Connect Microsoft Sentinel to the Microsoft Defender portal

Microsoft Sentinel is generally available within Microsoft's unified security operations (SecOps) platform in the Microsoft Defender portal, with or without Microsoft Defender XDR or an E5 license. When you onboard Microsoft Sentinel to the Defender portal together Microsoft Defender XDR, you unify capabilities like incident management and advanced hunting. Reduce tool switching and build a more context-focused investigation that expedites incident response and stops breaches faster. For more information, see:

• What is Microsoft's unified security operations platform?
• Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal
• Microsoft Defender XDR integration with Microsoft Sentinel

Prerequisites

Before you begin, review the feature documentation to understand the product changes and limitations.

• Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal
• Advanced hunting in the Microsoft Defender portal
• Alerts, incidents, and correlation in Microsoft Defender XDR
• Automation with the unified security operations platform

The Microsoft Defender portal supports a single Microsoft Entra tenant and the connection to a primary workspace and multiple secondary workspaces. If you have only one workspace when you onboard Microsoft Sentinel, that workspace is designated as the primary workspace. For more information, see Multiple Microsoft Sentinel workspaces in the Defender portal. In the context of this article, a workspace is a Log Analytics workspace with Microsoft Sentinel enabled.

Microsoft Sentinel prerequisites

To onboard and use Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal, you must have the following resources and access:

• A Log Analytics workspace that has Microsoft Sentinel enabled

• An Azure account with the appropriate roles to onboard, use, and create support requests for Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal. You won't see workspaces in the Defender portal to onboard where you don't have the required permissions. The following table highlights some of the key roles needed.

  Task	Microsoft Entra or Azure built-in role required	Scope
  Onboard Microsoft Sentinel to the Defender portal	One of the following in Microsoft Entra ID: - Global administrator AND subscription Owner - Security administrator AND subscription Owner - Global administrator AND User Access Administrator AND Microsoft Sentinel Contributor - Security administrator AND User Access Administrator AND Microsoft Sentinel Contributor	Tenant
  Connect or disconnect a secondary workspace	One of the following: - Global administrator AND subscription Owner - Security administrator AND subscription Owner - Global administrator AND User Access Administrator AND Microsoft Sentinel Contributor - Security administrator AND User Access Administrator AND Microsoft Sentinel Contributor - Subscription Owner - User Access Administrator AND Microsoft Sentinel Contributor	- Subscription Owner or User Access Administrator roles - Subscription, resource group, or workspace resource for Microsoft Sentinel Contributor
  Change the primary workspace	Global administrator or security administrator in Microsoft Entra ID	Tenant
  View Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal	Microsoft Sentinel Reader	Subscription, resource group, or workspace resource
  Query Microsoft Sentinel data tables or view incidents	Microsoft Sentinel Reader or a role with the following actions: - Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/read - Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/query/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/Incidents/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/comments/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/relations/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/tasks/read	Subscription, resource group, or workspace resource
  Take investigative actions on incidents	Microsoft Sentinel Contributor or a role with the following actions: - Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/read - Microsoft.OperationalInsights/workspaces/query/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/write - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/comments/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/comments/write - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/relations/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/relations/write - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/tasks/read - Microsoft.SecurityInsights/incidents/tasks/write	Subscription, resource group, or workspace resource
  Create a support request	Owner or Contributor or Support request contributor or a custom role with Microsoft.Support/*	Subscription

  After you connect Microsoft Sentinel to the Defender portal, your existing Azure role-based access control (RBAC) permissions allow you to work with the Microsoft Sentinel features that you have access to. Continue to manage roles and permissions for your Microsoft Sentinel users from the Azure portal, as any Azure RBAC changes are reflected in the Defender portal.

  For more information, see Roles and permissions in Microsoft Sentinel and Manage access to Microsoft Sentinel data by resource.

  Important

  Microsoft recommends that you use roles with the fewest permissions. This helps improve security for your organization. Global Administrator is a highly privileged role that should be limited to emergency scenarios when you can't use an existing role.

Microsoft's unified SecOps platform prerequisites

To unify capabilities with Defender XDR in Microsoft's unified SecOps platform, you must have the following resources and access:

• Licensing for Defender XDR, as described in Microsoft Defender XDR prerequisites
• Account for Defender XDR is a member of the same Microsoft Entra tenant with which Microsoft Sentinel is associated
• Access to Microsoft Defender XDR in the Defender portal, as described in Microsoft Defender XDR prerequisites

If applicable, complete these prerequisites:

Onboard Microsoft Sentinel

To connect a Microsoft Sentinel workspace to the Defender portal, complete the following steps. If you're onboarding Microsoft Sentinel without Defender XDR, there's an extra step to trigger the connection with Microsoft Sentinel and Defender portal.

1. Go to the Microsoft Defender portal and sign in.
2. To onboard Microsoft Sentinel without Defender XDR in the Defender portal:
   1. To trigger the connection with Microsoft Sentinel, select Investigation & response > Incidents.
   2. Wait a few minutes for the connection to complete.
3. In the Defender portal, select Overview.
4. Select Connect a workspace.
5. Choose the workspaces you want to connect and select Next.
6. Select the Primary workspace.
7. Read and understand the product changes associated with connecting your workspace.
8. Select Connect.

After your workspace is connected, the banner on the Overview page shows that your environment is ready. The Overview page is updated with new sections that include metrics from Microsoft Sentinel like the number of data connectors and automation rules.

Explore Microsoft Sentinel features in the Defender portal

After you connect your workspace to the Defender portal, Microsoft Sentinel is on the left-hand side navigation pane. If you have Defender XDR enabled, pages like Overview, Incidents, and Advanced Hunting have unified data from the primary workspace for Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR. If you don't have Defender XDR enabled, these pages just include data from Microsoft Sentinel. For more information about the unified capabilities and differences between portals, see Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal.

Many of the existing Microsoft Sentinel features are integrated into the Defender portal. For these features, notice that the experience between Microsoft Sentinel in the Azure portal and Defender portal are similar. Use the following articles to help you start working with Microsoft Sentinel in the Defender portal. When using these articles, keep in mind that your starting point in this context is the Defender portal instead of the Azure portal.

• Search
  • Search across long time spans in large datasets
  • Restore archived logs from search
• Threat management
  • Visualize and monitor your data by using workbooks
  • Conduct end-to-end threat hunting with Hunts
  • Use hunting bookmarks for data investigations
  • Use hunting Livestream in Microsoft Sentinel to detect threat
  • Hunt for security threats with Jupyter notebooks
  • Add indicators in bulk to Microsoft Sentinel threat intelligence from a CSV or JSON file
  • Work with threat indicators in Microsoft Sentinel
  • Understand security coverage by the MITRE ATT&CK framework
• Content management
  • Discover and manage Microsoft Sentinel out-of-the-box content
  • Microsoft Sentinel content hub catalog
  • Deploy custom content from your repository
• Configuration
  • Find your Microsoft Sentinel data connector
  • Create custom analytics rules to detect threats
  • Work with near-real-time (NRT) detection analytics rules in Microsoft Sentinel
  • Create watchlists
  • Manage watchlists in Microsoft Sentinel
  • Create automation rules
  • Create and customize Microsoft Sentinel playbooks from content templates

Find Microsoft Sentinel settings in the Defender portal under System > Settings > Microsoft Sentinel.

Change the primary workspace

You can only have one primary workspace connected to the Defender portal at a time. But you can change the primary workspace.

1. In the Defender portal, go to System > Settings > Microsoft Sentinel > Workspaces.
2. Select the name of the workspace that you want to make primary.
3. Select Set as primary.
4. Read and understand the product changes associated with changing the primary workspace.
5. Select Confirm and proceed.

When you switch the primary workspace for Microsoft Sentinel, the Defender XDR connector is connected to the new primary and disconnected from the former one automatically. For more information, see Multiple Microsoft Sentinel workspaces in the Defender portal.

Offboard Microsoft Sentinel

If you decide to offboard a workspace from the Defender portal, disconnect the workspace from the settings for Microsoft Sentinel.

1. Go to the Microsoft Defender portal and sign in.

2. In the Defender portal, under System, select Settings > Microsoft Sentinel.

3. On the Workspaces page, select the connected workspace and Disconnect workspace.

4. Provide a reason why you're disconnecting the workspace.

5. Confirm your selection.

   When your workspace is disconnected, the Microsoft Sentinel section is removed from the left-hand side navigation of the Defender portal. Data from Microsoft Sentinel is no longer included on the Overview page.

If you want to connect to a different workspace, from the Workspaces page, select the workspace and Connect a workspace.

Related content

• Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal
• Advanced hunting in the Microsoft Defender portal
• Automatic attack disruption in Microsoft Defender XDR
• Investigate incidents in Microsoft Defender portal
• Optimize your security operations