My previous blog posts discussed collecting events from Azure PaaS resources and networking and security sources. But what about collecting from servers? Whether deployed in the cloud, on-prem VMs or even physical machines, those are probably still the biggest attack surface and therefore the most common sources of events.
To collect events from servers wherever those are deployed, use the Azure Log Analytics agent (also called “MMA” for Microsoft Monitoring Agent). The agent supports collecting from Windows machines as well as Linux. The agent can be installed manually or provisioned in Azure using Microsoft VM extensions for Windows or Linux.
Azure Sentinel connectors which utilize the agent
The agent supports the following Sentinel connectors:
Once you enabled them through the Sentinel’s Data Connectors, they will be collected by every agent configured to send data to the workspace.
Additional data streams collected by the Agent
However, the agent is not limited to this telemetry, and Azure Sentinel can collect the following additional data streams using the agent:
- When installed on a domain controller, the agent collects AD events.
- You can configure the agents to send any Windows event type, not just security events, such as Sysmon. Read the blog post Using Sysmon in Azure Sentinel to learn how to do that. One specific
- IIS logs
- Wire Data: sFlow-like data collected by the agent
- Files: Events stored in files on the server
Additional on-premises Microsoft telemetry
For completeness, n addition you can collect on-premises telemetry not using the agent for the following sources:
- Windows Defender
- Intune
- Microsoft SQL: Logs to the Windows Event
Agent management
- Monitor agents health using the Azure Monitor Agent Health solution
- You can select the data collection tier to control how many Windows Security events are collected.
- You can send telemetry from an agent to multiple destination workspaces.
- No direct internet access for the agent? Use the Log Analytics gateway.
- And, rest assured, the agent compresses data when sending it to the cloud to reduce the network load.