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Modify content to use the Advanced Security Information Model (ASIM) (Public preview)

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Normalized security content in Microsoft Sentinel includes analytics rules, hunting queries, and workbooks that work with unifying normalization parsers.

You can find normalized, out-of-the-box content in Microsoft Sentinel galleries and solutions, create your own normalized content, or modify existing, custom content to use normalized data.

This article explains how to convert existing Microsoft Sentinel analytics rules to use normalized data with the Advanced Security Information Model (ASIM).

To understand how normalized content fits within the ASIM architecture, refer to the ASIM architecture diagram.

Tip

Also watch the Deep Dive Webinar on Microsoft Sentinel Normalizing Parsers and Normalized Content or review the slides. For more information, see Next steps.

Important

ASIM is currently in PREVIEW. The Azure Preview Supplemental Terms include additional legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Modify custom content to use normalization

To enable your custom Microsoft Sentinel content to use normalization:

  • Modify your queries to use any unifying parsers relevant to the query.

  • Modify field names in your query to use the normalized schema field names.

  • When applicable, change conditions to use the normalized values of the fields in your query.

Sample normalization for analytics rules

For example, consider the Rare client observed with high reverse DNS lookup count DNS analytic rule, which works on DNS events send by Infoblox DNS servers:

let threshold = 200;
InfobloxNIOS
| where ProcessName =~ "named" and Log_Type =~ "client"
| where isnotempty(ResponseCode)
| where ResponseCode =~ "NXDOMAIN"
| summarize count() by Client_IP, bin(TimeGenerated,15m)
| where count_ > threshold
| join kind=inner (InfobloxNIOS
    | where ProcessName =~ "named" and Log_Type =~ "client"
    | where isnotempty(ResponseCode)
    | where ResponseCode =~ "NXDOMAIN"
    ) on Client_IP
| extend timestamp = TimeGenerated, IPCustomEntity = Client_IP

The following code is the source-agnostic version, which uses normalization to provide the same detection for any source providing DNS query events. The following example uses built-in ASIM parsers:

_Im_Dns(responsecodename='NXDOMAIN')
| summarize count() by SrcIpAddr, bin(TimeGenerated,15m)
| where count_ > threshold
| join kind=inner (imDns(responsecodename='NXDOMAIN')) on SrcIpAddr
| extend timestamp = TimeGenerated, IPCustomEntity = SrcIpAddr

To use workspace-deployed ASIM parsers, replace the first line with the following code:

imDns(responsecodename='NXDOMAIN')

Differences between built-in and workspace-deployed parsers

The two options in the example above are functionally identical. The normalized, source-agnostic version has the following differences:

  • The _Im_Dns or imDnsnormalized parsers are used instead of the Infoblox Parser.

  • The normalized parsers fetch only DNS query events, so there is no need for checking the event type, as performed by the where ProcessName =~ "named" and Log_Type =~ "client" in the Infoblox version.

  • The SrcIpAddr field is used instead of Client_IP.

  • Parser parameter filtering is used for ResponseCodeName, eliminating the need for an explicit where clauses.

Note

Apart from supporting any normalized DNS source, the normalized version is shorter and easier to understand.

If the schema or parsers do not support filtering parameters, the changes are similar, except that the filtering conditions are kept from the original query. For example:

let threshold = 200;
imDns
| where isnotempty(ResponseCodeName)
| where ResponseCodeName =~ "NXDOMAIN"
| summarize count() by SrcIpAddr, bin(TimeGenerated,15m)
| where count_ > threshold
| join kind=inner (imDns
    | where isnotempty(ResponseCodeName)
    | where ResponseCodeName =~ "NXDOMAIN"
    ) on SrcIpAddr
| extend timestamp = TimeGenerated, IPCustomEntity = SrcIpAddr

Next steps

This article discusses the Advanced Security Information Model (ASIM) content.

For more information, see: