Log Ingestion Options
Hi, Is anyone ingesting Fortinet Firewalls, ZScaler, and Cisco Meraki logs into Sentinel? All three data sources require a log forwarder (Linux Syslog). I might use the below flow as a scalable design Data Sources -> Load Balancer -> VMSS or Individual Forwarders (With AMA & RSyslog/syslog-ng Daemon) --- sentinel workspace As Meraki uses a different port "22033 by default" and file "meraki.conf". For example, CEF (Fortinet and Zscaler) uses TCP port 25226 or 25224 for forwarding traffic to the workspace, need assistance on the below queries please: - Which option would be the best and cost-effective, VMSS-based log ingestion, or have two separate forwarders (One for CEF and another for Meraki)? - In the case of the based method, can we set it up to accommodate traffic from all three sources? - How can we manage encryption from data sources ->Load Balancer? thanks
Understand New Sentinel Pricing Model with Sentinel Data Lake Tier
Introduction on Sentinel and its New Pricing Model Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform that collects, analyzes, and correlates security data from across your environment to detect threats and automate response. Traditionally, Sentinel stored all ingested data in the Analytics tier (Log Analytics workspace), which is powerful but expensive for high-volume logs. To reduce cost and enable customers to retain all security data without compromise, Microsoft introduced a new dual-tier pricing model consisting of the Analytics tier and the Data Lake tier. The Analytics tier continues to support fast, real-time querying and analytics for core security scenarios, while the new Data Lake tier provides very low-cost storage for long-term retention and high-volume datasets. Customers can now choose where each data type lands—analytics for high-value detections and investigations, and data lake for large or archival types—allowing organizations to significantly lower cost while still retaining all their security data for analytics, compliance, and hunting. Please flow diagram depicts new sentinel pricing model: Now let's understand this new pricing model with below scenarios: Scenario 1A (PAY GO) Scenario 1B (Usage Commitment) Scenario 2 (Data Lake Tier Only) Scenario 1A (PAY GO) Requirement Suppose you need to ingest 10 GB of data per day, and you must retain that data for 2 years. However, you will only frequently use, query, and analyze the data for the first 6 months. Solution To optimize cost, you can ingest the data into the Analytics tier and retain it there for the first 6 months, where active querying and investigation happen. After that period, the remaining 18 months of retention can be shifted to the Data Lake tier, which provides low-cost storage for compliance and auditing needs. But you will be charged separately for data lake tier querying and analytics which depicted as Compute (D) in pricing flow diagram. Pricing Flow / Notes The first 10 GB/day ingested into the Analytics tier is free for 31 days under the Analytics logs plan. All data ingested into the Analytics tier is automatically mirrored to the Data Lake tier at no additional ingestion or retention cost. For the first 6 months, you pay only for Analytics tier ingestion and retention, excluding any free capacity. For the next 18 months, you pay only for Data Lake tier retention, which is significantly cheaper. Azure Pricing Calculator Equivalent Assuming no data is queried or analyzed during the 18-month Data Lake tier retention period: Although the Analytics tier retention is set to 6 months, the first 3 months of retention fall under the free retention limit, so retention charges apply only for the remaining 3 months of the analytics retention window. Azure pricing calculator will adjust accordingly. Scenario 1B (Usage Commitment) Now, suppose you are ingesting 100 GB per day. If you follow the same pay-as-you-go pricing model described above, your estimated cost would be approximately $15,204 per month. However, you can reduce this cost by choosing a Commitment Tier, where Analytics tier ingestion is billed at a discounted rate. Note that the discount applies only to Analytics tier ingestion—it does not apply to Analytics tier retention costs or to any Data Lake tier–related charges. Please refer to the pricing flow and the equivalent pricing calculator results shown below. Monthly cost savings: $15,204 – $11,184 = $4,020 per month Now the question is: What happens if your usage reaches 150 GB per day? Will the additional 50 GB be billed at the Pay-As-You-Go rate? No. The entire 150 GB/day will still be billed at the discounted rate associated with the 100 GB/day commitment tier bucket. Azure Pricing Calculator Equivalent (100 GB/ Day) Azure Pricing Calculator Equivalent (150 GB/ Day) Scenario 2 (Data Lake Tier Only) Requirement Suppose you need to store certain audit or compliance logs amounting to 10 GB per day. These logs are not used for querying, analytics, or investigations on a regular basis, but must be retained for 2 years as per your organization’s compliance or forensic policies. Solution Since these logs are not actively analyzed, you should avoid ingesting them into the Analytics tier, which is more expensive and optimized for active querying. Instead, send them directly to the Data Lake tier, where they can be retained cost-effectively for future audit, compliance, or forensic needs. Pricing Flow Because the data is ingested directly into the Data Lake tier, you pay both ingestion and retention costs there for the entire 2-year period. If, at any point in the future, you need to perform advanced analytics, querying, or search, you will incur additional compute charges, based on actual usage. Even with occasional compute charges, the cost remains significantly lower than storing the same data in the Analytics tier. Realized Savings Scenario Cost per Month Scenario 1: 10 GB/day in Analytics tier $1,520.40 Scenario 2: 10 GB/day directly into Data Lake tier $202.20 (without compute) $257.20 (with sample compute price) Savings with no compute activity: $1,520.40 – $202.20 = $1,318.20 per month Savings with some compute activity (sample value): $1,520.40 – $257.20 = $1,263.20 per month Azure calculator equivalent without compute Azure calculator equivalent with Sample Compute Conclusion The combination of the Analytics tier and the Data Lake tier in Microsoft Sentinel enables organizations to optimize cost based on how their security data is used. High-value logs that require frequent querying, real-time analytics, and investigation can be stored in the Analytics tier, which provides powerful search performance and built-in detection capabilities. At the same time, large-volume or infrequently accessed logs—such as audit, compliance, or long-term retention data—can be directed to the Data Lake tier, which offers dramatically lower storage and ingestion costs. Because all Analytics tier data is automatically mirrored to the Data Lake tier at no extra cost, customers can use the Analytics tier only for the period they actively query data, and rely on the Data Lake tier for the remaining retention. This tiered model allows different scenarios—active investigation, archival storage, compliance retention, or large-scale telemetry ingestion—to be handled at the most cost-effective layer, ultimately delivering substantial savings without sacrificing visibility, retention, or future analytical capabilities.
Unified SecOps XDR
Hi, I am reaching out to community to seek understanding regarding Unified SecOps XDR portal for Multi-tenant Multi-workspace. Our organization already has a Azure lighthouse setup. My question is if M365 lighthouse license also required for the Multi-tenant Multi-workspace in unified SecOps XDR portal?[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.
Backing up Sentinel and the Security subscription
A lot of people ask about how Security Operations can effectively back up all of the Sentinel related objects. One option is to use GitHub or Azure DevOps pipelines to get a daily backup. I've been doing this for a very long time and it seems like a good forum to share that code. The trick behind it has been to use PowerShell to derive the current API versions for Azure objects. Once you do that, you can recursively download the whole subscription to a repo and then scripts can renerate reports using markdown and yaml. I've been backing up my subscription reliably since 2021. The default project creates reports for all the Sentinel related elements. Markdown lets the object reports be drilled down into... And KQL is presented as YAML for readability. It's actually easy to deploy all the backedup JSON files through REST if needed but for most of us, being able to have readable KQL and Git History of changes in files is probably all we need. This project is completely written in PowerShell with no compiled modules & anyone is freely welcome to it. I've written more about it here: https://www.laurierhodes.info/node/168 ... and the source code and install documentation can be found here: https://github.com/LaurieRhodes/PUBLIC-Subscription-Backup I hope this is of use to the community! 🙂 Best Regards LaurieLocal IPs ( 10.60.0.0/24 ) in ClientIP field in OfficeActivity logs?
Started seeing this more often recently and it started to cause some uptick in alerts across multiple customers (we are an MSP). It seems to me like a backend workflow is failing to write true source IPs to OfficeActivity logs, resulting in some 10.60.0.0/24 IPs being recorded as the ClientIP. Could this be some backend IP belonging to a Microsoft services? This can't be related to the customer since we see the same thing across up to 37 tenants/customers. This includes FileDownloaded operations which is what caused alerts and brought the issue to our attention. To make sure this also wasn't some kind of correlation to device, I checked the logs further and it's happening where IsManagedDevice == false and even anonymous file access. Is anyone else seeing this and can anyone from Microsoft confirm whether this is a mistake or bug somewhere upstream? Sample KQL: // Query 1 OfficeActivity | where TimeGenerated >=ago(30d) | where ipv4_is_private( ClientIP ) | where IsManagedDevice == false | summarize min(TimeGenerated), max(TimeGenerated), Operations=make_set(Operation), NumberUsers=dcount(UserId), make_set(UserId), UserAgents=make_set(UserAgent) by ClientIP // Query 2 OfficeActivity | where TimeGenerated >=ago(60d) | where isnotempty( ClientIP ) and ipv4_is_private( ClientIP ) | summarize count() by bin(TimeGenerated, 1d)
Some accounts missing Azure AD Object ID
Hi all There is something that has been annoying me for a while and I felt it's finally time to post abount it. We have a hybrid AD-AAD setup with a user sync up and running since years back, that particular feature is not my area but from what I've heard the sync is working fine. My trouble is that Sentinel seems to not be able to reslove the AAD Object ID of some users. For example if I use the Entity Behaviour feature to look up one user it's entity page show "-" as the Azure AD Object ID. Alerts and incidents are shown for the user so Sentinel seems to be able to tie the user to incidents at least. If I select another user I might get the full AAD Object ID. This is driving my crazy because I have a few playbooks where I need the AAD-ID and they don't work as it is now. Could anyone shed some light on what process lies behind the correlation between a user and the AAD ID? Regards FredrikSentinel incident synchronization
Hi there, Do you have any feedback or experience about incident synchronization for fields such as "Assigned to", "Tags", and so on? According to the MS Docs, only status is synchronized, but I feel like the sync of other fields is essential. Example 1 For instance, I saw environments where people developped an Azure function to programmatically tag incidents with regions tags (e.g. emea, us, euw, etc.) within M365 Security portal based on their evidences i.e. if an evidence is email address removed for privacy reasons, it would be tagged with 'US'. But as you know this tag does not replicate to Microsoft Sentinel, and configuring the same kind of things on Sentinel side is much more complicated, or this is not a very proper way to do it. Example 2 When assigning incident to people, I think synchronization should be done. I understand that one solution rather than another should be used, but depending on people role in the company, they won't use both solution (altough they maybe should). If you take a CISO, they probably only use the M365 Security portal, but if the technical team uses Sentinel only and assign incidents to each other in Sentinel, the CISO won't see any of the assignments. It might sound like a detail, but I have multiple feedbacks for different customers that have the full MS security stack, and they really wonder how to handle things with that lack of sync. Anyway, if you ever faced to same kind of need feel free to share your experience!
