Correlate Data with Watchlists
Implementation Effort: Medium
Creating and managing watchlists requires IT and security teams to define, import, and maintain reference data, and integrate it into detection rules and queries.
User Impact: Low
This feature is used by security analysts and administrators; end users are not impacted or required to take action.
Overview
Watchlists in Microsoft Sentinel allow security teams to import external reference data—such as IP addresses, file hashes, or user lists—and correlate it with event data to enhance threat detection, investigation, and response. These lists are stored as name-value pairs and can be used in Kusto queries, detection rules, hunting queries, and playbooks. Common use cases include identifying activity from terminated employees, suppressing alerts from known safe sources, or enriching alerts with business context.
By correlating data with watchlists, organizations can reduce alert fatigue, improve detection accuracy, and accelerate incident response. This aligns with the Zero Trust principle of "Assume Breach", as it enables proactive threat hunting and segmentation of suspicious activity using curated intelligence. Failing to implement watchlists may result in missed threats or excessive false positives, leading to slower response times and analyst burnout.