Determine Response Strategy
Implementation Effort: Medium
Defining a response strategy involves integrating Defender for APIs with SIEM/SOAR tools, setting up alert rules, and coordinating with incident response teams.
User Impact: Low
All actions are handled by security operations and platform teams; no direct user involvement is required.
Overview
Microsoft Defender for APIs provides runtime threat detection and integrates with Microsoft Defender for Cloud to support a full incident response lifecycle. A well-defined response strategy ensures that API-related threats are detected, triaged, and remediated efficiently using existing security operations workflows.
Key Elements of a Response Strategy
- Alerting: Defender for APIs generates alerts for threats such as unauthenticated access, sensitive data exposure, and OWASP API Top 10 risks 1.
- SIEM Integration: Alerts can be forwarded to Microsoft Sentinel or other SIEM platforms for centralized monitoring and correlation 1.
- Incident Management: Use the Microsoft Defender portal to classify, assign, and track incidents. This includes tagging, severity scoring, and linking related alerts 2.
- Automation: Integrate with SOAR tools or Power Automate to trigger playbooks for containment, notification, or remediation.
- Post-Incident Review: Conduct root cause analysis and update detection rules or posture configurations to prevent recurrence 2.
Without a defined response strategy, API threats may go undetected or unresolved, increasing the risk of data breaches or service disruption. This capability supports the Zero Trust principle of "Assume breach" by ensuring rapid detection and coordinated response to API threats.