Integrating Microsoft Sentinel with Samurai XDR for Enhanced Threat Detection

Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform has proven to be one of its most prolific product ecosystems. Azure’s influence extends way beyond pure cloud services, giving rise to its IAM solution Entra Id and Microsoft Sentinel. Sentinel is a cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) that provides intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence to mitigate security threats.

While it can be easy to get started with Sentinel, especially for resources inside Azure, Sentinel can rapidly become very complex to manage and configure, especially if you really want to get value from its rich functionality. Many organizations, especially smaller ones, don’t have the resources required to manage the complexity that comes with Sentinel. To demonstrate a more intuitive solution, we will explore how you can integrate Sentinel with extended detection and response (XDR) to achieve optimal cybersecurity functionality without the need to build the skills base needed to manage and understand the complexity of Sentinel directly.

Sentinel’s Strengths: Ease of Deployment and Integration

Being a cloud-native product, one of the immediate strengths of Sentinel SIEM is its ease of deployment. This is especially true when you start using it to monitor events inside Microsoft Azure since it can be deployed from the Azure portal within minutes and doesn’t require the deployment of any infrastructure.

Sentinel truly stands out in its extensive selection of integrations and connectors. As part of Microsoft’s security tooling ecosystem, Sentinel integrates tightly with other Microsoft security products, like M365 Defender and Azure Defender for Cloud. While Sentinel can ingest generic logging sources like Syslog and Common Event Format (CEF), it also provides support for hundreds of products both from Microsoft and other vendors via pre-built connectors.

Addressing Challenges in Sentinel SIEM Threat Detection

Sentinel’s threat detection capabilities are driven by a powerful rules-based engine and is fully scalable. Sentinel provides rich threat detection capabilities, including advanced analytics and machine learning via its Fusion correlation engine. Rules can either be chosen from templates provided by Microsoft or they can be written by the user using Microsoft’s Kusto Query Language.

However, to maintain detection fidelity, the task of curating pre-defined rules based on known attack patterns, suspicious behaviors, or specific conditions that could indicate a security incident is labor intensive, continuously adding additional rules which are tailored to the organization’s unique environment. And, to be done properly, this task also requires the skills of experienced SecOp practitioners. Smaller SMBs may lack the budget and the expertise to build a strong cybersecurity posture with Sentinel’s rules-based alerts paradigm. XDR threat detection and response technology is the next evolution of SIEM and managed detection and response (MDR) platforms. Yet, I am not suggesting a rip and replace scenario with Sentinel. You can still benefit from the strengths of Sentinel with its easy access to Microsoft products. XDR is vendor agnostic and integrates seamlessly to complement any SIEMs and other security solutions.

SIEM —> MDR —> XDR —> Enterprise-Grade Cybersecurity

SIEMs collect data, helping companies meet regulatory compliance by providing audit trails, reporting, and log management, but stop short at threat detection. MDR is not entirely comprehensive, requiring businesses to implement security controls and manage security posture. XDR uses advanced machine learning and AI to quickly identify and respond to anomalies and ranks threats for better prioritization and faster response times – and delivers the information to the SMB in one dashboard, a single view of detection, investigation, and response.

Complexities of Sentinel SIEM

While it is easy to get started with Sentinel, maintaining it can become complex, especially if you want to integrate non-Microsoft products and perform advanced threat detection which relies on more than rulesets. For instance, to use threat intelligence in Sentinel you first need to install a connector to ingest a threat intelligence feed, such as the TI connector available from Microsoft. From there, you need rules which act on the TI that you have ingested into Sentinel. While the tools to do this are readily available, they still need to be configured. XDRs, including Samurai XDR, is a streamlined tool that doesn’t require laborious configuration or a dedicated, highly skilled security team to operate it.

The Sentinel pricing model can rapidly become complex, as it is based on the volume of data ingested and the length of retention. By default, Sentinel retains log data for 30 days. This can be extended to 90 days without incurring additional charges. Beyond 90 days, data retention volumes should be carefully estimated to avoid any unpleasant surprises in your invoices.

We designed our XDR to open access to smaller organizations, especially SMBs, that don’t have the resources to manage the complexity which comes with architecting and building a full threat detection and response solution based on Sentinel.

Advantages of Integrating XDR with Sentinel

By integrating Microsoft Sentinel with Samurai XDR, you can achieve a powerful cybersecurity posture but retain the simplicity of a solution that doesn’t burden you with a lot of work to launch, maintain, and update it. For instance:

• The simple, per endpoint pricing model of Samurai XDR removes the need for you to try to calculate the volumes of logs your environment generates.

• Samurai XDR gives you a full year’s data retention for all your logs.

• The always-on, one-view solution allows you to integrate all your threat detection for both on-premises and cloud-based technologies.

• The detection capabilities of Samurai XDR use advanced analytics and machine learning straight out of the box, without any need for you to perform any configuration or tuning.

• Samurai XDR’s threat intelligence, which benefits from the unique vantage point provided by NTT’s Tier 1 Internet backbone, is enabled as core part of the detection engine. This provides visibility of threat activity across 40% of the world’s internet coverage.

By integrating Microsoft Sentinel with Samurai XDR, you can combine the strengths of Sentinel SIEM with an intuitive next-gen technology that gathers intelligence and then detects and identify threats in real-time before they can cause damage

To see Samurai XDR in action in your own environment, claim your 30 Day Free Trial today.

About the Author:

Greg Garten is the Chief Technology Officer of NTT Security Holdings and Samurai XDR, with 25 years of experience ranging from telco/carrier to advanced technology startup environments, focusing on the creation and delivery of global managed services. Greg has been with NTT for over 10 years, focusing on the engineering and product development of their cybersecurity platforms, products, and services. Greg has also held various engineering and executive roles at companies such as Intuit, Cisco, Silver Lake Sumeru, Exodus Communication, Cybera, and several overseas technology startups and multinational technology companies. He is an active Member IEEE, ISC2, and ISSA.

3 Takeaways:

1. Ease of Deployment and Integration: Sentinel is easy to deploy within Azure and integrates well with Microsoft products and other vendors.

2. Challenges: Sentinel's complexity and expense means that SMBs may lack the budget and the expertise to build a strong cybersecurity posture with Sentinel SIEM.

3. XDR Integration Benefits: Integrating Sentinel with Samurai XDR fortifies and simplifies cybersecurity management, providing enhanced threat detection without the need for extensive configuration or expertise.

 

Bibliography:

1. NTT “Global Threat Intelligence Report 2024.” https://www.security.ntt/global-threat-intelligence-report-2024 2024

2. Montesino, R., Fenz, S., & Baluja, W. (2012). SIEM‐based framework for security controlsautomation. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09685221211267639/full/html. Information Management & Computer Security, 20(4), 248-263.