Building a Security Operations Center with Microsoft Sentinel

Introduction Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) solution. In this post, we’ll explore how to build an effective Security Operations Center (SOC) using Sentinel. Why Microsoft Sentinel? Key Advantages Cloud-Native Scale - Ingest and analyze petabytes of data AI and Machine Learning - Built-in intelligence for threat detection Cost-Effective - Pay only for what you ingest Integrated - Native integration with Microsoft ecosystem Extensible - 100+ out-of-the-box connectors Architecture Overview Data Sources → Data Connectors → Log Analytics → Sentinel ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ Azure Office 365 Analytics Incidents AWS Azure AD Workbooks Playbooks GCP Defender Hunting Automation On-Prem 3rd Party Notebooks Response Getting Started Step 1: Create Sentinel Workspace # Create Log Analytics workspace az monitor log-analytics workspace create \ --resource-group sentinel-rg \ --workspace-name sentinel-workspace \ --location eastus \ --sku PerGB2018 # Enable Sentinel on the workspace az sentinel onboard \ --resource-group sentinel-rg \ --workspace-name sentinel-workspace Step 2: Configure Data Retention # Set retention to 90 days Set-AzOperationalInsightsWorkspace ` -ResourceGroupName "sentinel-rg" ` -Name "sentinel-workspace" ` -RetentionInDays 90 Step 3: Enable Data Connectors Key connectors to enable first: ...

December 12, 2025 · 6 min · 1224 words · Solution Architect