Threats are outpacing
traditional security tools
Cyber threats in Australia are growing in scale, speed, and sophistication. Yet most organisations are still operating with siloed tools, alert fatigue, and security teams stretched beyond capacity.
The answer is not more tools. It's a unified, intelligent platform that brings your entire digital estate into view and responds at machine speed.
Are these challenges familiar?
Alert fatigue is overwhelming your team.
Too many tools generate too many alerts, burying critical threats in the noise.
Siloed security tools leave blind spots.
On-premises, cloud, endpoints, and Saas tools don’t share signals. Attackers exploit the gaps.
SOC staffing and skills are scarce.
Recruiting and retaining experienced security analysts is expensive and increasingly difficult.
Legacy SIEM costs are spiralling.
Splunk and QRadar licensing, infrastructure, and maintenance costs are unsustainable at scale.
Microsoft Sentinel:
The Cloud-Native SIEM built for the AI Era
Give your security team complete visibility with AI-driven threat detection and automated response through Microsoft Sentinel.
Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) platform. It ingests signals from across your entire digital estate (multi-cloud, on-premises, endpoints, and SaaS) and uses AI to detect, investigate, and respond to threats at scale.
Since 2025, Sentinel has been unified with Microsoft Defender XDR in a single Defender portal, giving security teams a consolidated console for SIEM and XDR capabilities. Microsoft was recognised as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SIEM.
SIEM + SOAR in one platform
Collect, detect, investigate, and respond to threats – all within a single unified platform, without the cost of managing separate SOAR infrastructure.
AI-driven threat detection
Built-in machine learning and Security Copilot integration surface threats faster than rule-based approaches, with explainable verdicts your team can act on.
Cloud-scale economics
Pay only for what you ingest, with commitment tiers offering up to 32% savings, and the new 50 GB tier making enterprise SIEM accessible for smaller organisations.
Microsoft Sentinel core capabilities
What can Microsoft Sentinel do for your organisation? These core capabilities make Sentinel crucial for defending against emerging threats:
Comprehensive Threat Detection
Collect and analyse signals from 350+ data sources: firewalls, endpoints, cloud environments, identity platforms, and SaaS apps. Sentinel's codeless connector platform lets you onboard any source, with detection rules, dashboards, playbooks, and hunting queries available out of the box.
Security Copilot and Agentic AI
Microsoft Security Copilot brings generative AI to incident response, summarising incidents in natural language, suggesting remediation steps, and powering agentic workflows. The Sentinel MCP server connects AI agents to your security data for advanced automation.
Sentinel Graph
Sentinel graph builds a connected intelligence layer that links users, devices, alerts, behaviours, and incidents. It illuminates hidden attack paths and entity relationships, surfacing risks that traditional alert-based detection misses entirely.
Sentinel Data Lake
A cloud-scale security data foundation for cost-effective, long-term retention of high-volume telemetry. Supports direct ingestion from Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Office, and Cloud Apps, without the cost of the full analytics tier, enabling richer historical investigation.
User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA)
The generally available UEBA behaviours layer aggregates security telemetry into clear, human-readable behavioural summaries. It detects insider threats and compromised accounts by identifying deviations from normal patterns across Microsoft and third-party sources, including AWS, GCP, and Okta.
SOAR and Automated Incident Response
200+ customisable playbooks automate routine response tasks, from account isolation to ticket creation, so your analysts focus on complex investigations. Machine learning correlates alerts into prioritised incidents, reducing mean time to respond across your environment.
Microsoft Sentinel in action
Explore common use cases for Microsoft Sentinel that boost security operations and maintain compliance:
Threat Detection and Incident Response
Gain comprehensive visibility by collecting and correlating data from firewalls, endpoints, cloud environments, and identity platforms. Sentinel helps your team identify and prioritise threats and respond swiftly through automated playbooks.
Multi-Cloud Security Monitoring
Purpose-built for cloud environments, Sentinel provides native monitoring of Microsoft Azure alongside AWS, GCP, and hybrid infrastructure. New connectors include AWS Network Firewall, GCP Cloud Run, VPC Flow, and Palo Alto Prisma.
Centralised Log Management and Compliance
Consolidate all security logs, whether on-premises and cloud, into a single hub. Sentinel simplifies compliance, auditing, and long-term retention through its data lake, supporting Australian regulatory frameworks, including the ASD Essential Eight and the Privacy Act.
Insider Threat Detection
The UEBA behaviours layer analyses cross-platform behaviour patterns across Microsoft Entra ID, AWS, GCP, and Okta, surfacing anomalous access, data exfiltration, and privilege misuse before they escalate.
SIEM Migration from Splunk or QRadar
Modernise your SOC by migrating from legacy SIEM platforms. Microsoft's AI-assisted SIEM migration experience automates the translation of detection rules and the setup of data connectors. Professional Advantage provides full migration services and post-deployment support.
Proactive Threat Hunting
Give your analysts cutting-edge tools to actively investigate potential threats. Sentinel's KQL-based hunting queries, combined with Sentinel graph and custom graph visualisations via the VS Code extension, enable deep investigation without writing detection rules from scratch.
Ready to leave Splunk or QRadar behind?
Microsoft's AI-assisted SIEM migration experience, combined with Professional Advantage's migration expertise,
makes moving to Sentinel faster and lower-risk than ever before.
Microsoft also offers free migration support through the Cloud Accelerate Factory program.
Contact us to find out if your organisation qualifies.
Microsoft Sentinel Consulting Services from Professional Advantage
- Security and Risk Assessment.
We assess your current security posture, map your environment against the MITRE ATTACK Framework, identify coverage gaps and redundancies, and prioritise the use cases where Sentinel will deliver the greatest risk reduction for your organisation. - Requirements Planning and Architecture Design.
We design a Sentinel architecture tailored to your environment: selecting the right data sources, defining workspace and retention strategy, planning commitment tier and data lake usage, and mapping your automation and compliance requirements. - Deployment and SIEM Migration.
Our engineers deploy Microsoft Sentinel, configure data connectors (including legacy SIEM migrations from Splunk or QRadar), implement detection rules, build automated response playbooks, and integrate with your existing ticketing and workflow tools. - Ongoing Managed Services.
We act as an extension of your security team through our Modern Managed Services, providing continuous monitoring, rule tuning, playbook optimisation, incident escalation support, and monthly reporting on your security posture and SOC performance.
Why Australian businesses choose Professional Advantage as their
Microsoft Security Partner
Professional Advantage combines Microsoft-certified security expertise with end-to-end delivery, helping Australian organisations not just deploy security tools, but actually stay secure. Unlike many Microsoft partners, mid-sized to large organisations choose to work with us for these reasons:
Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security.
We hold Microsoft's Security specialisation, demonstrating verified capability in deploying Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Entra ID, and Microsoft Purview. Not all Microsoft partners are security specialists. We are.
Full Microsoft stack expertise.
We are uniquely positioned to support your entire Microsoft environment, from Sentinel and Defender to Microsoft 365, Azure, Entra ID, Purview, and Dynamics 365, under one partner. Add to that our Microsoft Tier 1 CSP capability, which means faster integrations, cleaner architecture, less complexity, and lower overall cost of ownership.
Almost 40 years serving Australian organisations.
Since 1989, Professional Advantage has been helping Australian organisations navigate technology change. We understand the local regulatory landscape, including ASD Essential Eight, the Australian Privacy Act, and sector-specific compliance requirements.
An extension of your security team.
Whether you have an established SOC that needs Sentinel expertise or a lean IT team that needs managed security coverage, we tailor our engagement model to your capability, acting as an integrated extension of your team, not an external vendor.
35+
Years experience serving 1000 Australian organisations
90+
Consistently high net promoter score
9.7
Years average client tenure
Professional Advantage is a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security and a Tier 1 CSP.
Learn more about Microsoft Sentinel
How can you anticipate and stop threats with a unified security operations platform?
Download eBook →
What are the four ways Microsoft Sentinel can transform your security operations centre?
Download datasheet →
What does end‑to‑end security look like in a cloud‑ and AI‑driven world?
Download eBook →
What is Microsoft Sentinel, what does it do, and what are its key features and benefits?
Read blog →
What do organisations need to know according to the latest Microsoft Digital Defence Report?
Read article →Top Microsoft Sentinel FAQs
What is Microsoft Sentinel?
Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration Automated Response (SOAR) solution built on Microsoft Azure. It helps organisations detect, investigate, and respond to security threats across their digital environment.
What makes Sentinel a powerful solution?
- Native integration with Microsoft 365 and Defender XDR tools.
- Real-time visibility into your environment’s security posture.
- Supports hybrid and multi-cloud environments (including AWS and Google Cloud).
- Pay-as-you-go pricing: —no infrastructure setup or upfront cost.
Key Features
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Data Collection | Connects to Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS, on-premises servers, firewalls, and more. |
| AI-powered Threat Detection | Uses machine learning and Microsoft threat intelligence to identify real threats. |
| Investigation Tools | Visualise attack chains, timelines, and correlations across data sources with Auxiliary Logs and Analytics Logs. |
| Automated Threat Response | Trigger playbooks (via Logic Apps) to respond to incidents automatically. |
| Scalability | As a cloud-native tool, it scales automatically with your data and workloads. |
Learn more about Microsoft Sentinel in blog Modernising Security Operations with Microsoft Sentinel
How does Microsoft Sentinel differ from traditional SIEM?
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the differences between Microsoft Sentinel and traditional SIEM solutions.
| Feature | Microsoft Sentinel | Traditional SIEM |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Cloud-native (built on Azure). | On-premises or hybrid. |
| Scalability | Auto-scales with data volume and users. | Requires manual hardware or license upgrades. |
| Setup & Maintenance | Minimal setup; no infrastructure to manage. | High setup and ongoing maintenance costs. |
| Integration | Seamless with Microsoft 365, Azure, Defender, and third-party tools. | Often requires manual connectors and integrations. |
| Cost Model | Pay-as-you-go based on data ingestion. | Typically fixed or tiered licensing with high upfront cost. |
| Artificial Intelligence | Built-in AI/ML for automated threat detection and correlation. | Often limited or requires separate modules. |
| Automation | Native SOAR via Logic Apps and playbooks. | Requires third-party tools or custom scripting. |
| Updates & Upgrades | Continuous updates via Azure platform. | Periodic manual upgrades needed. |
| Multi-Cloud Support | Supports Azure, AWS, GCP, and hybrid environments. | Typically fixed or tiered licensing with high upfront cost. |
| Time to Value | Fast to deploy and derive insights. | Slower setup; longer time to operationalise. |
In simple terms:
- Sentinel is cloud-first, smarter, and faster to deploy—ideal for modern, hybrid, or cloud-native environments.
- Traditional SIEMs are infrastructure-heavy and often slower to adapt to evolving threats.
Can I integrate Microsoft Sentinel with my existing systems?
Yes. Sentinel can ingest data from Microsoft and third-party sources for unified SIEM and SOAR capabilities.
Popular third-party integrations with Microsoft Sentinel include, but are not limited to:
Security Solutions and Firewalls
|
Identity and Access Management
|
Email Security
|
Cloud Platform and SaaS
|
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)/XDR
|
Threat Intelligence
|
How long does a Microsoft Sentinel deployment take?
A standard Microsoft Sentinel deployment typically takes 4 to 12 weeks, depending on the size of your environment, the number of data sources, and the complexity of your detection and automation requirements.
Professional Advantage follows a structured methodology covering assessment, design, deployment, and handover, with ongoing managed services available post-deployment.
What is the difference between Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR is an endpoint-to-cloud detection and response platform focused on Microsoft's own security signals (endpoints, identities, email, cloud apps).
Microsoft Sentinel is a SIEM that ingests logs and signals from any source, including third-party tools like Cisco, AWS, Splunk, and SAP, and applies AI-driven analytics across your entire environment. Since 2025, both platforms have been unified in the Microsoft Defender portal, but they serve distinct, complementary roles. Most enterprise environments benefit from both. Learn more about Microsoft Sentinel in this article.
Can Microsoft Sentinel replace Splunk or QRadar?
Yes. Microsoft Sentinel is a full-featured SIEM that can replace legacy platforms like Splunk and QRadar.
Microsoft now provides an AI-assisted SIEM migration experience that automates the migration of detection rules and data connectors, significantly reducing the effort required. Microsoft also offers free migration support through the Cloud Accelerate Factory program. Contact us to find out whether your organisation qualifies.
Professional Advantage can aid with end-to-end SIEM migration services, including rule translation, data onboarding, and team enablement. Sign up here for a commitment-free 1-hour consultation to learn how we can help.
Does Microsoft Sentinel work with non-Microsoft tools?
Yes. Microsoft Sentinel has over 350 pre-built data connectors for third-party platforms, including Cisco, AWS, GCP, Palo Alto, Fortinet, SAP, Okta, and many more.
Its codeless connector platform allows custom integrations with virtually any data source. The connector ecosystem was significantly expanded at Microsoft Ignite 2025 and RSAC 2026 with new AWS, GCP, and DSPM integrations.
Is Microsoft Sentinel suitable for small and mid-sized businesses in Australia?
Yes. Microsoft Sentinel is now suitable for organisations of all sizes. The 50 GB/day commitment tier introduced in 2025 was specifically designed to make Sentinel more accessible and cost-predictable for smaller organisations.
Professional Advantage works with SMBs across Australia to right-size Sentinel deployments and provide managed services that fill SOC capability gaps without requiring a full in-house security team.
Transform your SOC today for comprehensive threat protection tomorrow!
Whether you're assessing your security posture, planning a SIEM migration, or looking to get more from an existing Sentinel deployment, we can help. Book a free, no-obligation consultation with our team.Complete the form below, or contact us on 1800 126 499 to speak to one of our experts today.
What else can we help with
Microsoft Security Services
Cybersecurity Platform Consolidation, Essential Eight Compliance Services, Intune, Defender, Sentinel, Entra ID
Learn more →
Modern Managed Services
Cloud and Application Support, Managed Security, End User Desktop, Server and Network Support
Learn more →
AI Consulting Services
Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure OpenAI, Power Platform Copilot, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio
Learn more →
Modern Work
Microsoft 365, SharePoint, iWorkplace Information Management and Compliance, Microsoft Purview
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Client Success
Check out how other organisations are successfully leveraging Microsoft’s security solutions.
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