What is our primary use case?
It's mostly used for cloud-based analytics for proactive incident response. As an enterprise product, it falls under next-gen SIEM.
How has it helped my organization?
An advantage of Sentinel is that Microsoft has acquired RiskIQ as a threat intel platform and they've amalgamated it into the platform. When any analytical (or correlation) rule triggers, the enrichment is bundled within the solution. We don't need to input anything, it is there by default. Every rule is enriched right at the triggering or detection stage, which eases the job of the SOC analyst. The platform has become so intelligent compared to other solutions. When an alert is triggered, the enrichment happens so that we know exactly at that moment the true or false posture. This is a mature feature compared to the rest of the providers.
Most of our customers use M365 with E3 or E5 licenses, and some use Business Premium, which provides the entire bundle of M365 Security including EDR, DLP, Zero Trust, and email security. There are two native advantages for customers that use M365 Security and Sentinel. The first advantage is that the log or security-event ingestion into Sentinel is free. Cost-wise, they're saving a lot and that is a major advantage.
The other advantage is that when you use M365 Security with Sentinel, you get multi-domain visibility. That means when attacks happen with different kill-chains, in different stages through the email channel or a web channel, there is intelligence-sharing and that is a missing piece when customers integrate non-Microsoft solutions with Sentinel. With Microsoft, it is all included and the intelligence is seamlessly shared. The moment an email security issue is detected, it is sent to the Sentinel platform as well as to the M365 Defender platform. The moment it is flagged, it can trigger.
That way, if the email security missed something, the EDR will pick up a signal triggered by a payload or by a script being shared and will trigger back to the email security to put that particular email onto a blacklist. This cross-intelligence is happening without even a SIEM coming into play.
And a type of SOAR functionality is found within M365 Defender. It can run a complete, automated investigation response at the email security level, meaning the XDR platform level. When M365 Security is combined with Sentinel it gives the customer more power to remediate attacks faster. Detection and response are more powerful when M365 Defender and Sentinel are combined, compared to a customer going with a third-party solution and Sentinel.
Sentinel has an investigation pane to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place, where SOC analysts can drill down. It will gather all the artifacts so that the analysts can drill down without even leaving the page. They can see the start of the attack and the sequence of events from Sentinel. And on the investigation page, SOC analysts can create a note with their comments. They can also call for a response action from that particular page.
Also, most of the next-gen cloud analytics vendors don't provide a common MSSP platform for the service provider to operate. That means we have to build our own analytics in front of those solutions. Sentinel has something called Lighthouse where we can query and hunt and pull all the metadata into an MSSP platform. That means multi-customer threat prioritization can be done because we have complete visibility of all our customers. We can see how an attack pattern is evolving in different verticals. Our analysts can see exactly what the top-10-priority events are from all of our customers. Even if we have a targeted vertical, such as BFSI, we can create a use case around that and apply it to a customer that has not been targeted. We can leverage multiple verticals and multiple customers and see if a new pattern is emerging around it. Those processes are very easy with Sentinel as an MSSP platform.
Because we use 75 percent of the automation possible through the platform we are able to reduce MTTA. It is also helpful that we get all the security incidents including the threat, vulnerability, and security score in one place of control. We don't have to go to one place for XDR, another for email, another for EDR, and a fourth for CASB. Another time saver is the automated investigation response playbooks that are bundled with the solution. They are available for email, EDR, and CASB. As soon as a threat is detected, they will contain it and it will give you a status of partially or fully remediated. Most of our customers have gone for 100 percent automation and remediation. These features save at least 50 percent of the time it would otherwise take.
In terms of cost savings, in addition to the savings on log-ingestion, Microsoft Sentinel uses hyperscaler features with low-tier, medium-tier, and hot storage. For customers that need long-term data storage, this is the ideal platform. If you go with Securonix or Palo Alto, you won't see cost savings. But here, they can choose how long they want to keep data in a hot tier or a low or medium tier. That also helps save a lot on costs.
What is most valuable?
It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it.
In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer.
The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work.
And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel.
That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free
What needs improvement?
Only one thing is missing: NDR is not available out of the box. The competitive cloud-native SIEM providers have the NDR component. Currently, Sentinel needs NDR to be powered from either Corelight or some other NDR provider. It needs a third-party OEM. Other than that, it supports the entire gamut of solutions.
Also, we are helping customers build custom data-source integration. Microsoft needs to look at some strategic development on the partner front for out-of-the-box integration.
For how long have I used the solution?
We are an MSSP and we have offered Microsoft Sentinel as a service to our customers for close to one and half years. Before I joined this organization, I worked with another organization that provided Microsoft Sentinel as a service for close to one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The platform is pretty stable. I generally do not have any problems with it unless an issue arises while deploying a playbook. The platform is 98 percent stable. That other 2 percent only happens when you start working deep on customization. Out-of-the-box, everything has been tested and there aren't any problems. But when you try to create something on your own, that's where you may need Microsoft support.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
You can scale it as much as you want. There are no limitations on scaling it.
It supports multi-region environments. Even if it is a large organization with multiple regions and multiple subscriptions, it can collect the data within the regions. With GDPR, logs should stay within the country. The solution can comply with the law of the land and still serve multiple locations.
Sentinel Lighthouse is not only meant for MSSPs. A large organization with diverse geography can meet the local data-residency laws, and Lighthouse will still act as a platform to connect all the regions and provide a centralized dashboard and visibility as an organization. So it can work if the customer has only one region and if there are multiple regions. It is a unique platform.
Also, every six months they develop a lot of playbooks as well as from the marketplace, the Microsoft Sentinel Content hub. MSSPs like us can use it to create content and put it into the marketplace so that other customers or service providers can use them. Similarly, when those parties develop things, they are available to us.
Microsoft is almost too active. We receive something new to offer to our customers every month or two. We also operate Splunk and QRadar but we see a lot of activity from Microsoft compared to the other vendors. That means we have a lot of value-adds to offer to our customers. These updates do not go to the customer by default. As a service provider, that helps us. We are the enablers, and a lot of these updates are free of cost for Sentinel users.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate Microsoft technical support at five out of 10 because we have to go through a lot of steps before we get to the right technical stakeholder. They have to improve a lot.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
As an MSSP we also use Splunk, Qradar, and Micro Focus ArcSight. We added Microsoft as well because of customer demand.
Existing customers that are doing a tech refresh are going for cloud-native. Digital transformation has been the driving factor. A lot of our customers have embraced microservices and they're looking for a new-age, cloud-native SIEM to support cloud-native solutions. For most of our customers that are looking at migrating to Sentinel, the major factor is the cloud. They have moved their data center servers to AWS or GCP or Azure.
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment is straightforward. There are only two or three methods, depending on whether it is on-premises log collection or M365 all-cloud, in which case it is API-based with out-of-the-box APIs. Within a few clicks, we can integrate it. It is simple and fast.
If we're dealing with all-M365 components and Azure components, we can complete deployment within a day. If we're dealing with the customer-log collection, it depends on the customer. There are some prerequisites required, but if the prerequisites are ready, then it takes, again, a day or so.
The number of people involved depends on the situation, but if there is not much more than out-of-the-box deployment, a maximum of two L1 engineers can complete all the activity.
What was our ROI?
From my perspective, the ROI is good because Microsoft keeps getting new things done without any additional cost. Every quarter there is at least a 10 to 15 percent increase with add-on components and content that are free. That is a type of enrichment that customers receive that they do not get from any other platform.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Microsoft gives a discount of 50 percent but only for customers that are clocking 100 GB and above. They should also look at medium and SMB customers in that regard.
There are a lot of advantages for customers with a Microsoft ecosystem. They need to know the tricks for optimizing the cost of Microsoft Sentinel. They need to work with the right service provider that can help them to go through the journey and optimize the cost.
For Microsoft security products there is a preview mode of up to six months, during which time they are non-billable. The customer is free to take that subscription and test it. If they like it, they will be billed but they have six months where they can evaluate the product and see the value. That is the best option and no other vendor gives a free preview for six months.
Other solutions will have two updates a year, maximum. And most of them are not updates to the features but are security or platform-stability updates. Microsoft is completely different. Because the platform is managed by them, they don't give platform updates. They give updates on the content that are free. They keep adding this data, which is helping customers to stay relevant and updated.
Our customers see a lot of value from that process. Some 60 to 70 percent move from preview mode to production.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The challenge with competitive products, or any SIEM, is that they are use-case specific: You define some correlation and they will detect it. Some of the next-gen solutions today work with analytics but the analytics are limited to the logs that have been registered. Other platforms are also not able to pinpoint the inception point of the attack. Once the attack is being reviewed, they will use log sources of that particular attack and will drill down into that particular attack scenario, but they're not able to group the attack life cycle: the initiation of that attack, and the different stages of the attack. The visibility is limited when it comes to other SIEMs.
But Sentinel has something called Fusion, which can give you multi-stage attack visibility. That is not something available from other SIEM vendors. Fusion is a very special kind of detection. It will only trigger when it sees the linkage between multiple attacks detected by multiple data sources. It will try to relate all the attacks and see if there is a link between them. It gives you a complete footprint of how that attack started, how it evolved, how it is going, and which phase it is in now. It will give a complete view of the attack, and that is a missing link compared with other SIEM vendors. This is a unique feature of Microsoft Sentinel.
Sentinel's UEBA is around 90 percent effective, and the threat intel is a 10 out of 10, but it is an add-on. If a customer takes that add-on package, it will give complete threat intel and visibility into the deep and dark web. In addition, it helps a customer to track the external attack surface. It is a comprehensive threat intel platform.
The Sentinel SOAR is a 10 out of 10 and, if I could, I would rate it higher. Other SOAR platforms do not help reduce the price. A customer may not be able to use them after some time because they charge per SOC analyst. With Microsoft, there is no limitation on SOC analysts. It is purely billed based on consumption, which is a great advantage. Every customer can use it. It is free for up to 4,000 actions. Even if a customer goes to 50,000 actions per day, which is normally what a large-volume customer will do, he'll be charged $50, and no competitive SOAR vendor is in that league.
What other advice do I have?
Understand the product capabilities first and, before finalizing your product, see how we can optimize your solutions. Also, try to see a roadmap. Then plan your TCO. Other SIEMs do not give you the advantage of free log ingestion, but if you want to understand the TCO, you need to know what your organization is open to adopting. If you integrate Microsoft solutions in different places, like cloud or CASB, it is going to give you more free ingestion and your TCO is going to be reduced drastically.
Organizations that have a Microsoft E5 license have an advantage because all the Microsoft components we have talked about are free. Unfortunately, we have also witnessed that most of our customers with an E5 license are not using the product features effectively. They need to see how they can leverage these services at the next level and then start integrating with Sentinel. That will give them a better return on investment and a proper TCO.
The platform gives you the ability to do 100 percent automation, but it is up to the service provider or the customer to decide what the percentage should be. The percentage varies from organization to organization. In our organization, we are using 75 percent of the automation before it reaches a SOC analyst. At a certain point, we want to see our SOC Analyst intervene. We want to do that remaining 25 percent manually, where the analyst can call for further responses.
Threat intelligence, in my opinion, is not generally going to work in a predictive mode. It is more a case of enrichment and indicators of compromise. It can only help in direction and correlation, but may not take you to a predictive mode, except if we talk about external attack surface management. The threat intel feed is going to give you an indicator of compromise and that will help you to be proactive but not predictive.
Whereas the external attack surface management and deep and dark web monitoring will monitor all your public assets. If a hacker is doing something in your public-facing assets, it will give a proactive alert that suspicious activities are happening in those assets. That will help my SOC analysts to be predictive, even before an attack happens. If somebody is trying brute force, that's where the predictive comes into play. The deep and dark web monitoring will help to monitor my brand and my domain. If hackers discuss my critical assets or my domain within a dark web chat, this intel can pick that up. In that case, they can say something predictively and that they are planning for an attack on your assets.
In terms of going with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor's security suite, customers need to be smart. Every smart solution keeps its intelligence within the solution. If the landscape includes email, web, EDR, et cetera, at a bare minimum there are eight different attack surfaces and everyone can have different controls. A SOC analyst will have to manage eight different consoles and have eight unique skill sets with deep knowledge of each product. So although individual solutions bring a lot of things to the table, the customer is not able to use those features 100 percent. We are failing when we go with individual products. An individual product may be more capable, but an organization will not be able to use the product effectively. The silos of intelligence, the number of different consoles, and the right skill sets to apply to each product are problems.
In addition, attacks are evolving and the software is evolving along with them. A product vendor may release some new features but the customer won't have the right skill set internally to understand them and apply them.
But with a single-vendor situation like Microsoft, the SOC analyst has nowhere else to go. It is one XDR platform. All the policies, all the investigation, and everything they need to apply is right in one place. There are also more Microsoft-Certified resources in the market, people who are certified in all the Microsoft products. All of a sudden, my skill set problem is solved and there is no need to look at multiple consoles, and the silos of intelligence are also solved. All three pain points are resolved.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner