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Announcing the Microsoft Sentinel: Zero Trust (TIC3.0) Solution

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TJBanasik
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Dec 06, 2021

The Microsoft Sentinel: Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) Workbook was released earlier this year with an overwhelmingly positive reception from our user community. We are announcing the next evolution of this content in the Microsoft Sentinel: Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) Solution. This content features a redesigned user interface, new control card layouts, dozens of new visualizations, better-together integrations with Microsoft Defender for Cloud for assessments and alerting rules to actively monitor/alert on compliance posture deviations across each TIC 3.0 control family.

 

Microsoft Sentinel: Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) Solution

This solution enables governance and compliance teams to design, build, monitor, and respond to Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) requirements across 25+ Microsoft products. The solution includes the new Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) Workbook, (11) Analytics Rules, and (1) Playbook. While only Microsoft Sentinel is required to get started, the solution is enhanced with numerous Microsoft offerings, including, but not limited to:

 

What is Zero Trust?

Zero Trust is a proactive, integrated approach to security that explicitly and continuously verifies every transaction, asserts least privilege, and relies on intelligence, advanced detection, and real-time response to threats, across all layers of the digital estate. The core to Zero Trust strategy is strict access control. This concept is critical to prevent attackers from pivoting laterally and elevating access within an environment. At Microsoft, we define Zero Trust around those three principles.

  • Verify Explicitly: Always authenticate and authorize based on all available data points, including user identity, location, device health, service or workload, data classification, and anomalies.
  • Use Least Privileged Access: Limit user access with just-in-time and just-enough-access (JIT/JEA), risk-based adaptive policies, and data protection to secure both data and productivity.
  • Assume Breach: Minimize blast radius for breaches and prevent lateral movement by segmenting access by the network, user, devices, and app awareness. Verify all sessions are encrypted end to end. Use analytics to get visibility, drive threat detection, and improve defenses.

 

What is Trusted Internet Connections (TIC 3.0)?

Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) is a federal cybersecurity initiative to enhance network and perimeter security across the United States federal government. The TIC initiative is a collaborative effort between the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the General Services Administration (GSA). The TIC 3.0: Volume 3 Security Capabilities Handbook provides various security controls, applications, and best practices for risk management in federal information systems.

 

Content Use Cases

Microsoft Sentinel: Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) Workbook: The Microsoft Sentinel Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) workbook provides a mechanism for viewing log queries, azure resource graph, metrics, and policies aligned to Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) controls across 25+ Microsoft products across Azure, Office365, Windows, and many more. This workbook enables Compliance Professionals, Security Architects, Engineers, SecOps Analysts, Managers, and IT Pros to gain situational awareness visibility for the security posture of cloud workloads. There are also recommendations for selecting, designing, deploying, and configuring Microsoft offerings for alignment with respective Zero Trust and TIC 3.0 requirements.

 

 

Microsoft Sentinel: Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) Analytics Rules: (11) new analytics rules aligned to actively monitoring Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) posture by control family. Thresholds are customizable for alerting compliance teams to changes in posture. For example, suppose your workload's resiliency posture falls below 70% in a week. In that case, an alert is generated detailing respective policy status (passing & failing), assets identified, last assessment time, and deep links to Microsoft Defender for Cloud for remediations.

 

 

Playbook: Notify Governance Compliance Team provides the capability to automatically monitor Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) posture and notify the Governance Compliance team of deviations with the relevant details in both email and Microsoft Teams messages.

 

Benefits

  • Build/design workloads within Zero Trust and TIC 3.0 requirements
  • Customizable reporting for subscription, workspace, time, and control family.
  • Redesigned Control Cards, Coverage across (11) TIC 3.0 control families
  • Fully customizable panels for 3rd party product integration
  • Deep links integration for seamless pivots between security products
  • Compliance crosswalks to NIST CSF, configuration guidance, and alignment with Microsoft references/telemetry
  • Query/Alert generation with (11) new analytics rules

Reporting

  • 150+ visualizations, recommendations, queries across logs, azure resource graph, policy, metrics, and APIs
  • Single-click report exports via Print Workbooks feature
  • Integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud: Regulatory Compliance Assessments

Audience

  • Security Governance, Risk, Compliance Professionals: Compliance posture assessment and reporting
  • Engineers/Architects: Design Zero Trust and TIC 3.0 aligned workloads
  • SecOps: Alert/Automation building
  • Managed Security Service Providers: Consulting services

Getting Started

This content is designed to provide the foundation for designing, building, and monitoring workload compliance within Zero Trust and TIC 3.0 requirements. Below are the steps to onboard required dependencies, enable connectors, review content, and provide feedback.

 

  • Review the Zero Trust (TIC3.0) Workbook
    • Microsoft Sentinel > Workbooks > Select Zero Trust (TIC 3.0)
  • Review/Enable Zero Trust (TIC3.0) Analytics Rules
    • Microsoft Sentinel > Analytics > Search "ZeroTrust(TIC 3.0)”"
  • Review Playbook Automation
    • Microsoft Sentinel > Automation > Active playbooks > Search Notify-GovernanceComplianceTeam > Enable
    • Create Automation Rule
      •     Analytics > Search Zero Trust > Edit > Automated Response > Add new > Select Actions: Run Playbook > Select Notify-GovernanceComplianceTeam and configure automation options > Review > Save > Mirror configuration across all Zero Trust (TIC 3.0) analytics rules.

  • Review the content and provide feedback through the survey

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Are custom views and reports supported?
    • Yes, via subscription, workspace, time, control family, maturity level parameters. You can select everything, specific control families, maturity level reports as needed, and export via the print/save workbooks feature.
  • Are additional products required?
    • Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are required. Each control card is based on telemetry from multiple products, including which product is leveraged and what type of telemetry is used for the visualization. 25+ Microsoft security products provide enrichment to this solution.
  • Are panels with no data bad?
    • No, this provides a starting point for addressing Zero Trust and TIC 3.0 control requirements, including recommendations for addressing respective controls.
  • Is Multi-Subscription, Multi-Cloud & Multi-Tenant supported?
  • Is 3rd Party integration supported?
    • Yes, workbooks and analytics are customizable for integration with 3rd party products.
  • Is this available in government regions?
    •  Yes, this solution is in Public Preview and deployable to Commercial/Government regions.
  • What rights are required to use this content?

Learn More About Zero Trust with Microsoft Security

 

Updated Dec 07, 2021
Version 4.0