This installment is part
of a broader series to keep you up to date with the latest
features/enhancements in Azure Sentinel. The installments will be bite-sized to
enable you to easily digest the new content.
Introduction
Security operations (SecOps) teams need to be equipped with the tools that
empower them to efficiently detect, investigate, and respond to threats across
your enterprise. Azure Sentinel watchlists empower organizations to shorten
investigation cycles and enable rapid threat remediation by providing the
ability to collect external data sources for correlation with security events.
Additionally, correlations and analytics help SecOps stay appraised of bad
actors and compromised entities across the environment. Incorporating external
data and performing correlation across analytics allows security teams to get a
better view of their entire infrastructure and take steps to reduce risk.
Due to evolving and constant change in the cybersecurity landscape that we
live in, it is very challenging for SecOps to stay appraised of new indicators
of compromise.
Azure Sentinel Watchlists provides the ability to quickly import IP
addresses, file hashes, etc. from csv files into your Azure Sentinel
workspace. Then utilize the watchlist name/value pairs for joining and
filtering for use in alert rules, threat hunting, workbooks, notebooks and for
general queries.
Due to the constant change, security analysts need the flexibility to update
watchlists to stay ahead. With that in mind, we are super excited to
announce the Azure Sentinel Watchlist enhancements that empower security
analysts to drive efficiency by enabling the ability to update or add items to
a watchlist using an intuitive user interface.
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For additional use case examples, please refer to these relevant blog posts:
Utilize Watchlists to Drive Efficiency during Azure Sentinel Investigations:
At the annual Microsoft Build 2021 Developer Conference, we announced two
new products that are based on blockchain technology. Azure Confidential
Ledger, now in preview, offers a fully managed service for customers who
need to store sensitive data with high integrity and confidentiality. Azure SQL Database ledger,
also in preview, enables storage of sensitive relational data in a
tamper-evident way.
In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to both of these new products as well
as help you understand when it makes sense to use them individually, together,
and even with an existing blockchain system.
Azure
Confidential Ledger
Enterprises running sensitive workloads need a secure way to store their
logs and important metadata while collaborating with other parties.
The Confidential Consortium Framework (CCF) is a
Microsoft-created open framework for building confidential permissioned
blockchain services. By running a confidential blockchain network of nodes in secure enclaves, data remains append-only with immutability
guarantees and the data from the client goes straight to the ledger’s
enclaves.
Building on the CCF framework, Azure Confidential
Ledger (preview) provides the ability to store sensitive data records
with integrity and confidentiality guarantees, all in a highly available and
performant manner. Stored data remains immutable and tamper-proof in the
append-only ledger with the benefits of a fully managed solution that provides
infrastructure and operations so customers can get started quickly. The service
provides these assurances by harnessing the power of Confidential Computing‘s secure enclaves when setting up
the decentralized blockchain network. Microsoft’s access is limited to setting
up and managing the network, and this specialized design means that only the
customer has access to transaction data in the Confidential Ledger.
Asking yourself the following questions can help you decide if Azure
Confidential Ledger is right for you:
Do you need to store unstructured data (i.e. files,
digests) that must remain intact for recordkeeping purposes?
Are you working with sensitive workflows where
confidentiality must be maintained?
Are you in need of a service that has high integrity
and security with a minimalistic trusted computing base?
Are you working with parties that need irrefutable
evidence that tampering did not occur to the stored data?
If you said yes to one or more of these, Azure Confidential Ledger is right
for you. Customers have been using Azure Confidential Ledger in various
ways. Novaworks,
an e-parliamentary software solution, is using Azure Confidential Ledger to
securely log votes in a tamper-proof ledger for a high-fidelity voting process.
Azure
SQL Database ledger
Azure SQL Database
ledger (preview) is a tamper-evident solution for your databases that
provides cryptographic proof of your database’s integrity. Using a
blockchain data structure implemented as system tables in your database, the
ledger feature ensures that any transaction which modifies relational data in
your database can be tracked, and any potential tampering detected and easily
remediated. Providing proof that your data has not been tampered with is
as simple as running a stored procedure that compares the calculated
cryptographic hashes in your database against a database digest, which is
published automatically in a secure location, such as Azure Confidential
Ledger.
Ledger is a feature of Azure SQL Database, meaning there is no additional
cost to add tamper-evidence capabilities. You don’t have to migrate data
from your existing SQL databases to add tamper-evidence capabilities and no
changes are needed to your applications as ledger is an extension of existing
SQL table functionality.
Asking yourself the following questions can help you decide if Azure SQL
Database ledger is right for you.
Do you have business-critical data in Azure SQL
Database where you must ensure data integrity is intact?
Can 3rd parties who interact with your
data accept a “trust, but verify” model rather than each party having a
copy of the ledger?
Do you need to prove to auditors or regulators that
your data has not been tampered with?
Do you have a need for queryability and strong data
management capabilities, such as streaming data from a blockchain to an
off-chain store while maintaining integrity from on-chain to off-chain?
If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, then Azure SQL Database
ledger is right for you. Customers like RTGS.global, who provide a
global liquidity network for banks, are already using this capability to
provide a ledger of transactions to regulators to prove that global banking
transactions have not been tampered. Read our blog to learn
more.
Putting
it all together
Trust is foundational in any business process that spans organizational
boundaries. Microsoft goes beyond traditional blockchains, using the
building blocks of this technology as the underpinning for the distributed
ledger of Azure Confidential Ledger and the consolidated data store of Azure
SQL Database ledger. These solutions empower our customers to apply the
power of blockchain to sensitive data, simplifying solution development,
reducing cost and providing a new level of digital trust to transactions.
Deciding which technology is best for your needs ultimately depends on the
level of trust between parties transacting with the data, and the type of data
being protected. In addition to the points mentioned above, consider the
following when deciding whether Azure SQL Database ledger or Azure Confidential
Ledger is right for you.
Learn
more
Read the Azure Confidential Ledger announcement blog and documentation to learn more about how this new
service is empowering our customers and securing their work.
Read the Azure SQL Database ledger documentation and whitepaper to
learn more about how the ledger feature works and how to use it with your
Azure SQL Database.
The modern enterprise, of any size, faces a challenge that the logistics
involved in planning a phishing simulation exercise are often laborious and
time-consuming to implement. So to help address this we are pleased to announce
some extra functionality in Attack Simulation Training that we feel will bring
some added benefits in this space by:
Helping move away from the traditional approach of
running quarterly or annual simulations, to a more always on ‘educating’
model, by scheduling simulations to launch at a higher frequency (being
mindful of simulation and training fatigue of course).
Letting you schedule simulations up to a year in
advance, so you decide the parameters of your simulations once in advance
then you are good to go.
Introducing some randomization elements around send
times and dates to help combat the crowdsource effect that can occur when
running large simulation exercises.
You can access the new functionality by selecting the “Simulation
automations” tab within the main experience.
When you create a simulation automation, the experience walks you through a
wizard experience just like creating a manual simulation, with the addition of
a few new steps.
Payload selection – Here we allow you to manually select
what payloads you would like to be in scope for the simulations, or
alternatively you can opt to randomize, where we will take a random
payload from the available library and use that.
Simulation schedule – Here, you get to decide if you
would like a randomized schedule or a more predictable fixed schedule.
What is the difference?
A randomized schedule
lets you select a start date and end date, the days of the week you would like
to be in scope for delivery and after how many simulation launches would you
like the automation to stop.
Once the automation is enabled, the simulations will be launched on random
days between the dates you have specified. You can also choose to randomize the
send times (to negate the water cooler effect of users receiving simulation
messages at the same time and chatting about it).
A fixed
schedule allows you to run automations in a more controlled manner. We take the
same approach – you specify a start date and end date – however this time you
are prompted to enter the cadence, either weekly or monthly and the parameters
of how often you would like them to launch.
For example, you can schedule an automation to run once a week for a period
of 7 weeks starting every Monday, or you can also opt to end the simulations by
a particular date or after a specific number of occurrences that you define.
Government Cloud
and Regional Availability Updates
Attack Simulation
Training is now live in GCC:
Starting 15 June 2021, Attack Simulation Training will be generally
available in our Government Community Cloud. If your organization has Office
365 G5 GCC or Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Plan 2) for Government, you
can use Attack Simulation Training in Microsoft 365 Defender to run realistic
attack scenarios in your organization as described here. Please note that the service is not yet available in
GCC-High or DoD environments and this is part of our future roadmap.
Attack Simulation
Training is now live in new regions:
Starting 16 June 2021, Attack Simulation Training will be generally
available to tenants in Latin America, Brazil, and Switzerland that have
Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2. For any guidance
on running simulations, please start here. For frequently asked questions, please refer to our FAQ page.
We hope you find the enhancements useful as you continue your journey of
end-user education and behavior change. If you have any comments or feedback be
sure to let us know.
Today, we are announcing the 2nd
annual Hackathon for Azure Sentinel! This hackathon challenges
security experts around the globe to build end-to-end cybersecurity solutions
for Azure Sentinel that delivers enterprise value by collecting data, managing
security, detecting, hunting, investigating, and responding to constantly
evolving threats. We invite you to participate in this hackathon for a chance
to solve this challenge and win a piece of the $19000 cash prize pool*. This
online hackathon runs from June 21st to Oct 4th, 2021,
and is open to individuals, teams, and organizations globally.
Azure Sentinel provides
a platform for security analysts and threat hunters of various levels to not
only leverage existing content like workbooks (dashboard), playbooks (workflow
orchestrations), analytic rules (detections), hunting queries, etc. but also build custom content and solutions as well.
Furthermore, Azure Sentinel also provides APIs
for integrating different types of applications to connect with Azure Sentinel
data and insights. Here are few examples of end-to-end solutions that
unlocks the potential of Azure Sentinel and drives enterprise value.
Azure Sentinel Solutions blogpost provides examples of
end-to-end solutions that deliver product and/or domain and/or industry
vertical value.
In addition to learning more about Azure Sentinel and delivering
cybersecurity value to enterprises, this hackathon offers the following awesome
prizes for top projects:
First Place (1) – $10,000 USD cash prize
Second Place (1) – $4000 USD cash prize
Runners Up (2) – $1500 USD cash prize each
Popular Choice (1) – $1000 USD cash prize
The first 10 eligible submissions also qualify to
receive $100 each.
Note: Refer to the Hackathon official rules for details on project types that
qualify for each prize category
In addition, the four winning projects will be heavily promoted on Microsoft
blogs and social media so that your creative projects are widely known to all.
The criteria for judging consist of quality of the idea, value to enterprise
and technical implementation. Refer to the Azure
Sentinel Hackathon website for further details and get started.
Judging Panel
Judging commences immediately after the hackathon submission window closes
on October 4th, 2021. We’ll announce the winners on or before
October 27th, 2021. Our judging panel currently includes the
following influencers and experts in the cybersecurity community.
Ann Johnson – Corporate Vice President, Cybersecurity
Solutions Group, Microsoft
Vasu Jakkal – Corporate Vice President, Microsoft
Security, Compliance and Identity
John Lambert – Distinguished Engineer and General
Manager, Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center
Nick Lippis – Co-Founder, Co-Chair ONUG
Andrii Bezverkhyi – CEO & founder of SOC Prime,
inventor of Uncoder.IO
*No purchase necessary.
Open only to new and existing Devpost users who are the age of majority in
their country. Game ends October 4th, 2021 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time.
Refer to the official rules for details.
Qualcomm has confirmed the bug and fixed the issue and mobile players are notified, according to the researchers.
According to researchers with Israeli cybersecurity firm Checkpoint have discovered a high-risk security vulnerability in Qualcomm mobile chip responsible for cellular communication in nearly 40 per cent of the high-end phones offered by Google, Samsung, LG, Xiaomi and OnePlus.
If exploited, the vulnerability in Qualcomm mobile station modem (MSM) would have allowed an attacker to use Android OS itself as an entry point to inject malicious and invisible code into phones, granting them access to SMS messages and audio of phone conversations, according to Check Point Research.
“During our investigation, we discovered a vulnerability in a modem data service that can be used to control the modem and dynamically patch it from the application processor,” they said in a blog post on Thursday.
According to Counterpoint Research, Qualcomm’s Mobile Station Modem is a system of chips that provides capabilities for things like voice, SMS, and high-definition recording, mostly on higher-end devices.
“This means an attacker could have used this vulnerability to inject malicious code into the modem from Android, giving them access to the device user’s call history and SMS, as well as the ability to listen to the device user’s conversations,” they added.
A hacker can also exploit the vulnerability to unlock the device’s SIM, thereby overcoming the limitations imposed by service providers on it.
Mobile devices should always be updated to the latest version of the OS to protect against the exploitation of vulnerabilities. Only installing apps downloaded from official app stores reduces the probability of downloading and installing a mobile malware,” the researchers advised.
In August 2020, Check Point Research found over 400 vulnerabilities on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chip that threatened the usability of mobile phones.
Vulnerability also could have potentially allowed an attacker to unlock a mobile device’s SIM, according to the cyber security company.
The
use of small-scale distributed energy resources (DERs), such as wind and
solar photovoltaics, are growing rapidly and transforming the power grid.
In fact, a distribution utility may need to remotely communicate with
thousands of DERs and other grid-edge devices—many of which are not owned
by them. Any attack that can deny, disrupt, or tamper with DER
communications could prevent a utility from performing necessary control
actions and could diminish grid resiliency.
In
this practice guide, the NCCoE applies standards, best practices, and
commercially available technology to protect the digital communication,
data, and control of cyber-physical grid-edge devices. The guide
demonstrates an example solution for monitoring and detecting unusual
behavior of connected industrial internet of things devices and building a
comprehensive audit trail of trusted IIoT data flows.
By
releasing Volumes A and B as a preliminary draft, we are sharing our
progress made to date, using the feedback received to shape future drafts
of the practice guide, and featuring technologies and practices that
organizations can use to monitor, trust, and protect information exchanges
between commercial- and utility-scale distributed energy resources (DERs).
The public comment period is open through May 24, 2021. See
the publication
details for a copy of the draft volumes and instructions for
submitting comments.
NIST
seeks input from SP 800-82 stakeholders to ensure that the future update
will continue to deliver the guidance necessary to help organizations
manage the cybersecurity risks associated with their control systems.
Specifically,
NIST requests input on the following:
Expansion in scope of SP
800-82 from industrial control systems to control systems in general
Application of new
cybersecurity capabilities in control system environments
Development of guidance
specific to small and medium-sized control system owners and operators
Updates to control system
threats, vulnerabilities, standards and recommended practices
Updates to the control
system Overlay
Removal of material from
the current document that is outdated, unneeded, or no longer
applicable.
All comments are due by May 28, 2021. Please
submit your comments by email to sp800-82rev3@nist.gov.
When providing comments, please be specific and include the rationale for
any proposed additions or deletions of material.
An
Initial Public Draft of the update, which will be published as SP 800-82
Rev. 3, is scheduled for a late 2021/early 2022 release.
With cryptocurrency mining on the rise, Microsoft and Intel have partnered
to deliver threat detection technology to enable EDR capabilities in Microsoft
Defender for Endpoint.
Special thanks to for
collaborating on this blog post with me!
In this blog post, we will review the new Azure Sentinel data streams for
Azure Active Directory non-interactive, service principal, and managed identity
logins. We will also share the new security content we built and updated in the
product, which includes analytics rules for the detection part and workbooks to
assist our customers to deal with this blind spot.
The shift to the cloud and the rise of automation tasks and
service-to-service integration have contributed to a dramatic increase in the
use of managed applications, service principals, and managed identities.
These new security objects perform login activity which is not captured in
Azure Active Directory’s traditional sign-in logs.
The updated Azure Active Directory data connector now brings these important
sign-in events into Azure sentinel.
What are
non-interactive logins?
Non-interactive user sign-ins are sign-ins that were performed by a client
app or an OS component on behalf of a user. Like interactive user sign-ins,
these sign-ins are done on behalf of a user. Unlike interactive user sign-ins,
these sign-ins do not require the user to supply an Authentication factor.
Instead, the device or client app uses a token or code to authenticate or
access a resource on behalf of a user. In general, the user will perceive these
sign-ins as happening in the background of the user’s activity.
Some activity that is captured in these logs:
A client app uses an OAuth 2.0 refresh token to get an
access token.
A client uses an OAuth 2.0 authorization code to get an
access token and refresh token.
A user performs single sign-on (SSO) to a web or
Windows app on an Azure AD joined PC.
A user signs in to a second Microsoft Office app while
they have a session on a mobile device using FOCI (Family of Client IDs).
Why is it so
important to monitor and detect activities in this area?
Some examples that highlight why it’s so important to collect, and get
visibility into these logs as part of your detections and hunting:
SolarWinds
campaign – As part of our learning on the SolarWinds
campaign investigation, we used these logs in the hunting phase to check
if the malicious actor used a sensitive app to gain “Data Access”.
In the previous episodewe provided recommendations about how to use the Microsoft 365 Defender API
and, specifically, how
to optimize the Advanced huntingquery.
In this
episode we willdemonstrateuse cases detailing how to access the API data and use this information in other products.
One of the most commonuses of the API is for visualization in PowerBI. This provides the capability to analyze, visualize, and share
your data with others quickly and easily.
If you are not familiar with PowerBi, we suggest you visit theMicrosoft PowerBi web site, and download PowerBI desktop.
In the previous episode, we
described how you
can easily use PowerBi to represent Microsoft 365
data in a visual format. In this episode, we will explore another way
you can interact with the Microsoft 365 Defender
API. We will describe how to automate
data analysis and hunting using Jupyter notebook.
Automate your hunting queries
While hunting and conducting investigations on a
specific threat or IOC, you may want to use multiple queries to obtain wider
optics on the possible threats or IOCs in your network. You
may also want to leverage queries that are used by
other hunters and use it as a pivot point to perform deep
analysis and find anomalous behaviors. You can find a
wide variety of examples in our Git repository where various queries related to
the same campaign or attack technique are shared.
In scenarios such as this, it is sensible to
leverage the power of automation to run the queries rather than running
individual queries one-by-one.
This is where Jupyter Notebook is
particularly useful. It takes in a JSON file with hunting queries as input and
executes all the queries in sequence. The results are saved in a
.csv file that you can analyze and share.
Hopefully, you have read my previous blog posts about Azure Purview access
management Part 1 and Part 2 to find about Azure Purview control plane and data
plane roles and tasks. In this post, I will cover the following topic:
Overview of dashboards and roles required to extend
your M365 Sensitivity Labels to Azure Purview.
We have a new Azure Purview bog for your consideration. Please remember that
Azure Purview is a unified data governance service, and security is one of its
pillars.
At-scale data
processing systems typically store a single table in a data lake as multiple
files. This concept is represented in Azure Purview by using resource sets. A
resource set is a single object in the data catalog that represents a large
number of assets in storage. To learn more, see the resource set documentation.
When scanning a storage account, Azure Purview uses a
set of defined patterns to determine if a group of assets is a resource set. In
some cases, Azure Purview’s resource set grouping may not accurately reflect
your data estate. Resource set pattern rules allow you to customize or override
how Azure Purview detects which assets are grouped as resource sets and how
they are displayed within the catalog.
Pattern rules are currently supported in public preview
in the following source types:
Welcome to the eDiscovery in Microsoft 365 One Stop Shop Resource
Page!
We built this page to help you easily find all relevant content and
resources relating to the compliance solutions in Microsoft 365. Please
bookmark this page for future reference as we will update it on an ongoing
basis.
A software supply chain attack—such as the recent SolarWinds Orion
attack—occurs when a cyber threat actor infiltrates a software vendor’s network
and employs malicious code to compromise the software before the vendor sends
it to their customers. The compromised software can then further compromise
customer data or systems.
To help software vendors and customers defend against these attacks, CISA
and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) have released Defending
Against Software Supply Chain Attacks. This new interagency
resource provides an overview of software supply chain risks and
recommendations. The publication also provides guidance on using NIST’s Cyber
Supply Chain Risk Management (C-SCRM) framework and the Secure Software
Development Framework (SSDF) to identify, assess, and mitigate risks.
You are subscribed to National Cyber Awareness System Current Activity for
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. This information has recently
been updated, and is now available.
Microsoft’s
April 2021 Security Update mitigates significant vulnerabilities
affecting on-premises Exchange Server 2016 and 2019. An attacker could exploit
these vulnerabilities to gain access and maintain persistence on the target
host. CISA strongly urges organizations to apply Microsoft’s April 2021
Security Update to mitigate against these newly disclosed vulnerabilities.
Note: the Microsoft security updates released in March 2021 do not remediate
against these vulnerabilities.
In response to these the newly disclosed vulnerabilities, CISA has issued Supplemental
Direction Version 2 to Emergency Directive (ED) 21-02: Mitigate Microsoft
Exchange On-Premises Product Vulnerabilities. ED 20-02 Supplemental Direction
V2 requires federal departments and agencies to apply Microsoft’s April 2021
Security Update to mitigate against these significant vulnerabilities affecting
on-premises Exchange Server 2016 and 2019.
Although CISA Emergency Directives only apply to Federal Civilian Executive
Branch agencies, CISA strongly encourages state and local governments, critical
infrastructure entities, and other private sector organizations to review ED
21-02 Supplemental Direction V2 and apply the security updates immediately. Review
the following resources for additional information:
