Sentinel POC- Architecture and Recommendations For MSSPs (Part 1)

By Ashwin Venugopal -

 



To read part 2, please click here
To read part 3, please click here
To read part 4, please click here
To read part 5, please click here






MSSP Architecture Goal

The following diagram provides the overview of the typical architecture an MSSP partner should build to evaluate Sentinel's capabilities. Sentinel is configured at the core in the Log Analytics Workspace (LAW), and both of them exists in a resource group within a subscription. MSSPs will deploy these resources associated with the MSSP tenant, to gain access to MSSP's customers' resources via Azure Lighthouse.

Tenants and Subscriptions for the Sentinel POC in the Context of an MSSP

Tenants- A tenant will be required that will work as the MSSP tenant and at least one tenant that can work as the customer's tenant. Although, Microsoft Sentinel and its associated LAW are subscription resources, but, they must be associated with a tenant.

Subscriptions- A subscription within the MSSP tenant and at least one subscription within each of customer tenants is required. It is needed because LAW, used for data ingestions, and Sentinel, which is a service deployed on a LAW, are both resources can only exist within a subscription.

Considerations:

  • Which tenant will be the MSSP tenant? Partners with POC are free to choose their corporate tenant as their MSSP tenant, but, ultimately the MSSP tenant should be isolated using multiple identity model, else new tenant should be created. However, if only Sentinel's features are being tested for a period of time, then, the single identity model or the corporate tenant will be enough to do so.

  • Are there any options or credits to cover the costs of tenants/subscriptions? CDX environments cannot be used because it has some restrictions that does not allow anyone to add payment instruments required to create a new subscription. However, a Visual Studio subscription, offered as a part of the Developer Program, can be attached to one of those tenants. The program provides a Microsoft 365 developer sandbox, which can be the MSSP tenant as well. Hence, partners can combine Visual studio subscription and Microsoft 365 developer sandbox, resulting in a tenant and subscription with the costs covered by the developer program. This is very useful because the partners will get an E5 license with that tenant, allowing them to test scenarios using some of the Defender 365 Security services. 

  • Free trial- New workspaces can ingest up to 10GB/day of log data for the first 31-days at no cost. Both Log Analytics data ingestion and Microsoft Sentinel charges are waived during this trial period. It is subject to a 20 workspace limit per Azure tenant.

  • Which region?- Various elements should be considered while evaluating the region where the Log Analytics Workspace can be created, like egress costs, feature availability, compliance requirements, etc. There is a decision tree available in the documentation that can guide partners when making these decisions. 

  • An isolated subscription- Microsoft recommends the Sentinel workspace be placed on a separate subscription or a separate management group, so that the permissions of the security data can be isolated preventing them from being inherited.



    




To read part 2, please click here
To read part 3, please click here
To read part 4, please click here
To read part 5, please click here


























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