that the actions are executed correctly.
Yes, you can add multiple actions to an automation rule to define the steps that should be taken in response to the incident.
You can view the status of automation rules in Microsoft Sentinel by checking the Automation Rules blade in the Azure portal.
Using automation rules in incident response can help streamline the response process, reduce response times, and ensure that critical steps are not missed.
You can monitor the effectiveness of automation rules in Microsoft Sentinel by tracking the incident metrics such as Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA) and Mean Time to Resolve (MTTR).
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