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Stream alerts to monitoring solutions

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Microsoft Defender for Cloud has the ability to stream security alerts into various Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Security Orchestration Automated Response (SOAR), and IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions. Security alerts are generated when threats are detected on your resources. Defender for Cloud prioritizes and lists the alerts on the Alerts page, along with additional information needed to quickly investigate the problem. Detailed steps are provided to assist you to remediate the detected threat. All alerts data is retained for 90 days.

There are built-in Azure tools that are available that ensure you can view your alert data in the following solutions:

  • Microsoft Sentinel
  • Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud
  • Power BI
  • ServiceNow
  • IBM's QRadar
  • Palo Alto Networks
  • ArcSight

Stream alerts to Defender XDR with the Defender XDR API

Defender for Cloud natively integrates with Microsoft Defender XDR allows you to use Defender XDR's incidents and alerts API to stream alerts and incidents into non-Microsoft solutions. Defender for Cloud customers can access one API for all Microsoft security products and can use this integration as an easier way to export alerts and incidents.

Learn how to integrate SIEM tools with Defender XDR.

Stream alerts to Microsoft Sentinel

Defender for Cloud natively integrates with Microsoft Sentinel Azure's cloud-native SIEM and SOAR solution.

Microsoft Sentinel's connectors for Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Sentinel includes built-in connectors for Microsoft Defender for Cloud at the subscription and tenant levels.

You can:

When you connect Defender for Cloud to Microsoft Sentinel, the status of Defender for Cloud alerts that get ingested into Microsoft Sentinel is synchronized between the two services. For example, when an alert is closed in Defender for Cloud, that alert is also shown as closed in Microsoft Sentinel. When you change the status of an alert in Defender for Cloud, the status of the alert in Microsoft Sentinel is also updated. However, the statuses of any Microsoft Sentinel incidents that contain the synchronized Microsoft Sentinel alert aren't updated.

You can enable the bi-directional alert synchronization feature to automatically sync the status of the original Defender for Cloud alerts with Microsoft Sentinel incidents that contain the copies of the Defender for Cloud alerts. For example, when a Microsoft Sentinel incident that contains a Defender for Cloud alert is closed, Defender for Cloud automatically closes the corresponding original alert.

Learn how to connect alerts from Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

Note

The bi-directional alert synchronization feature isn't available in the Azure Government cloud.

Configure ingestion of all audit logs into Microsoft Sentinel

Another alternative for investigating Defender for Cloud alerts in Microsoft Sentinel is to stream your audit logs into Microsoft Sentinel:

Tip

Microsoft Sentinel is billed based on the volume of data that it ingests for analysis in Microsoft Sentinel and stores in the Azure Monitor Log Analytics workspace. Microsoft Sentinel offers a flexible and predictable pricing model. Learn more at the Microsoft Sentinel pricing page.

Stream alerts to QRadar and Splunk

To export security alerts to Splunk and QRadar, you need to use Event Hubs and a built-in connector. You can either use a PowerShell script or the Azure portal to set up the requirements for exporting security alerts for your subscription or tenant. Once the requirements are in place, you need to use the procedure specific to each SIEM to install the solution in the SIEM platform.

Prerequisites

Before you set up the Azure services for exporting alerts, make sure you have:

  • Azure subscription (Create a free account)
  • Azure resource group (Create a resource group)
  • Owner role on the alerts scope (subscription, management group or tenant), or these specific permissions:
    • Write permissions for event hubs and the Event Hubs Policy
    • Create permissions for Microsoft Entra applications, if you aren't using an existing Microsoft Entra application
    • Assign permissions for policies, if you're using the Azure Policy 'DeployIfNotExist'

Set up the Azure services

You can set up your Azure environment to support continuous export using either:

  1. Download and run the PowerShell script.

  2. Enter the required parameters.

  3. Execute the script.

The script performs all of the steps for you. When the script finishes, use the output to install the solution in the SIEM platform.

Azure portal

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

  2. Search for and select Event Hubs.

  3. Create an Event Hubs namespace and event hub.

  4. Define a policy for the event hub with Send permissions.

If you're streaming alerts to QRadar:

  1. Create an event hub Listen policy.

  2. Copy and save the connection string of the policy to use in QRadar.

  3. Create a consumer group.

  4. Copy and save the name to use in the SIEM platform.

  5. Enable continuous export of security alerts to the defined event hub.

  6. Create a storage account.

  7. Copy and save the connection string to the account to use in QRadar.

For more detailed instructions, see Prepare Azure resources for exporting to Splunk and QRadar.

If you're streaming alerts to Splunk:

  1. Create a Microsoft Entra application.

  2. Save the Tenant, App ID, and App password.

  3. Give permissions to the Microsoft Entra Application to read from the event hub you created before.

For more detailed instructions, see Prepare Azure resources for exporting to Splunk and QRadar.

Connect the event hub to your preferred solution using the built-in connectors

Each SIEM platform has a tool to enable it to receive alerts from Azure Event Hubs. Install the tool for your platform to start receiving alerts.

Tool Hosted in Azure Description
IBM QRadar No The Microsoft Azure DSM and Microsoft Azure Event Hubs Protocol are available for download from the IBM support website.
Splunk No Splunk Add-on for Microsoft Cloud Services is an open source project available in Splunkbase.

If you can't install an add-on in your Splunk instance, for example if you're using a proxy or running on Splunk Cloud, you can forward these events to the Splunk HTTP Event Collector using Azure Function For Splunk, which is triggered by new messages in the event hub.

Stream alerts with continuous export

To stream alerts into ArcSight, SumoLogic, Syslog servers, LogRhythm, Logz.io Cloud Observability Platform, and other monitoring solutions, connect Defender for Cloud using continuous export and Azure Event Hubs.

Note

To stream alerts at the tenant level, use this Azure policy and set the scope at the root management group. You'll need permissions for the root management group as explained in Defender for Cloud permissions: Deploy export to an event hub for Microsoft Defender for Cloud alerts and recommendations.

To stream alerts with continuous export:

  1. Enable continuous export:

  2. Connect the event hub to your preferred solution using the built-in connectors:

    Tool Hosted in Azure Description
    SumoLogic No Instructions for setting up SumoLogic to consume data from an event hub are available at Collect Logs for the Azure Audit App from Event Hubs.
    ArcSight No The ArcSight Azure Event Hubs smart connector is available as part of the ArcSight smart connector collection.
    Syslog server No If you want to stream Azure Monitor data directly to a syslog server, you can use a solution based on an Azure function.
    LogRhythm No Instructions to set up LogRhythm to collect logs from an event hub are available here.
    Logz.io Yes For more information, see Getting started with monitoring and logging using Logz.io for Java apps running on Azure

  3. (Optional) Stream the raw logs to the event hub and connect to your preferred solution. Learn more in Monitoring data available.

To view the event schemas of the exported data types, visit the Event Hubs event schemas.

Use the Microsoft Graph Security API to stream alerts to non-Microsoft applications

Defender for Cloud's built-in integration with Microsoft Graph Security API without the need of any further configuration requirements.

You can use this API to stream alerts from your entire tenant (and data from many Microsoft Security products) into non-Microsoft SIEMs and other popular platforms:

Note

The preferred way to export alerts is through Continuously export Microsoft Defender for Cloud data.

Next steps

This page explained how to ensure your Microsoft Defender for Cloud alert data is available in your SIEM, SOAR, or ITSM tool of choice. For related material, see: