automate-responses-with-playbooks.md

title	description	ms.topic	author	ms.author	ms.date	appliesto	ms.collection
Automate threat response with playbooks in Microsoft Sentinel | Microsoft Docs	This article explains automation in Microsoft Sentinel, and shows how to use playbooks to automate threat prevention and response.	conceptual	batamig	bagol	03/14/2024	Microsoft Sentinel in the Azure portal Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender portal	usx-security

Automate threat response with playbooks in Microsoft Sentinel

SOC analysts deal with numerous security alerts and incidents, and the sheer volume can overwhelm teams, leading to ignored alerts and uninvestigated incidents. Many alerts and incidents can be addressed by the same sets of predefined remediation actions, which can be automated to make the SOC more efficient and free up analysts for deeper investigations.

Use Microsoft Sentinel playbooks to run preconfigured sets of remediation actions to help automate and orchestrate your threat response. Run playbooks automatically, in response to specific alerts and incidents that trigger a configured automation rule, or manually and on-demand for a particular entity or alert.

For example, if an account and machine are compromised, a playbook can automatically isolate the machine from the network and block the account by the time the SOC team is notified of the incident.

Note

Because playbooks make use of Azure Logic Apps, additional charges may apply. Visit the Azure Logic Apps pricing page for more details.

[!INCLUDE unified-soc-preview]

Recommended use cases

The following table lists high-level use cases where we recommend using Microsoft Sentinel playbooks to automate your threat response:

Use case	Description
Enrichment	Collect data and attach it to an incident to help your team make smarter decisions.
Bi-directional sync	Sync Microsoft Sentinel incidents with other ticketing systems. For example, create an automation rule for all incident creations, and attach a playbook that opens a ticket in ServiceNow.
Orchestration	Use the SOC team's chat platform to better control the incidents queue. For example, send a message to your security operations channel in Microsoft Teams or Slack to make sure your security analysts are aware of the incident.
Response	Immediately respond to threats, with minimal human dependencies, such as when a compromised user or machine is indicated. Alternately, manually trigger a series of automated steps during an investigation or while hunting.

For more information, see Recommended playbook use cases, templates, and examples.

Prerequisites

The following roles are required to use Azure Logic Apps to create and run playbooks in Microsoft Sentinel.

[!INCLUDE playbooks-roles]

Extra permissions required for Microsoft Sentinel to run playbooks

[!INCLUDE playbooks-service-account-permissions]

Playbook templates (preview)

Important

Playbook templates are currently in PREVIEW. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for additional legal terms that apply to Azure features that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not yet released into general availability.

Playbook templates are prebuilt, tested, and ready-to-use workflows that aren't useable as playbooks themselves, but are ready for you to customize to meet your needs. We also recommend that you use playbook templates as a reference of best practices when developing playbooks from scratch, or as inspiration for new automation scenarios.

Access playbook templates from the following sources:

Location	Description
Microsoft Sentinel Automation page	The Playbook templates tab lists all installed playbooks. Create one or more active playbooks using the same template. When we publish a new version of a template, any active playbooks created from that template have an extra label added in the Active playbooks tab to indicate that an update is available.
Microsoft Sentinel Content hub page	Playbook templates are available as part of product solutions or standalone content installed from the Content hub. For more information, see: About Microsoft Sentinel content and solutions Discover and manage Microsoft Sentinel out-of-the-box content
GitHub	The Microsoft Sentinel GitHub repository contains many other playbook templates. Select Deploy to Azure to deploy a template to your Azure subscription.

Technically, a playbook template is an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template, which consists of several resources: an Azure Logic Apps workflow and API connections for each connection involved.

For more information, see:

• Create and customize Microsoft Sentinel playbooks from content templates
• Recommended playbook templates
• Azure Logic Apps for Microsoft Sentinel playbooks

Playbook creation and usage workflow

Use the following workflow to create and run Microsoft Sentinel playbooks:

1. Define your automation scenario. We recommend that you review recommended playbooks use cases and playbook templates to start.

2. If you're not using a template, create your playbook and build your logic app. For more information, see Create and manage Microsoft Sentinel playbooks.

   Test your logic app by running it manually. For more information, see Run a playbook manually, on demand.

3. Configure your playbook to run automatically on a new alert or incident creation, or run it manually as needed for your processes. For more information, see Respond to threats with Microsoft Sentinel playbooks.

Related content

• Create and customize Microsoft Sentinel playbooks from content templates
• Create and manage Microsoft Sentinel playbooks
• Respond to threats with Microsoft Sentinel playbooks
• Azure Logic Apps for Microsoft Sentinel playbooks