Solutions / Defender XDR deployment
Microsoft Defender XDR deployment for teams that own it but do not run it.
Defender licences are switched on. Alerts appear. Nobody works the queue, because nobody was assigned. Identra deploys Defender for Endpoint, Identity, Office 365 and Cloud Apps end to end, correlates signals into XDR incidents, and hands over runbooks that let the internal team clear alerts in five to fifteen minutes each.
- Focus
- Microsoft Defender XDR + Sentinel
- Baseline licence
- Microsoft 365 E5 or standalone Defender plans
- Typical duration
- 8 to 14 weeks
- Pricing model
- Fixed scope, fixed price per phase
01 / What we deploy
All four Defender pillars, plus Sentinel where it earns its place.
- 01
Defender for Endpoint onboarding
Every device onboarded through Intune or Group Policy, attack-surface-reduction rules deployed in warn mode first then enforced, tamper protection enabled tenant-wide, and device risk scoring wired back into Conditional Access so a compromised device loses access automatically.
Defender for EndpointASRIntuneCA integration - 02
Defender for Identity
Sensors deployed on every domain controller for on-premises AD monitoring, ADFS if present, and Entra Connect servers. Suspicious activity policies tuned to your environment to cut false positives. Alerts correlated into XDR incidents alongside endpoint and email signals.
Defender for IdentityAD monitoringHybrid - 03
Defender for Office 365
Safe Links and Safe Attachments configured for all users, anti-phishing impersonation protection for VIP mailboxes, and automated investigation of user-reported phishing. Attack simulation training scheduled quarterly.
EmailAnti-phishSimulation - 04
Microsoft Sentinel setup
Sentinel activated in the unified Defender portal, log sources configured for non-Microsoft systems, KQL detection rules tuned to your environment, and SOAR playbooks for common response patterns (disable user, isolate device, reset password).
SentinelKQLSOARPlaybooks
02 / Situations we see
Same story, different sector.
Alerts exist, staff are stretched thin, and nobody has been given the runbook that turns an alert into a fifteen-minute triage. That is the gap.
IT Manager, 300-person law firm
Situation. M365 E5 with Defender licences activated a year ago. Alerts fire but nobody works the queue. Compliance auditor recently asked for the incident-response plan; there isn’t one.
Outcome. Defender onboarded to every device. Top 8 alert types documented with playbook for junior admin. IR plan drafted from the templates. Auditor got a real answer.
Head of Security, US SaaS company (150 staff)
Situation. Uses AWS heavily but has Microsoft 365 for productivity. Defender for Cloud Apps sits at defaults. No unified view across the two clouds; two dashboards, no correlation.
Outcome. Defender for Cloud Apps connected to AWS via the API connector. XDR now surfaces cross-cloud incidents (compromised M365 credential used against AWS resources) in one queue.
Head of IT, US regional bank
Situation. Regulated (FFIEC). Currently using a legacy SIEM with limited Microsoft-native ingestion. Alert-to-detection time regularly exceeds SLA.
Outcome. Sentinel activated in unified Defender portal, legacy SIEM decommissioned. KQL rule library tuned for banking-sector patterns. Alert-to-detection time cut by two-thirds; alert cost reduced with Defender-native ingestion.
03 / Related solutions