{"id":93748,"date":"2021-06-08T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/security\/blog\/\/?p=93748"},"modified":"2023-05-15T23:07:38","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T06:07:38","slug":"optimize-security-with-azure-firewall-solution-for-azure-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/security\/blog\/2021\/06\/08\/optimize-security-with-azure-firewall-solution-for-azure-sentinel\/","title":{"rendered":"Optimize security with Azure Firewall solution for Azure Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"
Security is a constant balance between proactive and reactive defenses. They are both equally important, and neither can be neglected. Effectively protecting your organization means constantly optimizing both prevention and detection.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we\u2019re excited to announce a seamless integration between Azure Firewall<\/a> and Azure Sentinel<\/a>. Now, you can get both detection and prevention in the form of an easy-to-deploy Azure Firewall solution for Azure Sentinel.<\/p>\n Combining prevention and detection allows you to ensure that you both prevent sophisticated threats when you can, while also maintaining an \u201cassume breach mentality\u201d to detect and quickly respond to cyberattacks.<\/p>\n The seamless integration of Azure Firewall and Azure Sentinel enables security operations with three key capabilities:<\/p>\n The whole experience is packaged as a solution in the Azure Sentinel marketplace<\/a>, which means it can be deployed in just a few clicks.<\/p>\n Deploying the solution is simple. You can find it in the \u201cSolutions\u201d blade in your Azure Sentinel workspace, called the \u201cAzure Firewall Solution for Azure Sentinel.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Figure 1: Azure Sentinel solutions preview.<\/em><\/p>\n Once you open the Azure Firewall solution, simply hit the \u201ccreate\u201d button, follow all the steps in the wizard, pass validation, and create the solution. With just a few clicks, all content\u2014including connectors, detections, workbooks, and playbooks that we\u2019ll cover below\u2014will be deployed in your Azure Sentinel workspace.<\/p>\n The Azure Firewall workbook allows you to visualize Azure Firewall events. With this workbook, you can:<\/p>\n The workbook provides a single dashboard for ongoing monitoring of your firewall activity. When it comes to threat detection, investigation, and response, the Azure Firewall solution also provides built-in detection and hunting capabilities.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Figure 2. Azure Firewall workbook.<\/em><\/p>\n The solution\u2019s detection rules provide Azure Sentinel a powerful method for analyzing Azure Firewall signals to detect traffic representing malicious activity patterns traversing through the network. This allows rapid response and remediation of the threats.<\/p>\n The attack stages an adversary will pursue within the firewall solution are segmented based on the MITRE ATT&CK framework<\/a>. The MITRE framework is a series of steps that trace stages of a cyberattack from the early reconnaissance stages to the exfiltration of data. The framework helps defenders understand and combat ransomware, security breaches, and advanced attacks.<\/p>\n The solution includes detections for common scenarios an adversary might use as part of the attack\u2014Spanning from the discovery stage (gaining knowledge about the system and internal network) through the command-and-control (C2) stage (communicating with compromised systems to control them) to the exfiltration stage (adversary trying to steal data from the organization).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Figure 3. Azure Firewall threat detections in Sentinel.<\/em><\/p>\n Hunting queries are a tool for the security researcher to look for threats in the network of an organization, either after an incident has occurred or proactively to discover new or unknown attacks. To do this, security researchers will look at several indicators of compromise (IOCs). The built-in Azure Sentinel hunting queries in the Azure Firewall solution give security researchers the tools they need to find high-impact activities from the firewall logs. Several examples include:<\/p>\nAzure Sentinel and Azure Firewall: Better together<\/h2>\n
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How do you deploy and enable the Azure Firewall solution for Azure Sentinel?<\/h2>\n
Monitoring and visualizing Azure Firewall activities<\/h2>\n
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Detecting threats and leveraging AI-assisted investigation capabilities<\/h2>\n
Built-in Threat Detection\u2014analytics<\/h3>\n
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\n Detection rule<\/u><\/strong><\/td>\n What does it do?<\/u><\/strong><\/td>\n What does it indicate?<\/u><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Port scan<\/strong><\/td>\n Identifies a source IP scanning multiple open ports on the Azure Firewall.<\/td>\n Malicious scanning of ports by an attacker, trying to reveal open ports in the organization that can be compromised for initial access.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Port sweep<\/strong><\/td>\n Identifies a source IP scanning the same open ports on the Azure Firewall different IPs.<\/td>\n Malicious scanning of a port by an attacker trying to reveal IPs with specific vulnerable ports open in the organization.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Abnormal deny rate for source IP<\/strong><\/td>\n Identifies an abnormal deny rate for a specific source IP to a destination IP based on machine learning done during a configured period.<\/td>\n Potential exfiltration, initial access, or C2, where an attacker tries to exploit the same vulnerability on machines in the organization but is being blocked by the Azure Firewall rules.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Abnormal Port to protocol<\/strong><\/td>\n Identifies communication for a well-known protocol over a non-standard port based on machine learning done during an activity period.<\/td>\n Malicious communication (C2) or exfiltration by attackers trying to communicate over known ports (SSH, HTTP) but don\u2019t use the known protocol headers that match the port number.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Multiple sources affected by the same TI destination<\/strong><\/td>\n Identifies multiple machines that are trying to reach out to the same destination blocked by threat intelligence (TI) in the Azure Firewall.<\/td>\n An attack on the organization by the same attack group trying to exfiltrate data from the organization.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/figure>\n Hunting queries<\/h3>\n