[3/10] Microsoft Sentinel: The Power of Unified Visibility

From Fragmented Signals to a Single Source of Truth

Modern organizations operate across a complex digital landscape: cloud workloads, on-premises systems, mobile devices, SaaS platforms, hybrid identities, and sprawling data flows. Each layer generates its own telemetry — logs, alerts, anomalies — often in different formats, with different levels of fidelity.

Security teams are expected to make sense of this chaos.

They need to detect threats, identify root causes, and respond. Fast.

The problem? In many environments, signals are scattered across dozens of tools. Visibility becomes fragmented. Correlation becomes guesswork. And threats slip through the cracks — not because detection tools failed, but because the data wasn’t unified.

This is where Microsoft Sentinel changes the game.

And it’s why we made it the central nervous system of Wortell’s MxDR service.

Why a Cloud-Native SIEM is No Longer Optional

Sentinel isn’t just another tool — it’s a foundational capability for organizations serious about modern cybersecurity.

As a cloud-native SIEM (Security Information and Event Management), Microsoft Sentinel provides:

• Scalable, real-time ingestion of logs and signals from Microsoft and third-party sources.
• Correlation across endpoints, identities, applications, and infrastructure.
• Threat detection powered by Microsoft’s global security intelligence.
• Integration with automation tools (SOAR) to drive immediate action.

Because it runs on Azure, Sentinel eliminates the overhead of traditional SIEM infrastructure. It scales elastically, supports machine learning natively, and integrates deeply with Microsoft Defender products and Azure services.

For security teams, this means one thing: unified visibility across the entire digital estate.

Sentinel as the Heart of Wortell MxDR

When we designed Wortell MxDR, we knew we needed a detection engine that was both powerful and adaptable. Sentinel became that engine — not just because it’s feature-rich, but because it aligns with our customers’ existing Microsoft environments.

Here’s how it works in practice:

• Data Ingestion: Sentinel collects telemetry from Microsoft 365, Azure, Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Identity, firewalls, cloud apps, and more — all in real-time.
• Analytics Rules: We apply a curated set of detection rules developed by our SOC, tuned for each customer’s environment and risk profile.
• Incident Correlation: Related alerts are grouped into incidents automatically, reducing noise and surfacing real threats.
• Custom Hunting Queries: Our analysts run proactive hunts using Kusto Query Language (KQL) to uncover hidden threats or validate hypotheses.

Sentinel acts as the connective tissue that binds all security signals together. And through our platform Vidara, we enhance it even further.

Where Vidara Adds Value

While Sentinel is powerful on its own, managing it at scale — across multiple customers, regions, and use cases — requires a structured, automated layer.

That’s what Vidara provides.

• Rule Lifecycle Management: Vidara helps us deploy, test, and evolve detection rules across environments efficiently.
• Enrichment: When Sentinel generates an incident, Vidara enriches it with contextual information — such as MITRE ATT&CK mapping, asset criticality, and threat intelligence.
• Use-Case Library: We maintain an evolving collection of threat scenarios based on real-world attacks, continuously integrating them into Sentinel via Vidara.
• Automation: Vidara connects Sentinel to response playbooks, enabling decisions to be made and acted upon within minutes.

The result is a system that doesn’t just generate alerts — it understands them, prioritizes them, and drives response at speed.

Why This Matters for CIOs and CISOs

Security leaders don’t just want more alerts. They want:

• A single view of what’s happening across their environment.
• The ability to measure detection and response performance.
• A system that evolves with their business, not against it.

Microsoft Sentinel — combined with Wortell MxDR and Vidara — delivers that.

It provides the data depth needed by analysts, the strategic clarity required by executives, and the scale demanded by hybrid enterprises.

We often say: “You can’t protect what you can’t see.”

Sentinel is how we help organizations see clearly, act quickly, and stay ahead.

In the next article, I’ll explore how automation and AI are transforming security operations — not to replace people, but to give them back time, focus, and control. Looking forward to receive feedback or comments!

Stay tuned!

Jasper Bernaers