Alerts schemas

Defender for Cloud provides alerts that help you identify, understand, and respond to security threats. Alerts are generated when Defender for Cloud detects suspicious activity or a security-related issue in your environment. You can view these alerts in the Defender for Cloud portal, or you can export them to external tools for further analysis and response.

You can view these security alerts in Microsoft Defender for Cloud's pages - overview dashboard, alerts, resource health pages, or workload protections dashboard - and through external tools such as:

• Microsoft Sentinel - Microsoft's cloud-native SIEM. The Sentinel Connector gets alerts from Microsoft Defender for Cloud and sends them to the Log Analytics workspace for Microsoft Sentinel.
• Third-party SIEMs - Send data to Azure Event Hubs. Then integrate your Event Hubs data with a third-party SIEM. Learn more in Stream alerts to a SIEM, SOAR, or IT Service Management solution.
• The REST API - If you're using the REST API to access alerts, see the online Alerts API documentation.

If you're using any programmatic methods to consume the alerts, you need the correct schema to find the fields that are relevant to you. Also, if you're exporting to an Event Hubs or trying to trigger Workflow Automation with generic HTTP connectors, schemas should be utilized to properly parse the JSON objects.

Important

Since the schema is different for each of these scenarios, ensure you select the relevant tab.

The schemas

Microsoft Sentinel

The Sentinel Connector gets alerts from Microsoft Defender for Cloud and sends them to the Log Analytics Workspace for Microsoft Sentinel.

To create a Microsoft Sentinel case or incident using Defender for Cloud alerts, you need the schema for those alerts shown.

Learn more in the Microsoft Sentinel documentation.

The data model of the schema

Field	Description
AlertName	Alert display name
AlertType	unique alert identifier
ConfidenceLevel	(Optional) The confidence level of this alert (High/Low)
ConfidenceScore	(Optional) Numeric confidence indicator of the security alert
Description	Description text for the alert
DisplayName	The alert's display name
EndTime	The effect end time of the alert (the time of the last event contributing to the alert)
Entities	A list of entities related to the alert. This list can hold a mixture of entities of diverse types
ExtendedLinks	(Optional) A bag for all links related to the alert. This bag can hold a mixture of links for diverse types
ExtendedProperties	A bag of extra fields, which are relevant to the alert
IsIncident	Determines if the alert is an incident or a regular alert. An incident is a security alert that aggregates multiple alerts into one security incident
ProcessingEndTime	UTC timestamp in which the alert was created
ProductComponentName	(Optional) The name of a component inside the product, which generated the alert.
ProductName	constant ('Azure Security Center')
ProviderName	unused
RemediationSteps	Manual action items to take to remediate the security threat
ResourceId	Full identifier of the affected resource
Severity	The alert severity (High/Medium/Low/Informational)
SourceComputerId	a unique GUID for the affected server (if the alert is generated on the server)
SourceSystem	unused
StartTime	The effect start time of the alert (the time of the first event contributing to the alert)
SystemAlertId	Unique identifier of this security alert instance
TenantId	the identifier of the parent Microsoft Entra ID tenant of the subscription under which the scanned resource resides
TimeGenerated	UTC timestamp on which the assessment took place (Security Center's scan time) (identical to DiscoveredTimeUTC)
Type	constant ('SecurityAlert')
VendorName	The name of the vendor that provided the alert (for example, 'Microsoft')
VendorOriginalId	unused
WorkspaceResourceGroup	in case the alert is generated on a Virtual Machine (VM), Server, Virtual Machine Scale Set, or App Service instance that reports to a workspace, contains that workspace resource group name
WorkspaceSubscriptionId	in case the alert is generated on a VM, Server, Virtual Machine Scale Set, or App Service instance that reports to a workspace, contains that workspace subscriptionId

Azure Activity Log

Microsoft Defender for Cloud audits generated Security alerts as events in Azure Activity Log.

You can view the security alerts events in Activity Log by searching for the Activate Alert event as shown:

Sample JSON for alerts sent to Azure Activity Log

{
    "channels": "Operation",
    "correlationId": "2518250008431989649_e7313e05-edf4-466d-adfd-35974921aeff",
    "description": "PREVIEW - Role binding to the cluster-admin role detected. Kubernetes audit log analysis detected a new binding to the cluster-admin role which gives administrator privileges.\r\nUnnecessary administrator privileges might cause privilege escalation in the cluster.",
    "eventDataId": "2518250008431989649_e7313e05-edf4-466d-adfd-35974921aeff",
    "eventName": {
        "value": "PREVIEW - Role binding to the cluster-admin role detected",
        "localizedValue": "PREVIEW - Role binding to the cluster-admin role detected"
    },
    "category": {
        "value": "Security",
        "localizedValue": "Security"
    },
    "eventTimestamp": "2019-12-25T18:52:36.801035Z",
    "id": "/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID/resourceGroups/RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME/providers/Microsoft.Security/locations/centralus/alerts/2518250008431989649_e7313e05-edf4-466d-adfd-35974921aeff/events/2518250008431989649_e7313e05-edf4-466d-adfd-35974921aeff/ticks/637128967568010350",
    "level": "Informational",
    "operationId": "2518250008431989649_e7313e05-edf4-466d-adfd-35974921aeff",
    "operationName": {
        "value": "Microsoft.Security/locations/alerts/activate/action",
        "localizedValue": "Activate Alert"
    },
    "resourceGroupName": "RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME",
    "resourceProviderName": {
        "value": "Microsoft.Security",
        "localizedValue": "Microsoft.Security"
    },
    "resourceType": {
        "value": "Microsoft.Security/locations/alerts",
        "localizedValue": "Microsoft.Security/locations/alerts"
    },
    "resourceId": "/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID/resourceGroups/RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME/providers/Microsoft.Security/locations/centralus/alerts/2518250008431989649_e7313e05-edf4-466d-adfd-35974921aeff",
    "status": {
        "value": "Active",
        "localizedValue": "Active"
    },
    "subStatus": {
        "value": "",
        "localizedValue": ""
    },
    "submissionTimestamp": "2019-12-25T19:14:03.5507487Z",
    "subscriptionId": "SUBSCRIPTION_ID",
    "properties": {
        "clusterRoleBindingName": "cluster-admin-binding",
        "subjectName": "for-binding-test",
        "subjectKind": "ServiceAccount",
        "username": "masterclient",
        "actionTaken": "Detected",
        "resourceType": "Kubernetes Service",
        "severity": "Low",
        "intent": "[\"Persistence\"]",
        "compromisedEntity": "ASC-IGNITE-DEMO",
        "remediationSteps": "[\"Review the user in the alert details. If cluster-admin is unnecessary for this user, consider granting lower privileges to the user.\"]",
        "attackedResourceType": "Kubernetes Service"
    },
    "relatedEvents": []
}

The data model of the schema

Field	Description
channels	Constant, "Operation"
correlationId	The Microsoft Defender for Cloud alert ID
description	Description of the alert
eventDataId	See correlationId
eventName	The value and localizedValue subfields contain the alert display name
category	The value and localizedValue subfields are constant - "Security"
eventTimestamp	UTC timestamp for when the alert was generated
id	The fully qualified alert ID
level	Constant, "Informational"
operationId	See correlationId
operationName	The value field is constant - Microsoft.Security/locations/alerts/activate/action, and the localized value is Activate Alert (can potentially be localized par the user locale)
resourceGroupName	Includes the resource group name
resourceProviderName	The value and localizedValue subfields are constant - "Microsoft.Security"
resourceType	The value and localizedValue subfields are constant - "Microsoft.Security/locations/alerts"
resourceId	The fully qualified Azure resource ID
status	The value and localizedValue subfields are constant - "Active"
subStatus	The value and localizedValue subfields are empty
submissionTimestamp	The UTC timestamp of event submission to Activity Log
subscriptionId	The subscription ID of the compromised resource
properties	A JSON bag of other properties pertaining to the alert. Properties can change from one alert to the other, however, the following fields appear in all alerts: - severity: The severity of the attack - compromisedEntity: The name of the compromised resource - remediationSteps: Array of remediation steps to be taken - intent: The kill-chain intent of the alert. Possible intents are documented in the Intentions table
relatedEvents	Constant - empty array

Workflow automation

For the alerts schema when using workflow automation, see the connectors documentation.

Continuous export

Defender for Cloud's continuous export feature passes alert data to:

• Azure Event Hubs using the same schema as the alerts API.
• Log Analytics workspaces according to the SecurityAlert schema in the Azure Monitor data documentation.

MS Graph API

Microsoft Graph is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. It provides a unified programmability model that you can use to access the tremendous amount of data in Microsoft 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Use the wealth of data in Microsoft Graph to build apps for organizations and consumers that interact with millions of users.

The schema and a JSON representation for security alerts sent to MS Graph, are available in the Microsoft Graph documentation.

Related articles

• Log Analytics workspaces - Azure Monitor stores log data in a Log Analytics workspace, a container that includes data and configuration information
• Microsoft Sentinel - Microsoft's cloud-native SIEM
• Azure Event Hubs - Microsoft's fully managed, real-time data ingestion service

Next step

Continuously export Defender for Cloud data