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Detect threats by using hunting livestream in Microsoft Sentinel

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Sentinel in the Azure portal, Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal

Use hunting livestream to create interactive sessions that let you test newly created queries as events occur, get notifications from the sessions when a match is found, and launch investigations if necessary. You can quickly create a livestream session using any Log Analytics query.

  • Test newly created queries as events occur

    You can test and adjust queries without any conflicts to current rules that are being actively applied to events. After you confirm these new queries work as expected, it's easy to promote them to custom alert rules by selecting an option that elevates the session to an alert.

  • Get notified when threats occur

    You can compare threat data feeds to aggregated log data and be notified when a match occurs. Threat data feeds are ongoing streams of data that are related to potential or current threats, so the notification might indicate a potential threat to your organization. Create a livestream session instead of a custom alert rule to be notified of a potential issue without the overheads of maintaining a custom alert rule.

  • Launch investigations

    If there's an active investigation that involves an asset such as a host or user, view specific (or any) activity in the log data as it occurs on that asset. Be notified when that activity occurs.

Important

Microsoft Sentinel is available as part of the public preview for the unified security operations platform in the Microsoft Defender portal. For more information, see Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal.

Create a livestream session

You can create a livestream session from an existing hunting query, or create your session from scratch.

  1. For Microsoft Sentinel in the Azure portal, under Threat management, select Hunting.
    For Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal, select Microsoft Sentinel > Threat management > Hunting.

  2. To create a livestream session from a hunting query:

    1. From the Queries tab, locate the hunting query to use.
    2. Right-click the query and select Add to livestream. For example:

    create Livestream session from Microsoft Sentinel hunting query

  3. To create a livestream session from scratch:

    1. Select the Livestream tab.
    2. Select + New livestream.

  4. On the Livestream pane:

    • If you started livestream from a query, review the query and make any changes you want to make.
    • If you started livestream from scratch, create your query.

    Livestream supports cross-resource queries of data in Azure Data Explorer. Learn more about cross-resource queries.

  5. Select Play from the command bar.

    The status bar under the command bar indicates whether your livestream session is running or paused. In the following example, the session is running:

    create livestream session from Microsoft Sentinel hunting

  6. Select Save from the command bar.

    Unless you select Pause, the session continues to run until you're signed out from the Azure portal.

View your livestream sessions

  1. For Microsoft Sentinel in the Azure portal, under Threat management, select Hunting.
    For Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal, select Microsoft Sentinel > Threat management > Hunting.

  2. Select the Livestream tab.

  3. Select the livestream session you want to view or edit. For example:

    create livestream session from Microsoft Sentinel hunting query

    Your selected livestream session opens for you to play, pause, edit, and so on.

Receive notifications when new events occur

Because livestream notifications for new events use Azure portal notifications, you see these notifications whenever you use the Azure portal. For example:

Azure portal notification for livestream

Select the notification to open the Livestream pane.

Elevate a livestream session to an alert

Promote a livestream session to a new alert by selecting Elevate to alert from the command bar on the relevant livestream session:

Elevate livestream session to an alert

This action opens the rule creation wizard, which is prepopulated with the query that is associated with the livestream session.

Next steps

In this article, you learned how to use hunting livestream in Microsoft Sentinel. To learn more about Microsoft Sentinel, see the following articles: