Prioritize incidents in the Microsoft Defender portal

The Microsoft Defender portal applies correlation analytics and aggregates related alerts and automated investigations from different products into an incident. Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR also trigger unique alerts on activities that can only be identified as malicious given the end-to-end visibility in the unified platform across the entire suite of products. This view gives your security analysts the broader attack story, which helps them better understand and deal with complex threats across your organization.

Incident queue

The Incident queue shows a queue of incidents that were created across devices, users, mailboxes, and other resources. It helps you triage the incidents, prioritize and create an informed cybersecurity response decision.

Find the incident queue at Incidents & alerts > Incidents on the quick launch of the Microsoft Defender portal.

Select Most recent incidents and alerts to toggle a timeline chart of the number of alerts received and incidents created in the last 24 hours.

The incident queue includes Defender Queue Assistant that helps security teams cut through the large number of incidents and focus on the incidents that matter most. Using a machine learning prioritization algorithm, the Queue Assistant surfaces the highest-priority incidents, explains the reasoning behind the prioritization, and provides intuitive tools for sorting and filtering the incident queue. The algorithm is runs for all alerts, Microsoft native alerts, custom detections, or third-party signals. The algorithm is trained on real-world anonymized data and considers, among other things, the following data points when calculating the priority score:

• Attack disruption signals
• Threat analytics
• Severity
• SnR
• MITRE techniques
• Asset criticality
• Alert types and rarity
• High profile threats such as ransomware and nation-state attacks.

Incidents are automatically assigned a priority score from 0 to 100, with 100 being the highest priority. Score ranges are color-coded as follows:

• Red: Top priority (score > 85)
• Orange: Medium priority (15–85)
• Gray: Low priority (<15)

Select the incident row anywhere except the incident name, to display a summary pane with key information about the incident. The pane includes the priority assessment, the factors influencing the priority score, the incident's details, recommended actions, and related threats. Use the up and down arrows at the top of the pane to navigate to the previous or next incident in the incident queue. For more information on investigating the incident, see Investigate incidents.

By default, the incident queue show incidents created in the last week. Choose a different time frame by selecting time selector drop-down above the queue.

The total number of incidents in the queue is displayed next to the time selector. The number of incidents varies depending on the filters in use. You can search for incidents by name or incident ID

Select Customize columns to select columns displayed in the queue. Check or uncheck the columns you want to see in the incident queue. Arrange the order of the columns by dragging them up and down.

The Export button allows you to export the filtered data in the incident queue to a CSV file. The maximum number of records you can export to a CSV file is 10,000.

Incident names

For more visibility at a glance, Microsoft Defender XDR generates incident names automatically, based on alert attributes such as the number of endpoints affected, users affected, detection sources, or categories. This specific naming allows you to quickly understand the scope of the incident.

For example: Multi-stage incident on multiple endpoints reported by multiple sources.

If you onboarded Microsoft Sentinel to the Defender portal, then any alerts and incidents coming from Microsoft Sentinel are likely to have their names changed (regardless of whether they were created before or since the onboarding).

We recommend that you avoid using the incident name as a condition for triggering automation rules. If the incident name is a condition, and the incident name changes, the rule will not be triggered.

Filters

The incident queue also provides multiple filtering options, that when applied, enable you to perform a broad sweep of all existing incidents in your environment, or decide to focus on a specific scenario or threat. Applying filters on the incident queue can help determine which incident requires immediate attention.

The Filters list above the incident queue shows the current filters currently applied to the queue. Select Add filter to apply more filters to limit the set of incidents shown.

Select the filters you want to use, then select Add. The selected filters are shown along with the existing applied filters. Select the new filter to specify its conditions. For example, if you chose the "Service/detection sources" filter, select it to choose the sources by which to filter the list.

You can remove a filter by selecting the X on the filter name in the filters list.

The following table lists the available filters.

The default filter is to show all alerts and incidents with a status of New and In progress and with a severity of High, Medium, or Low.

You can also create filter sets within the incidents page by selecting Saved filter queries > Create filter set. If no filter sets have been created, select Save to create one.

Save custom filters as URLs

Once you've configured a useful filter in the incidents queue, you can bookmark the URL of the browser tab or otherwise save it as a link on a Web page, a Word document, or a place of your choice. Bookmarking gives you single-click access to key views of the incident queue, such as:

• New incidents
• High-severity incidents
• Unassigned incidents
• High-severity, unassigned incidents
• Incidents assigned to me
• Incidents assigned to me and for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
• Incidents with a specific tag or tags
• Incidents with a specific threat category
• Incidents with a specific associated threat
• Incidents with a specific actor

Once you have compiled and stored your list of useful filter views as URLs, use it to quickly process and prioritize the incidents in your queue and manage them for subsequent assignment and analysis.

Search

From the Search for name or ID box above the list of incidents, you can search for incidents in a number of ways, to quickly find what you're looking for.

Search by incident name or ID

Search directly for an incident by typing the incident ID or the incident name. When you select an incident from the list of search results, the Microsoft Defender portal opens a new tab with the properties of the incident, from which you can start your investigation.

Search by impacted assets

You can name an asset—such as a user, device, mailbox, application name, or cloud resource—and find all the incidents related to that asset.

Specify a time range

The default list of incidents is for those that occurred in the last six months. You can specify a new time range from the drop-down box next to the calendar icon by selecting:

• One day
• Three days
• One week
• 30 days
• 30 days
• Six months
• A custom range in which you can specify both dates and times

Next steps

After you've determined which incident requires the highest priority, select it and:

• Manage the properties of the incident for tags, assignment, immediate resolution for false positive incidents, and comments.
• Begin your investigations.

Defender Boxed

For a limited time during January and July of each year, Defender Boxed automatically appears when you first open the incident queue. Defender Boxed highlights your organization's security success, improvements, and response actions during the previous six months or calendar year.

You can do the following actions in the series of cards that appear in Defender Boxed:

• Download a detailed summary of your achievements that can be shared with others in your organization.

  

• Change the frequency of how often Defender Boxed will appear. You can choose between once (every January) or twice (every January and July) per year.

  

• Share your achievement to your social media networks, email, and other forums by saving the slide as an image.

  

To reopen Defender Boxed, go to the Incidents queue and then select Your Defender Boxed on the right side of the pane.

See also

• Incidents overview
• Manage incidents
• Investigate incidents