detection

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Detecting AI agents and non-human identities in Microsoft Sentinel: the classic-agent blind spot
Build 2026 made the direction official. The industry is moving from the app era into the agent era, and Microsoft spent a real share of the keynote on securing agents across their lifecycle, from discovering what is exploitable to governing what is running in production. On the identity side the centerpiece is Microsoft Entra Agent ID, now generally available, which gives AI agents first-class identities and extends Conditional Access, Identity Protection, and full audit logging to them. That is good news for agents you build the new way. It is not the whole picture, and the gap is where most SOCs will get hurt first. Modern agents are covered. Classic agents are not. Entra Agent ID draws a hard line between two kinds of agent. Modern agents are created through the Agent ID platform, each backed by an agent identity blueprint. They carry a proper Agent ID, a full audit trail, and the complete set of governance capabilities, including Identity Protection for Agents, which establishes a baseline for an agent's normal activity and flags anomalies automatically. Classic agents are everything that came before, or that gets built outside the platform: AI agents implemented as ordinary service principals or app registrations, for example Copilot Studio agents created before Agent ID was enabled, or any home-grown automation calling Graph with client credentials. In the Entra agent registry they appear with "Has Agent ID: No," and that flag matters, because the Agent ID protections apply to identities that actually hold an Agent ID. Classic agents sit outside Identity Protection for Agents and Conditional Access for Agents. Here is the uncomfortable part. The non-human identities you already run, the service principals behind your pipelines, your integrations, your scripts, your pre-platform Copilot Studio bots, are almost all classic agents. They tend to outnumber your human accounts, they have no MFA in any meaningful sense, and a credential added to one does not show up in the Azure portal. The new platform protections do not reach them. Until you migrate them, the only place you get detection coverage on that population is your SIEM. So this is the job Sentinel does that Agent ID does not: detect risky behavior on the classic, service-principal-backed agents that the platform cannot yet protect. The telemetry you have, and the one switch people forget Three tables carry most of the signal. AADServicePrincipalSignInLogs records service principal authentications, the client-credentials sign-ins your agents and automation use. No user, no MFA, just an app proving it holds a secret or certificate. AADManagedIdentitySignInLogs does the same for managed identities. AuditLogs records directory changes, including the one that matters most for persistence: a new credential added to an application or service principal. One practical warning before any of this works. Service principal and managed identity sign-in logs are not streamed by default. You have to enable those categories explicitly in the Entra diagnostic settings feeding your workspace. Plenty of teams write the detection, never check, and never notice the table is empty. Verify that first. Detection 1: a new credential on a service principal or app Adding a secret or certificate to an existing service principal is one of the cleanest persistence techniques in a Microsoft cloud. The attacker compromises a privileged user or app, drops a fresh credential on a service principal that already holds useful Graph permissions, and now has access that survives password resets and session revocation. It maps to MITRE T1098.001, Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Credentials. For a classic agent it is especially nasty, because there is no Identity Protection baseline watching it. // Detection 1: new secret or certificate added to an application or service principal // MITRE T1098.001 - Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Credentials AuditLogs | where OperationName has_any ("Add service principal", "Certificates and secrets management") | where Result =~ "success" | extend Initiator = coalesce( tostring(InitiatedBy.user.userPrincipalName), tostring(InitiatedBy.app.displayName)) | extend InitiatorIp = tostring(InitiatedBy.user.ipAddress) | mv-apply Target = TargetResources on ( where Target.type =~ "Application" | extend TargetName = tostring(Target.displayName), TargetId = tostring(Target.id), KeyChanges = Target.modifiedProperties ) | mv-apply Prop = KeyChanges on ( where tostring(Prop.displayName) =~ "KeyDescription" | extend NewKeys = parse_json(tostring(Prop.newValue)), OldKeys = parse_json(tostring(Prop.oldValue)) ) | extend AddedKeys = set_difference(NewKeys, OldKeys) | where array_length(AddedKeys) > 0 | project TimeGenerated, Initiator, InitiatorIp, TargetName, TargetId, AddedKeys | order by TimeGenerated desc The operation filter catches the three shapes this event takes in the log: "Add service principal," "Add service principal credentials," and "Update application - Certificates and secrets management." The modifiedProperties parsing isolates the KeyDescription change, and set_difference confirms a key was actually added rather than removed, so rotating out an old credential does not, on its own, fire the rule. False positives come from legitimate rotation and from automation that provisions app credentials (CI/CD, infrastructure as code). The initiator is the discriminant. A credential added by your deployment pipeline's service account at the usual time is routine. The same change initiated by an interactive admin out of hours, or by an account that never normally touches app credentials, is what you want to surface. Allow-list the expected initiators, not the targets. Detection 2: a classic agent signing in from a first-seen IP A service principal that has only ever authenticated from your Azure regions and suddenly signs in from somewhere new is a strong signal that its credential has been lifted and is being used elsewhere. Service principals have stable, boring network behavior, which makes a first-seen IP a far cleaner indicator for them than it is for roaming human users. This is the behavioral baseline Identity Protection gives you for free on modern agents, rebuilt in KQL for the classic ones it ignores. MITRE T1078.004, Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts. // Detection 2: classic-agent service principal signing in from a previously unseen IP // MITRE T1078.004 - Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts let baseline = 14d; let detection = 1d; let KnownIPs = AADServicePrincipalSignInLogs | where TimeGenerated between (ago(baseline + detection) .. ago(detection)) | where tostring(ResultType) == "0" | summarize KnownIPSet = make_set(IPAddress) by AppId; AADServicePrincipalSignInLogs | where TimeGenerated > ago(detection) | where tostring(ResultType) == "0" | lookup kind=leftouter KnownIPs on AppId | where set_has_element(KnownIPSet, IPAddress) == false | summarize FirstSeen = min(TimeGenerated), Resources = make_set(ResourceDisplayName, 10) by ServicePrincipalName, AppId, IPAddress | order by FirstSeen desc The query builds a per-application baseline of source IPs over the previous two weeks, then flags any successful sign-in today from an address outside that set. Two tuning notes. Brand-new service principals have no baseline, so they surface on first use. That is usually worth seeing once, but you can exclude AppIds younger than the baseline window if it gets noisy. And if your agents egress through shifting cloud IP ranges, widen the comparison from an exact IP to the autonomous system number or a known-range allow-list, otherwise you will chase your own infrastructure. This complements Agent ID, it does not replace it! The endgame is not to run these rules forever. It is to shrink the population they apply to. Inventory your tenant for agents marked "Has Agent ID: No," prioritize the ones holding sensitive Graph permissions, and migrate them onto the Agent ID platform, where Identity Protection and Conditional Access take over the baselining you are doing here by hand. Microsoft has signaled a migration path from classic to modern agents. Treat these two detections as the coverage you need in the meantime, and as a permanent safety net for anything that never makes the move. If you do one thing this week: enable the service principal sign-in log category, deploy detection 1, and pull a list of every service principal that had a credential added in the last 90 days. That list alone tends to be more interesting than people expect. Cheers, Marcel
Marcel_Graewer
Jun 09, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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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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Ingest Microsoft XDR Advanced Hunting Data into Microsoft Sentinel
I had difficulty finding a guide that can query Microsoft Defender vulnerability management Advanced Hunting tables in Microsoft Sentinel for alerting and automation. As a result, I put together this guide to demonstrate how to ingest Microsoft XDR Advanced Hunting query results into Microsoft Sentinel using Azure Logic Apps and System‑Assigned Managed Identity. The solution allows you to: Run Advanced Hunting queries on a schedule Collect high‑risk vulnerability data (or other hunting results) Send the results to a Sentinel workspace as custom logs Create alerts and automation rules based on this data This approach avoids credential storage and follows least privilege and managed identity best practices. Prerequisites Before you begin, ensure you have: Microsoft Defender XDR access Microsoft Sentinel deployed Azure Logic Apps permission Application Administrator or higher in Microsoft Entra ID PowerShell with Az modules installed Contributor access to the Sentinel workspace Architecture at a Glance Logic App (Managed Identity) ↓ Microsoft XDR Advanced Hunting API ↓ Logic App ↓ Log Analytics Data Collector API ↓ Microsoft Sentinel (Custom Log) Step 1: Create a Logic App In the Azure Portal, go to Logic Apps Create a new Consumption Logic App Choose the appropriate: Subscription Resource Group Region Step 2: Enable System‑Assigned Managed Identity Open the Logic App Navigate to Settings → Identity Enable System‑assigned managed identity Click Save Note the Object ID This identity will later be granted permission to run Advanced Hunting queries. Step 3: Locate the Logic App in Entra ID Go to Microsoft Entra ID → Enterprise Applications Change filter to All Applications Search for your Logic App name Select the app to confirm it exists Step 4: Grant Advanced Hunting Permissions (PowerShell) Advanced Hunting permissions cannot be assigned via the portal and must be done using PowerShell. Required Permission AdvancedQuery.Read.All PowerShell Script # Your tenant ID (in the Azure portal, under Azure Active Directory > Overview). $TenantID=”Your TenantID” Connect-AzAccount -TenantId $TenantID # Get the ID of the managed identity for the app. $spID = “Your Managed Identity” # Get the service principal for Microsoft Graph by providing the AppID of WindowsDefender ATP $GraphServicePrincipal = Get-AzADServicePrincipal -Filter "AppId eq 'fc780465-2017-40d4-a0c5-307022471b92'" | Select-Object Id # Extract the Advanced query ID. $AppRole = $GraphServicePrincipal.AppRole | ` Where-Object {$_.Value -contains "AdvancedQuery.Read.All"} # If AppRoleID comes up with blank value, it can be replaced with 93489bf5-0fbc-4f2d-b901-33f2fe08ff05 # Now add the permission to the app to read the advanced queries New-AzADServicePrincipalAppRoleAssignment -ServicePrincipalId $spID -ResourceId $GraphServicePrincipal.Id -AppRoleId $AppRole.Id # Or New-AzADServicePrincipalAppRoleAssignment -ServicePrincipalId $spID -ResourceId $GraphServicePrincipal.Id -AppRoleId 93489bf5-0fbc-4f2d-b901-33f2fe08ff05 After successful execution, verify the permission under Enterprise Applications → Permissions. Step 5: Build the Logic App Workflow Open Logic App Designer and create the following flow: Trigger Recurrence (e.g., every 24 hours Run Advanced Hunting Query Connector: Microsoft Defender ATP Authentication: System‑Assigned Managed Identity Action: Run Advanced Hunting Query Sample KQL Query (High‑Risk Vulnerabilities) Send Data to Log Analytics (Sentinel) On Send Data, create a new connection and provide the workspace information where the Sentinel log exists. Obtaining the Workspace Key is not straightforward, we need to retrieve using the PowerShell command. Get-AzOperationalInsightsWorkspaceSharedKey ` -ResourceGroupName "<ResourceGroupName>" ` -Name "<WorkspaceName>" Configuration Details Workspace ID Primary key Log Type (example): XDRVulnerability_CL Request body: Results array from Advanced Hunting Step 6: Run the Logic app to return results In the logic app designer select run, If the run is successful data will be sent to sentinel workspace. Step 7: Validate Data in Microsoft Sentinel In Sentinel, run the query: XDRVulnerability_CL | where TimeGenerated > ago(24h) If data appears, ingestion is successful. Step 8: Create Alerts & Automation Rules Use Sentinel to: Create analytics rules for: CVSS > 9 Exploit available New vulnerabilities in last 24 hours Trigger: Email notifications Incident creation SOAR playbooks Conclusion By combining Logic Apps, Managed Identities, Microsoft XDR, and Microsoft Sentinel, you can create a powerful, secure, and scalable pipeline for ingesting hunting intelligence and triggering proactive detections.
muraly005
Mar 23, 2026 Place Microsoft Sentinel
240Views
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Sentinel Data Connector: Google Workspace (G Suite) (using Azure Functions)
I'm encountering a problem when attempting to run the GWorkspace_Report workbook in Azure Sentinel. The query is throwing this error related to the union operator: 'union' operator: Failed to resolve table expression named 'GWorkspace_ReportsAPI_gcp_CL' I've double-checked, and the GoogleWorkspaceReports connector is installed and updated to version 3.0.2. Has anyone seen this or know what might be causing the table GWorkspace_ReportsAPI_gcp_CL to be unresolved? Thanks!
HeyNiko
Oct 22, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
275Views
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2Comments
Incident Missing Entities
Good morning! I would like to have some clarification on how entities work. Yesterday I found out that if I have 2 entities of the same type (In this particular case, two entities of the type Account), with the same identifier (originally, both share the identifier 'Name'), Sentinel appears to throw away one of them, or both in some instances, and when the alert generates an incident, the entities defined won't appear. I have switched out the identifier on both account types to something different, but until an incident gets triggered, I can't confirm if this will fix the original issue. So my questions are An analytic rule can or can't have two entities of the same type defined? If yes, that means that they need to have different identifiers. Is this a correct asumption? Some identifiers expect a certain type of value to be assigned, that means that eventually, I can ran out of identifiers for my entities or face the added complexity of dealing with types when returning values from my KQL query What could happen if I map an identifier to something that matches the type but not what that identifier represents? in this case, for Account, we have the identifier ObjectGuid. If I assign a value type string to it, that is not a guid, wouldn't that mess up something else in the background? Example, incident grouping If I move instead to use Sentinel Entities, which appear to be the 'general' option, I could only use one, since I only have 'entity' as available identifier, looping back to the problem of can have only one type of identifier for identity type. Thanks in advance
FaRa_AVM
Aug 07, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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Unable to retrieve logs from the SecurityIncident table.
: We are unable to retrieve logs from the SecurityIncident table. Although security alerts are visible, the SecurityIncident table remains empty. How can we get the logs to populate in the SecurityIncident table?
Palash_Shukla
Jul 04, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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IdentityInfo with analytics KQL query
Hi, I'm currently trying to create a KQL query for an alert rule in Sentinel. The log source upon which the alert rule is based, only contains the SAMAccountName, which prevents me from mapping it to an Account entity in the alert. I'm therefore trying to use the IdentityInfo table to lookup the AadUserId of the user, using the SAMAccountName. The issue I'm running into is that I want my query to run every 10 minutes, and look up data from the past 10 minutes, as this is most suitable given the nature of the alert and the log source. This however causes the lookup in the IdentityInfo table to also only check data from the last 10 minutes, which doesn't work as the data in that table may be much older and therefor fail the lookup of the AadUserId of the user. According to the documentation, the IdentityInfo table is refreshed every 14 days, so for it to work I'd have to create a query that checks all logging, including that of the log source, from the past 14 days, which is not what I want. Hopefully some of you have suggestions or ideas on how to make this work. Thanks a lot! Marek
Marekjdj
Jun 02, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
752Views
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Playbook when incident trigger is not working
Hi I want to create a playbook to automatically revoke session user when incident with specifics title or gravity is created. But after some test the playbook is'nt run autimacally, it work when I run it manually. I did'nt find what I do wrong. See the image and the code bellow. Thanks in advance! { "definition": { "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/providers/Microsoft.Logic/schemas/2016-06-01/workflowdefinition.json#", "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0", "triggers": { "Microsoft_Sentinel_incident": { "type": "ApiConnectionWebhook", "inputs": { "host": { "connection": { "name": "@parameters('$connections')['azuresentinel']['connectionId']" } }, "body": { "callback_url": "@{listCallbackUrl()}" }, "path": "/incident-creation" } } }, "actions": { "Get_incident": { "type": "ApiConnection", "inputs": { "host": { "connection": { "name": "@parameters('$connections')['azuresentinel-1']['connectionId']" } }, "method": "post", "body": { "incidentArmId": "@triggerBody()?['object']?['id']" }, "path": "/Incidents" }, "runAfter": {} }, "Send_e-mail_(V2)": { "type": "ApiConnection", "inputs": { "host": { "connection": { "name": "@parameters('$connections')['office365']['connectionId']" } }, "method": "post", "body": { "To": "email address removed for privacy reasons", "Subject": "Ceci est un test", "Body": "</p> <p class="\"editor-paragraph\"">@{body('Get_incident')?['id']}</p> <p class="\"editor-paragraph\"">@{body('Get_incident')?['properties']?['description']}</p> <p class="\"editor-paragraph\"">@{body('Get_incident')?['properties']?['incidentNumber']}</p> <p>", "Importance": "Normal" }, "path": "/v2/Mail" }, "runAfter": { "Get_incident": [ "Succeeded" ] } } }, "outputs": {}, "parameters": { "$connections": { "type": "Object", "defaultValue": {} } } }, "parameters": { "$connections": { "type": "Object", "value": { "azuresentinel": { "id": "/subscriptions/xxxx/providers/Microsoft.Web/locations/xxxxx/managedApis/xxxxxxx", "connectionId": "/subscriptions/xxxxxxx/resourceGroups/xxxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Web/connections/azuresentinel-Revoke-RiskySessions1", "connectionName": "azuresentinel-Revoke-RiskySessions1", "connectionProperties": { "authentication": { "type": "ManagedServiceIdentity" } } }, "azuresentinel-1": { "id": "/subscriptions/xxxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Web/locations/xxxx/managedApis/xxx", "connectionId": "/subscriptions/xxxxxxx/resourceGroups/xxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Web/connections/xxxx", "connectionName": "xxxxxx", "connectionProperties": { "authentication": { "type": "ManagedServiceIdentity" } } }, "office365": { "id": "/subscriptions/xxxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Web/locations/xxxxx/managedApis/office365", "connectionId": "/subscriptions/xxxxx/resourceGroups/xxxxxx/providers/Microsoft.Web/connections/o365-Test_Send-email-incident-to-xxxx", "connectionName": "o365-Test_Send-email-incident-to-xxxxx" } } } } }
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Amadou_OuryD
May 29, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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Unknown Behaviour Involving GroupsService in OfficeActivity
I have spotted a few hundred events with the following KQL query in my environment. This is the result of one of the entries. It looks like a regular legitimate behaviour by Microsoft but I don't seem to find any documentation about it. Can anyone share the insight of it? Thank you!
Fei_123
Mar 31, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
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Lookup data from the last == ingestion_time()
Howdy! In "Analytics rule wizard - Create a new Scheduled rule" under Query scheduling you have to fill out "Lookup data from the last" What time field is Sentinel looking at when determine which events to include in the lookup data? Is it ingestion_time()? Is it TimeGenerated? How does it know?
JanAnders45
Mar 26, 2025 Place Microsoft Sentinel
226Views
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3Comments