Microsoft has introduced custom graphs in Microsoft Sentinel (Public Preview), enabling security teams to move beyond isolated alerts and gain a deeper, relationship-driven understanding of cyber threats. As modern attacks span across identities, devices, applications, and data, traditional table-based analysis often fails to capture the full picture. Custom graphs address this by connecting these elements into a unified, visual model of security activity.
At the core of this capability is the concept of graph-based security analysis, where entities such as users, devices, and applications are represented as nodes, and their interactions as relationships. This allows organizations to map how actions are connected for example, tracing a phishing attack from email delivery to user interaction and subsequent data access. By visualizing these connections, security teams can better understand how threats propagate and where risks truly exist.
What makes custom graphs particularly powerful is the ability to build tailored security models using both Microsoft and non-Microsoft data sources. Powered by Microsoft Fabric and the Sentinel data lake, organizations can create graphs specific to their environment, enabling more accurate threat detection and investigation. This flexibility allows teams to uncover hidden patterns, detect anomalies, and identify risks that would otherwise remain invisible in traditional logs.
One of the key advantages of this approach is improved visibility into attack paths and blast radius. Security teams can trace how an attack moves across systems, identify affected users or assets, and understand the full scope of an incident without manually stitching together multiple data sources. This significantly accelerates investigations and enables faster, more confident decision-making during critical incidents.
Custom graphs also enable organizations to reconstruct multi-step attack chains, mapping attacker behavior across different stages such as initial access, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. By aligning these patterns with frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, teams gain a clearer understanding of attacker tactics and can respond more effectively. Additionally, the ability to detect structural anomalies, such as overprivileged users or unusual access patterns, helps proactively identify risks before they escalate into incidents.
From an operational perspective, Microsoft has made it easier to create and manage these graphs using tools like the Sentinel VS Code extension, along with AI-assisted development capabilities. Once created, graphs can be accessed directly within the Microsoft Defender portal, where teams can query, visualize, and interact with data in real time using Graph Query Language (GQL). This interactive experience allows analysts to explore relationships, pivot across data points, and uncover insights with minimal effort.
Overall, the introduction of custom graphs represents a significant shift in how organizations approach cybersecurity. By moving from disconnected alerts to relationship-aware threat intelligence, Microsoft Sentinel enables security teams to detect risks earlier, understand them more clearly, and respond more effectively. As threats become more complex and interconnected, this capability provides a powerful foundation for building a more proactive and intelligent security posture.