Cybersecurity today is a high-stakes battleground. Threat actors are faster, smarter, and increasingly armed with AI-driven tools that can overwhelm traditional defenses. Add to that the complexity of hybrid work, multi-cloud environments, and ever-expanding endpoints, and it’s clear that legacy security solutions just can’t keep up.
What organisations need isn’t just another tool, they need a scalable, intelligent and integrated platform that can outpace modern threats.
That’s where Microsoft Sentinel comes in. As a cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) solution, Sentinel is redefining how security teams detect, investigate, and respond to threats. By combining advanced AI, automation, and seamless integration across the Microsoft ecosystem and beyond, Sentinel empowers security operations to move from reactive firefighting to proactive defense.
What Is Microsoft Sentinel?
Microsoft Sentinel is designed to provide a centralised view of an organisation’s security posture, enabling teams to collect, detect, investigate, and respond to threats across an organisation distributed digital footprint. It scales easily and uses AI under the hood for enhanced threat detection, faster security investigations and automated incident response. Built correctly, Microsoft Sentinel proves to be highly capable and right for modern security operations.
Key Capabilities and Features
Microsoft Sentinel’s strength lies in its rich feature set, which continues to evolve with advancements in automation and artificial intelligence.
1. Data Ingestion and Management
Sentinel supports a wide array of built-in data connectors for Microsoft services (e.g., Microsoft Defender, Microsoft 365, Azure), other cloud platforms (AWS, GCP), and third-party tools (Cisco, Barracuda, Symantec) and with Codeless Connector Framework (CCF), you can also create custom connectors easily.
A recent innovation is the modern data lake, offering a cost-effective way to store and manage security data for long term retention and analysis.
2. Threat Detection and Analytics
Leveraging Microsoft’s global threat intelligence and built-in AI, Sentinel can detect previously unknown threats while minimising false positives.
- Analytics Rules: Written in Kusto Query Language (KQL), these rules form the backbone of threat detection.
- User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA): Identifies insider threats and compromised accounts by flagging anomalous behaviour.
- AI MITRE ATT&CK Tagging: Automatically suggests tagging detections with MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques, enhancing visibility and coverage.
3. Incident Investigation and Response
Sentinel consolidates related alerts into high-fidelity incidents, streamlining the investigation process.
- Investigation Graph: Visualises relationships between entities (users, IPs, devices) to trace attack paths.
- Automation and Playbooks: Enables automated responses such as isolating devices, blocking IPs, or creating support tickets.
- Unified Incident Experience: A new case management system integrates incidents across tenants and workspaces, including Microsoft Defender XDR.
4. Threat Hunting
Security analysts can proactively search for threats using hunting queries, saving notable events as bookmarks to build a timeline of suspicious activity, before alerts are even triggered.
Whats New? – The Shift to a Unified Security Operations Platform
Microsoft is transitioning Sentinel into a unified SecOps platform by integrating it deeply with the Microsoft Defender XDR ecosystem. This move aims to eliminate silos and provide a cohesive experience for security teams.
All Sentinel features are being migrated from the Azure portal to the Microsoft Defender portal, with full transition expected by July 2026. New customers are already onboarded via Defender, streamlining security management and enhancing collaboration between SIEM and XDR teams.
Microsoft Sentinel vs. Traditional SIEMs
Sentinel’s cloud-native architecture offers several advantages over legacy, on-premises SIEM solutions:
- Scalability and Cost Efficiency: Automatically scales to handle large data volumes with a pay-as-you-go model.
- Rapid Deployment: No on-prem setup means faster onboarding and quicker value realisation.
- Built-in AI and Automation: Advanced analytics and SOAR capabilities are integrated from the start, reducing alert fatigue and improving response times.
- Unified Ecosystem: Deep integration with Microsoft products provides richer context for threat detection and response.
Conclusion
Microsoft Sentinel is far more than just a SIEM, it’s a strategic platform built for the realities of modern security operations. With its cloud-first architecture, AI-driven threat detection, and seamless integration across Microsoft and third-party ecosystems, Sentinel enables security teams to stay ahead of adversaries, reduce noise, and respond with speed and confidence.
Adopting Sentinel isn’t just about upgrading technology, it’s about transforming the way your organisation approaches security.
Ready to see how Microsoft Sentinel can strengthen your security posture? Contact us today to start the conversation.
