Product Overview
Microsoft Entra ID provides identity and access management as a service. Entra ID is a popular option for enterprises looking to centralize authentication, enforce access policies, and reduce reliance on on-premises identity infrastructure. Although organizations using Entra ID don't have to worry about managing the underlying infrastructure, security remains a shared responsibility between Microsoft and their customers. Microsoft is responsible for physical security and ensuring systems are patched behind the scenes. Organizations are responsible for ensuring they are not putting their users and data at risk with insecure configurations or compromised credentials.
The Microsoft Entra ID detection and response strategy aims to help organizations gain visibility into active identity-based threats that must be remediated. Additionally, Expel provides resilience recommendations that help organizations lock down the platform and reduce the risk of an identity compromise.
Expel collects data through direct API integrations with the Microsoft Entra ID platform via Azure Event Hubs. Expel supports authentication with a Microsoft Entra ID Application with a set of read-only permissions. This integration allows Expel to collect alerts and audit logs from Microsoft Entra ID and leverage that data for detection and response.
Detection Strategy for Identity Integrations
Detection
Our identity security detection strategy focuses on optimizing user authentication and application access activity monitoring. This is achieved by directly integrating with identity providers and polling for audit and data access logs.
These events are analyzed through a combination of raw log analysis and security alert processing, which are then evaluated by our detection engine for signs of suspicious login activity or post-exploitation behavior. When a threat is identified, our automated response bot, Ruxie, enriches evidence fields with first- and third-party threat intelligence. Additionally, Ruxie queries a wide range of technologies to provide analysts with critical investigative information and related events.
Response
For alerts that contain source user information, identity technologies can provide rich context such as groups, locations, job title, and other pieces of metadata. Additionally, for cloud and SaaS alerts, identity technologies are queried to provide verbose context around user login behavior. This allows analysts to investigate the underlying session behind the activity they are triaging.
To learn more about our overall approach to detection strategy, see About Detection Strategy in the Help Center.
What We Support for Microsoft Entra ID
To see a comprehensive list of the most up-to-date Expel detection rules, vendor detection rules, opt-in detections, and available DUETs (did you expect this) that we support for Microsoft Entra ID, you can visit the Detections page in Workbench or ask your Sales or Support rep for the most recent download.
| Supported event log sources |
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| Microsoft Entra ID detection rules support | No. |
| Detection rules written by Expel | Yes. |
| Auto remediations |
Yes. Expel supports automatic execution of some remediation actions for this integration when you follow our setup guide to update the permissions in your vendor device, and then enable the auto remediation in Workbench. The available auto remediations for this integration include:
To enable auto remediations for your environment, see Enable an Auto Remediation in Workbench in the Help Center. |
| Investigative support through Workbench |
Yes. We are able to take the following investigative actions to gather data for triage and investigation of events.
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| Hunting support | Yes. Hunting is available for this integration to customers who purchase this option. Contact your Sales or Support rep for help understanding the hypotheses and objectives for each hunting technique. For a full list of techniques by integration, see Hunting Techniques in the Help Center. |
Additional Details and Common Questions
Console Access
A vendor alert does not typically include all of the contextual timeline activity surrounding the event of interest. Because this integration does not allow us to get all necessary data via the API, we will ask you for a certain level of console access during onboarding.
The level of access that we require is meant to support essential triage and research activities, and to help us determine the vector and extent of attacker activity for an identified threat. At minimum, we will ask for visibility into alert data, timeline events recorded, and live response/real time response shell (if applicable).
DUET
A DUET (did you expect this) rule flags certain events as needing an immediate verification or notification, and bypasses the normal internal event triage process. The events subject to DUET rules contain behaviors that are not typically indicative of true security incidents, as they are related to policy violations or potential risk.
There are a number of workflows that a DUET may follow. When enabled, the activity will be flagged for investigation and will be routed to you (rather than to us) to take a specified first action. To see the specific DUET rules currently supported for this integration, visit the Detections page in Workbench.