automation

148 Topics

Sentinel SOAR migration to Unified portal: what broke? anyone evaluated the AI playbook generator?
I want to open a conversation specifically focused on the automation and SOAR side of the migration, because this is the area where problems most commonly surface after onboarding rather than during it. A quick orientation: the Unified portal introduces a specific constraint that catches teams by surprise. Alert-triggered automation for alerts created by Microsoft Defender XDR is not available in the Defender portal. The main use case for alert-triggered automation in this context is responding to alerts from analytics rules where incident creation is disabled. If you had alert-triggered playbooks firing on Defender XDR signals, those need to be re-evaluated against the incident trigger model. This is documented by Microsoft, but it is easy to miss in the volume of migration guidance. The automation failure mode I have seen most consistently: automation rules built around incident title conditions. The Defender XDR correlation engine assigns its own incident names, so any condition keyed to "if incident title contains X" stops matching without throwing an error. The rule is still active, the automation is still enabled, and everything looks fine until someone notices a class of enrichment or response has gone quiet. Microsoft's recommendation is to use Analytic rule name as the condition instead. There is also a firm near-term deadline separate from the March 2027 portal retirement: queries and automation need to be updated by July 1, 2026 for standardised account entity naming. The Name field will consistently hold only the UPN prefix from that date. Any automation comparing AccountName against a full UPN will break. A few specific questions for practitioners: When you onboarded or reviewed your automation post-onboarding, what broke silently versus what produced a visible error? Silent failures are the dangerous ones and sharing specific patterns would be genuinely useful for the community. Has anyone evaluated the new AI playbook generator in the Defender portal? It requires Security Copilot with SCUs available and generates Python-based automation coauthored with Cline in an embedded VS Code environment. Interested in real-world comparisons against existing Logic Apps workflows for the same use case. For those who have migrated alert-triggered playbooks to automation rule invocation: did you find edge cases in the migration, particularly around playbooks used by multiple analytics rules simultaneously? Writing this up as Part 4 of the migration series. Sharing the article link once it is live for anyone who wants the full detail.
AnthonyPorter
May 20, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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Sentinel Foundry - MCP Server (Preview) (Github Community Release)
I’ve been cooking something that a lot of people in SOC have been struggling with — especially on the engineering side of Microsoft Sentinel. Thanks to the Microsoft Security team for shaping the capabilities of Sentinel even better with Sentinel Data Lake & Modern SecOps. Today’s the day I can finally share it. Note: This is not an official Microsoft product, but it is designed to make the Sentinel Build even better (complement) with much more intelligence. 🚀 Sentinel Foundry is now in public preview with 43 tools. (Sentinel Foundry - MCP Server) It’s an MCP server built to act like the brain of a strong Sentinel engineer — helping make building, improving, and operating Sentinel far more practical, faster, and honestly more enjoyable. For a lot of teams, the challenge is not understanding what Sentinel can do. The hard part is the engineering work around it: -> Deciding what data should actually be ingested -> Building a clean, scalable Sentinel foundation -> Writing useful detections instead of noisy ones -> Balancing security value with cost -> Turning ideas into deployable engineering outputs That is exactly why I built Sentinel Foundry to help communities grow stronger. It helps with the real engineering tasks behind Sentinel — from architecture thinking to detection design, deployment planning, ingestion strategy, automation ideas, and many of the workflows outlined in the GitHub project. How does it work? Here’s one of the flagship prompts I ran with it: “Give me a complete security posture report for our workspace. Score each pillar and tell me what to prioritise.” And within seconds, it produced a structured engineering blueprint that would normally take a lot longer to pull together manually. You can see the example prompts here in what it can do: https://github.com/prabhukiranveesam/Sentinel-Foundry#what-can-it-do I want building Sentinel to feel less like repetitive engineering overhead — and more like real security engineering that is fast, creative, and enjoyable. If you work with Sentinel as a SOC L2 analyst, engineer, detection engineer, consultant, or architect, I’d genuinely love for you to try it and tell me what you think. 🔗 Public Preview: https://github.com/prabhukiranveesam/Sentinel-Foundry This is just the start of an AI era — and I’m excited to keep shaping it with more powerful features over the coming days. This is very easy to set up and will be available to all of you at no cost during this month as part of the public preview, and your feedback is extremely valuable to shape this as a powerful solution.
veesamprabhukiran
May 05, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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Your Sentinel AMA Logs & Queries Are Public by Default — AMPLS Architectures to Fix That
When you deploy Microsoft Sentinel, security log ingestion travels over public Azure Data Collection Endpoints by default. The connection is encrypted, and the data arrives correctly — but the endpoint is publicly reachable, and so is the workspace itself, queryable from any browser on any network. For many organisations, that trade-off is fine. For others — regulated industries, healthcare, financial services, critical infrastructure — it is the exact problem they need to solve. Azure Monitor Private Link Scope (AMPLS) is how you solve it. What AMPLS Actually Does AMPLS is a single Azure resource that wraps your monitoring pipeline and controls two settings: Where logs are allowed to go (ingestion mode: Open or PrivateOnly) Where analysts are allowed to query from (query mode: Open or PrivateOnly) Change those two settings and you fundamentally change the security posture — not as a policy recommendation, but as a hard platform enforcement. Set ingestion to PrivateOnly and the public endpoint stops working. It does not fall back gracefully. It returns an error. That is the point. It is not a firewall rule someone can bypass or a policy someone can override. Control is baked in at the infrastructure level. Three Patterns — One Spectrum There is no universally correct answer. The right architecture depends on your organisation's risk appetite, existing network infrastructure, and how much operational complexity your team can realistically manage. These three patterns cover the full range: Architecture 1 — Open / Public (Basic) No AMPLS. Logs travel to public Data Collection Endpoints over the internet. The workspace is open to queries from anywhere. This is the default — operational in minutes with zero network setup. Cloud service connectors (Microsoft 365, Defender, third-party) work immediately because they are server-side/API/Graph pulls and are unaffected by AMPLS. Azure Monitor Agents and Azure Arc agents handle ingestion from cloud or on-prem machines via public network. Simplicity: 9/10 | Security: 6/10 Good for: Dev environments, teams getting started, low-sensitivity workloads Architecture 2 — Hybrid: Private Ingestion, Open Queries (Recommended for most) AMPLS is in place. Ingestion is locked to PrivateOnly — logs from virtual machines travel through a Private Endpoint inside your own network, never touching a public route. On-premises or hybrid machines connect through Azure Arc over VPN or a dedicated circuit and feed into the same private pipeline. Query access stays open, so analysts can work from anywhere without needing a VPN/Jumpbox to reach the Sentinel portal — the investigation workflow stays flexible, but the log ingestion path is fully ring-fenced. You can also split ingestion mode per DCE if you need some sources public and some private. This is the architecture most organisations land on as their steady state. Simplicity: 6/10 | Security: 8/10 Good for: Organisations with mixed cloud and on-premises estates that need private ingestion without restricting analyst access Architecture 3 — Fully Private (Maximum Control) Infrastructure is essentially identical to Architecture 2 — AMPLS, Private Endpoints, Private DNS zones, VPN or dedicated circuit, Azure Arc for on-premises machines. The single difference: query mode is also set to PrivateOnly. Analysts can only reach Sentinel from inside the private network. VPN or Jumpbox required to access the portal. Both the pipe that carries logs in and the channel analysts use to read them are fully contained within the defined boundary. This is the right choice when your organisation needs to demonstrate — not just claim — that security data never moves outside a defined network perimeter. Simplicity: 2/10 | Security: 10/10 Good for: Organisations with strict data boundary requirements (regulated industries, audit, compliance mandates) Quick Reference — Which Pattern Fits? Scenario Architecture Getting started / low-sensitivity workloads Arch 1 — No network setup, public endpoints accepted Private log ingestion, analysts work anywhere Arch 2 — AMPLS PrivateOnly ingestion, query mode open Both ingestion and queries must be fully private Arch 3 — Same as Arch 2 + query mode set to PrivateOnly One thing all three share: Microsoft 365, Entra ID, and Defender connectors work in every pattern — they are server-side pulls by Sentinel and are not affected by your network posture. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions regarding the information provided.
veesamprabhukiran
Apr 27, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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Issue connecting Azure Sentinel GitHub app to Sentinel Instance when IP allow list is enabled
Hi everyone, I’m running into an issue connecting the Azure Sentinel GitHub app to my Sentinel workspace in order to create our CI/CD pipelines for our detection rules, and I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Symptoms: When configuring the GitHub connection in Sentinel, the repository dropdown does not populate. There are no explicit errors, but the connection clearly isn’t completing. If I disable my organization’s IP allow list, everything works as expected and the repos appear immediately. I’ve seen that some GitHub Apps automatically add the IP ranges they require to an organization’s allow list. However, from what I can tell, the Azure Sentinel GitHub app does not seem to have this capability, and requires manual allow listing instead. What I’ve tried / researched: Reviewed Microsoft documentation for Sentinel ↔ GitHub integrations Looked through Azure IP range and Service Tag documentation I’ve seen recommendations to allow list the IP ranges published at //api.github.com/meta, as many GitHub apps rely on these ranges I’ve already tried allow listing multiple ranges from the GitHub meta endpoint, but the issue persists My questions: Does anyone know which IP ranges are used by the Azure Sentinel GitHub app specifically? Is there an official or recommended approach for using this integration in environments with strict IP allow lists? Has anyone successfully configured this integration without fully disabling IP restrictions? Any insight, references, or firsthand experience would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
JingleDingle
Apr 08, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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What caught you off guard when onboarding Sentinel to the Defender portal?
Following on from a previous discussion around what actually changes versus what doesn't in the Sentinel to Defender portal migration, I wanted to open a more specific conversation around the onboarding moment itself. One thing I have been writing about is how much happens automatically the moment you connect your workspace. The Defender XDR connector enables on its own, a bi-directional sync starts immediately, and if your Microsoft incident creation rules are still active across Defender for Endpoint, Identity, Office 365, Cloud Apps, and Entra ID Protection, you are going to see duplicate incidents before you have had a chance to do anything about it. That is one of the reasons I keep coming back to the inventory phase as the most underestimated part of this migration. Most of the painful post-migration experiences I hear about trace back to things that could have been caught in a pre-migration audit: analytics rules with incident title dependencies, automation conditions that assumed stable incident naming, RBAC gaps that only become visible when someone tries to access the data lake for the first time. A few things I would genuinely love to hear from practitioners who have been through this: - When you onboarded, what was the first thing that behaved unexpectedly that you had not anticipated from the documentation? - For those who have reviewed automation rules post-onboarding: did you find conditions relying on incident title matching that broke, and how did you remediate them? - For anyone managing access across multiple tenants: how are you currently handling the GDAP gap while Microsoft completes that capability? I am writing up a detailed pre-migration inventory framework covering all four areas and the community experience here is genuinely useful for making sure the practitioner angle covers the right ground. Happy to discuss anything above in more detail.
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AnthonyPorter
Apr 06, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
274Views
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3Comments
RSAC 2026: What the Sentinel Playbook Generator actually means for SOC automation
RSAC 2026 brought a wave of Sentinel announcements, but the one I keep coming back to is the playbook generator. Not because it's the flashiest, but because it touches something that's been a real operational pain point for years: the gap between what SOC teams need to automate and what they can realistically build and maintain. I want to unpack what this actually changes from an operational perspective, because I think the implications go further than "you can now vibe-code a playbook." The problem it solves If you've built and maintained Logic Apps playbooks in Sentinel at any scale, you know the friction. You need a connector for every integration. If there isn't one, you're writing custom HTTP actions with authentication handling, pagination, error handling - all inside a visual designer that wasn't built for complex branching logic. Debugging is painful. Version control is an afterthought. And when something breaks at 2am, the person on call needs to understand both the Logic Apps runtime AND the security workflow to fix it. The result in most environments I've seen: teams build a handful of playbooks for the obvious use cases (isolate host, disable account, post to Teams) and then stop. The long tail of automation - the enrichment workflows, the cross-tool correlation, the conditional response chains - stays manual because building it is too expensive relative to the time saved. What's actually different now The playbook generator produces Python. Not Logic Apps JSON, not ARM templates - actual Python code with documentation and a visual flowchart. You describe the workflow in natural language, the system proposes a plan, asks clarifying questions, and then generates the code once you approve. The Integration Profile concept is where this gets interesting. Instead of relying on predefined connectors, you define a base URL, auth method, and credentials for any service - and the generator creates dynamic API calls against it. This means you can automate against ServiceNow, Jira, Slack, your internal CMDB, or any REST API without waiting for Microsoft or a partner to ship a connector. The embedded VS Code experience with plan mode and act mode is a deliberate design choice. Plan mode lets you iterate on the workflow before any code is generated. Act mode produces the implementation. You can then validate against real alerts and refine through conversation or direct code edits. This is a meaningful improvement over the "deploy and pray" cycle most of us have with Logic Apps. Where I see the real impact For environments running Sentinel at scale, the playbook generator could unlock the automation long tail I mentioned above. The workflows that were never worth the Logic Apps development effort might now be worth a 15-minute conversation with the generator. Think: enrichment chains that pull context from three different tools before deciding on a response path, or conditional escalation workflows that factor in asset criticality, time of day, and analyst availability. There's also an interesting angle for teams that operate across Microsoft and non-Microsoft tooling. If your SOC uses Sentinel for SIEM but has Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, or other vendors in the stack, the Integration Profile approach means you can build cross-vendor response playbooks without middleware. The questions I'd genuinely like to hear about A few things that aren't clear from the documentation and that I think matter for production use: Security Copilot dependency: The prerequisites require a Security Copilot workspace with EU or US capacity. Someone in the blog comments already flagged this as a potential blocker for organizations that have Sentinel but not Security Copilot. Is this a hard requirement going forward, or will there be a path for Sentinel-only customers? Code lifecycle management: The generated Python runs... where exactly? What's the execution runtime? How do you version control, test, and promote these playbooks across dev/staging/prod? Logic Apps had ARM templates and CI/CD patterns. What's the equivalent here? Integration Profile security: You're storing credentials for potentially every tool in your security stack inside these profiles. What's the credential storage model? Is this backed by Key Vault? How do you rotate credentials without breaking running playbooks? Debugging in production: When a generated playbook fails at 2am, what does the troubleshooting experience look like? Do you get structured logs, execution traces, retry telemetry? Or are you reading Python stack traces? Coexistence with Logic Apps: Most environments won't rip and replace overnight. What's the intended coexistence model between generated Python playbooks and existing Logic Apps automation rules? I'm genuinely optimistic about this direction. Moving from a low-code visual designer to an AI-assisted coding model with transparent, editable output feels like the right architectural bet for where SOC automation needs to go. But the operational details around lifecycle, security, and debugging will determine whether this becomes a production staple or stays a demo-only feature. Would be interested to hear from anyone who's been in the preview - what's the reality like compared to the pitch?
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Marcel_Graewer
Apr 05, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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ARM template for deploying a workbook template to Microsoft Sentinel
Hello, I am attempting to deploy an ARM Template (execution using PowerShell) for any Analytic Rule to a Microsoft Sentinel instance. I have been following this link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/visualize/workbooks-automate#next-steps. I am struggling with ensuring the Workbook is deployed to the Microsoft Sentinel workbook gallery and NOT the Azure Monitor one. The link includes a sample ARM template where you can add <templateData> (JSON code), which represents the workbook you wish to deploy. I get it working to deploy to the Azure Monitor workbook gallery but not for it to be present in the Microsoft Sentinel one. Jason
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JMSHW0420
Mar 16, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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How to Include Custom Details from an Alert in Email Generated by a Playbook
I have created an analytics rule that queries Sentinel for security events pertaining to group membership additions, and triggers an alert for each event found. The rule does not create an incident. Within the rule logic, I have created three "custom details" for specific fields within the event (TargetAccount, MemberName, SubjectAccount). I have also created a corresponding playbook for the purpose of sending an email to me when an alert is triggered. The associated automation rule has been configured and is triggered in the analytics rule. All of this is working as expected - when a member is added to a security group, I receive an email. The one remaining piece is to populate the email message with the custom details that I've identified in the rule. However, I'm not sure how to do this. Essentially, I would like the values of the three custom details shown in the first screenshot below to show up in the body of the email, shown in the second screenshot, next to their corresponding names. So, for example, say Joe Smith is added to the group "Admin" by Tom Jones. These are the fields and values in the event that I want to pull out. TargetAccount = Admin MemberName = Joe Smith Subject Account = Tom Jones The custom details would then be populated as such: Security_Group = Admin Member_Added = Joe Smith Added_By = Tom Jones and then, the body of the email would contain: Group: Admin Member Added: Joe Smith Added By: Tom Jones
afiore1130
Feb 21, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
1.9KViews
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Update content package Metadata
Hello Sentinel community and Microsoft. Ive been working on a script where i use this command: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/securityinsights/content-package/install?view=rest-securityinsights-2024-09-01&tabs=HTTP Ive managed to successfully create everything from retrieving whats installed, uninstalling, reinstalling and lastly updating (updating needed to be "list, delete, install" however :'), there was no flag for "update available"). However, now to my issue. As this work like a charm through powershell, the metadata and hyperlinking is not being deployed - at all. So i have my 40 content packages successfully installed through the REST-api, but then i have to visit the content hub in sentinel in the GUI, filter for "installed" and mark them all, then press "install". When i do this the metadata and hyperlinking is created. (Its most noticeable that the analytic rules for the content hubs are not available under analytic rules -> Rule templates after installing through the rest api). But once you press install button in the GUI, they appear. So i looked in to the request that is made when pressing the button. It uses another API version, fine, i can add that to my script. But it also uses 2 variables that are not documented and encrypted-data. they are called c and t: Im also located in EU and it makes a request to SentinelUS. im OK with that, also as mentioned, another API version (2020-06-01) while the REST APi to install content packages above has 2024-09-01. NP. But i can not simulate this last request as the variables are encrypted and not available through the install rest api. They are also not possible to simulate. it ONLY works in the GUI when pressing install. Lastly i get another API version back when it successfully ran through install in GUI, so in total its 3 api versions. Here is my code snippet i tried (it is basically a mimic of the post request in the network tab of the browser then pressing "install" on the package in content hub, after i successfully installed it through the official rest api). function Refresh-WorkspaceMetadata { param ( [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$SubscriptionId, [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$ResourceGroup, [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$WorkspaceName, [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$AccessToken ) # Use the API version from the portal sample $apiVeri = "?api-version=" $RefreshapiVersion = "2020-06-01" # Build the batch endpoint URL with the query string on the batch URI $batchUri = "https://management.azure.com/\$batch$apiVeri$RefreshapiVersion" # Construct a relative URL for the workspace resource. # Append dummy t and c parameters to mimic the portal's request. $workspaceUrl = "/subscriptions/$SubscriptionId/resourceGroups/$ResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/$WorkspaceName$apiVeri$RefreshapiVersion&t=123456789&c=dummy" # Create a batch payload with several GET requests $requests = @() for ($i = 0; $i -lt 5; $i++) { $requests += @{ httpMethod = "GET" name = [guid]::NewGuid().ToString() requestHeaderDetails = @{ commandName = "Microsoft_Azure_SentinelUS.ContenthubWorkspaceClient/get" } url = $workspaceUrl } } $body = @{ requests = $requests } | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 5 try { $response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $batchUri -Method Post -Headers @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $AccessToken" "Content-Type" = "application/json" } -Body $body Write-Host "[+] Workspace metadata refresh triggered successfully." -ForegroundColor Green } catch { Write-Host "[!] Failed to trigger workspace metadata refresh. Error: $_" -ForegroundColor Red } } Refresh-WorkspaceMetadata -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId -ResourceGroup $resourceGroup -WorkspaceName $workspaceName -AccessToken $accessToken (note: i have variables higher up in my script for subscriptionid, resourcegroup, workspacename and token etc). Ive tried with and without mimicing the T and C variable. none works. So for me, currently, installing content hub packages for sentinel is always: Install through script to get all 40 packages Visit webpage, filter for 'Installed', mark them and press 'Install' You now have all metadata and hyperlinking available to you in your Sentinel (such as hunting rules, analytic rules, workbooks, playbooks -templates). Anyone else manage to get around this or is it "GUI" gated ? Greatly appreciated.
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john66571
Nov 06, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
651Views
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6Comments
[DevOps] dps.sentinel.azure.com no longer responds
Hello, Ive been using Repository connections in sentinel to a central DevOps for almost two years now. Today i got my first automated email on error for a webhook related to my last commit from the central repo to my Sentinel intances. Its a webhook that is automticly created in connections that are made the last year (the once from 2 years ago dont have this webhook automaticly created). The hook is found in devops -> service hooks -> webhooks "run state change" for each connected sentinel However, after todays run (which was successfull, all content deployed) this hook generates alerts. It says it cant reach: (EU in my case) eu.prod.dps.sentinel.azure.com full url: https://eu.prod.dps.sentinel.azure.com/webhooks/ado/workspaces/[REDACTED]/sourceControls/[REDACTED] So, what happened to this domain? why is it no longer responding and when was it going offline? I THINK this is the hook that sets the status under Sentinel -> Repositories in the GUI. this success status in screenshoot is from 2025/02/06, no new success has been registered in the receiving Sentinel instance. For the Sentinel that is 2 year old and dont have a hook in my DevOps that last deployment status says "Unknown" - so im fairly sure thats what the webhook is doing. So a second question would be, how can i set up a new webhook ? (it want ID and password of the "Azure Sentinel Content Deployment App" - i will never know that password....) so i cant manually add ieather (if the URL ever comes back online or if a new one exists?). please let me know.
john66571
Oct 25, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
301Views
2likes
3Comments