Monitoring and Logging Azure AD
This section provides comprehensive guidance on how to monitor and log activities within Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to ensure security, compliance, and operational visibility.
Key Monitoring and Logging Features
Azure AD Sign-in Logs
Sign-in logs provide insights into user sign-in activities to Azure AD resources. They are crucial for understanding user behavior, detecting suspicious activities, and troubleshooting sign-in failures.
- Real-time Monitoring: View sign-in events as they happen.
- Filtering and Searching: Powerful tools to find specific events based on user, application, IP address, and more.
- Audit Capabilities: Track successful and failed sign-ins for security audits.
- Reporting: Generate reports on sign-in trends and anomalies.
You can access sign-in logs through the Azure portal, Microsoft Graph API, or by streaming them to other SIEM tools.
Azure AD Audit Logs
Audit logs record activities performed within Azure AD, such as user creation, group management, application registration, and policy changes. They are essential for tracking administrative actions and ensuring compliance.
- Activity Tracking: Log changes to users, groups, applications, and other directory objects.
- Administrative Actions: Monitor who did what, when, and where.
- Compliance Reporting: Provide evidence of policy enforcement and system changes.
Audit logs are accessible via the Azure portal and Microsoft Graph API.
Azure AD Identity Protection Logs
Azure AD Identity Protection detects and responds to threats by monitoring for risk events, such as leaked credentials, sign-ins from infected devices, or unusual sign-in activities. Its logs provide detailed information about detected risks.
- Risk Detections: Identify potentially compromised user accounts.
- User Risk Score: Track the risk level associated with individual users.
- Remediation Actions: Monitor the application of policies like password reset or multi-factor authentication enforcement.
Integrating with Azure Monitor and SIEM Solutions
Azure Monitor Logs
Azure Monitor Logs is a powerful service that collects and analyzes log data from various Azure resources, including Azure AD. By sending Azure AD logs to Azure Monitor Logs, you can:
- Centralized Logging: Consolidate logs from multiple sources.
- Advanced Analytics: Use Kusto Query Language (KQL) for complex querying and pattern detection.
- Dashboards and Alerts: Create custom dashboards and configure alerts for critical events.
To set this up, configure diagnostic settings for Azure AD to send logs to a Log Analytics workspace.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
For enterprise-level security monitoring and incident response, integrate Azure AD logs with your existing SIEM solution (e.g., Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk, IBM QRadar). This is typically achieved by exporting Azure AD logs to Azure Event Hubs, which can then be ingested by the SIEM.
- In the Azure portal, navigate to Azure Active Directory.
- Go to Monitoring & health > Diagnostic settings.
- Click Add diagnostic setting.
- Select the log categories you want to collect (e.g., SignInLogs, AuditLogs, UserRiskEvents).
- Choose destinations such as Send to Log Analytics workspace or Stream to an event hub.
Best Practices for Monitoring and Logging
- Enable Comprehensive Logging: Ensure all relevant log categories are enabled for both sign-ins and audits.
- Configure Alerts: Set up alerts for high-risk activities, such as multiple failed sign-ins, sign-ins from unfamiliar locations, or critical administrative changes.
- Regularly Review Logs: Dedicate time to review sign-in and audit logs to identify unusual patterns or potential security incidents.
- Retain Logs Appropriately: Configure log retention policies based on your organization's compliance and security requirements.
- Educate Your Team: Ensure that security and IT operations teams are trained on how to use the monitoring tools and interpret the log data.