Things to Know before Enabling Azure Sentinel in Your Environment

by Radhika Pawar creative content writer

So, you have finally made up your mind to leverage what Azure Sentinel has to offer enterprises in terms of security. Considering the role it plays in improving security, it is essential that you get things right from the word go. After all, security is a key focus for today’s organizations and it is essential that you prioritize visibility across the entire cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

The good news is that enabling Sentinel in your environment is not going to eat into your precious time. Of course, this is only possible if you know how to go about it from start to finish. Either way, this should never be the underlying reason why you cannot leverage the benefits it offers.

Before you do anything else, you need to ensure you have all you need in place. This includes an active Azure subscription, a Log Analytics workspace, and a contributor or reader permission turning on in the resource group that the workspace belongs to. With all these in place, you should browse to Sentinel within the Azure portal to deploy.

Keep in mind Azure Sentinel is free to use during the preview period. However, the underlying Log Analytics workspace still gathers cost for data ingested from your data connectors once you use the first free 5GB. Fortunately, there are different Microsoft data connectors available out-of-the-box. These connectors provide near real-time integration.

Aside from this, Sentinel also offers out-of-the-box-data connectors for non-Microsoft solutions. Some of the most notable options include Cisco, Barracuda, AWS, and Symantec. If this is not enough, it provides support for generic connectors making it easy for you to send data via Windows Firewall, REST API, or Syslog. That way, you can send information from any data source making it flexible to your infrastructure.

After enabling the data connectors, Sentinel analyzes and provides reports on potential threats within your environment using the built-in alert rules. Either way, the real power of Azure Sentinel lies in the ability to write custom alert rules.

The Bottom Line

There you have it, some of the things you need to know before you finally enable Azure Sentinel in your environment. Remember, you can tailor Azure Sentinel to help you protect your enterprise against any specific threats it faces. So, what are you waiting for before you make the switch and enjoy improved security!