1. First Principles of Security Operations
Before configuring a single connector or writing a single detection, you need five foundations: what a SOC is actually optimizing for, how raw telemetry becomes something an analyst can act on, why Microsoft splits the work between an XDR and a SIEM, how attacker behavior is modeled, and how to ask questions of security data in KQL. Every SC-200 objective is an application of these five ideas. A Sentinel analytics rule is a standing KQL question mapped to an ATT&CK technique that produces alerts; an attack disruption action is the response half of the loop running at machine speed. Master the foundations here and the rest of the guide becomes recognition rather than memorization.
Why care: the exam rarely asks these ideas directly, but almost every scenario question fails without them. Think of this phase as learning the grammar before reading the sentences.
⚠️ Exam Trap: Answers that add tools, rules, or alert volume without correlation, tuning, or automation usually lose to answers that shorten detection or response time.
