5.5. Reflection Checkpoint: Defender and Sentinel Mastery

You have now explored Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Sentinel. These tools provide comprehensive security posture management, threat protection, and security monitoring.

Scenario Synthesis: An organization needs:

• Compliance assessment against PCI DSS
• Vulnerability scanning for Azure VMs without agents
• Weekly SQL vulnerability scans with results accessible for review
• Security event collection from Azure resources with alerts to a SOC partner

Reflection Question: How would you configure Defender for Cloud compliance policies, Defender for Servers Plan 2 with agentless scanning, Defender for SQL with periodic scans, and Azure Monitor with Event Hubs to meet these requirements?

Self-Assessment Prompts:

• Can you identify which compliance standards are built-in vs. custom?
• Do you know where Defender for SQL vulnerability scan results are stored?
• Can you configure a single alert rule to monitor all VMs in a resource group?
• Do you understand when to use Event Hubs vs. Storage for log export?
• Can you identify required permissions for Azure Functions-based Sentinel connectors?