How to integrate Microsoft Defender/ Sentinel with Microsoft Fabric
Since September 23, 2026, the Microsoft Sentinel data lake is no longer a separate onboarding and billing project: it comes integrated with Sentinel for every customer. The bigger change is where the advanced work happens. Day-to-day SOC work (hunting, workbooks,...
Auditing Microsoft Defender and Intune Configuration Changes
Microsoft is clearly moving toward a more unified security operations experience within the Defender portal. Over the last few years, we have seen Microsoft bring more security capabilities together under the Defender platform. Instead of working with completely separate portals...
Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence: Native Defender Integration and API Access
Previously, Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence (MDTI) was offered as a separate product and portal experience. Organizations that wanted access to the full Defender TI capabilities required an additional premium license, which could cost tens of thousands of dollars per year...
How to natively archive Defender XDR logs for up to 12 years
For years, customers have asked for ways to extend data retention in Microsoft Defender XDR beyond the default limits to support advanced hunting and long-term archiving needs. By default, Defender XDR retains incidents, alerts, and related data for up to...
Microsoft Sentinel Cost Management: How to get insights in data lake usage
Microsoft announced the public preview of Microsoft Sentinel Cost Management at Microsoft Ignite 2025. The new feature brings more in-depth cost visibility into the usage of Sentinel and Sentinel Data Lake. With the release of Microsoft Sentinel data lake, it...
How to store Defender XDR data for years in Sentinel data lake without expensive ingestion cost
In recent years, an increasing number of customers have requested options to extend retention in Microsoft Defender XDR beyond the default 30 days at a low cost, all with the requirement of having the KQL experience available. Blog information: Feature is...
Microsoft Sentinel data lake: How to use/enable and set-up the unified data lake
Microsoft released the new Microsoft Sentinel data lake in public preview this month. With the data lake feature, it is possible to scale and store data more easily for less cost. The new Microsoft Sentinel data lake is a new...
Deploy Sysmon and collect additional data with Sentinel and the AMA agent
System Monitor (Sysmon) is one of the most common add-ons for Windows logging. With Sysmon, you can detect malicious activity by tracking code behavior and network traffic. Sysmon is part of the Sysinternals package and is owned by Microsoft. Sysmon...
Which data connector and activity is free in Microsoft Sentinel?
After the initial onboarding of Microsoft Sentinel, connectors can be used for ingesting data. Microsoft invested in pre-build connectors which can be used for adding data/events correctly in Microsoft Sentinel. For a large set of Microsoft products; there are connectors...
Use automation/playbooks in Microsoft Sentinel during incident update activity using update triggers
Automation is critical for modern SOC environments to handle the volume of upcoming threats and manage day-to-day tasks. Ideally most of the features are automated in Microsoft Sentinel during the incident creation, enrichment, update, and closure. For quite some time...
Microsoft MVP
Need assistance by Jeffrey?
MDE blog series
