Microsoft’s Efforts to Improve Cybersecurity with Sentinel

In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity plays a vital role in ensuring that computers, data, networks and programs are protected from unauthorized access. Organizations are continuously faced with data breaches, identity theft and other forms of cybercrime that can cause financial and reputational damage.

According to experienced IT support providers at TechQuarters, one of the most important things you can do for your business is use trusted services and products that can stop threats quickly and efficiently.

Microsoft has made it a priority to constantly improve and develop its cybersecurity to prevent and respond to any potential security incidents that might happen to its users.

Microsoft Sentinel is a newer tool that works in the Microsoft Azure cloud to allow teams to focus on protecting the company rather than spend time maintaining the infrastructure, giving higher efficiency and accurate security analytics.

Sentinel is a cloud-native and scalable SEIM (security information and event management) and SOAR (Security orchestration, automation, and response) solution. It works on a cycle to deliver end-to-end functionality by constantly collecting, detecting, investigating and responding.

• Collection – Sentinel begins by gathering data at cloud scale from various points including devices, users, applications and infrastructure both in cloud and on-premises environments.
  
• Detection – By leveraging analytics and threat intelligence capabilities, Sentinel can identify previously unknown threats while also reducing the number of false positives.
  
• Investigation – Sentinel uses built-in artificial intelligence technology to efficiently investigate suspicious activities at scale.
  
• Response – After a security incident is detected it’s essential to respond quickly to minimize any damage. Sentinel uses custom orchestration and automation to create workflows and automate common security tasks. This includes isolating infected devices from the network, blocking malicious IP addresses and disabling compromised user accounts. By automating these tasks threats can be addressed faster and more consistently. 

This cycle of cybersecurity is reliant on AI to apply automation where a human isn’t needed but it’s not just about the initial automation of tasks. The AI will improve as time goes by. After the AI presents its initial lists of probable attacks and vulnerabilities, Sentinel uses the feedback and the actions taken by the user to update its rules to better identify threats in the next cycle. Each time it will get smarter about which alerts are worth alerting the user as a priority.

Another key strength of Microsoft Sentinel highlighted by Office 365 Consultancy providers is its integration with other Microsoft security products such as Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Defender. This gives businesses a comprehensive group of security solutions that are integrated to work seamlessly together to provide end-to-end protection against a wide variety of cyber threats.

Azure Active Directory is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management solution. By integrating with Azure Active Directory, Sentinel allows better visibility into suspicious user activity and potentially compromised accounts. Any unusual activity with the cloud application will be alerted to the users by Sentinel.

And when it comes to Microsoft Defender, Sentinel uses the endpoint security platform to detect and respond to any potential threats with machine learning and behavioural analysis data. Microsoft Defender sends data to Sentinel automatically for analysis to fund any correlations to other security data across the business.

The reality is that there is no competition for Sentinel at the moment especially if your business is already running with Microsoft products and services. There are going to be some upfront investments with time and money in order to get Sentinel configured for your business’s individual needs. A good IT Support Company can help make the process easier because it doesn’t take a day or two to set up.

But once Microsoft Sentinel is up and running it is easy to manage. It allows security teams to no longer have to take care of the infrastructure but rather only focus on incident events. Sentinel is the best you can get in terms of a SIEM and SOAR platform, other SIEMs don’t even compare to Microsoft Sentinel right now.