Microsoft · Free Practice Questions · Last reviewed May 2026
18 real exam-style questions organised by domain, each with the correct answer highlighted and a plain-English explanation of why it's right — and why the others are wrong.
A user reports receiving a suspicious email that bypassed the spam filter. An analyst opens the Microsoft 365 Defender portal to investigate. Which component provides a detailed entity view of the email including delivery actions, phish simulation details, and campaign information?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Threat Explorer)
Threat Explorer provides a detailed email entity view including delivery actions, phish simulation, and campaign information.
Microsoft Defender for Identity
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
During an incident investigation, an analyst notices a compromised user account that was used to access sensitive data from SharePoint Online. Which Microsoft 365 Defender workload would provide the most relevant alerts for suspicious file access patterns?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Defender for Cloud Apps monitors cloud app activity including SharePoint Online and can alert on suspicious file access.
Microsoft Defender for Identity
A security analyst is writing a Kusto Query Language (KQL) advanced hunting query in Microsoft 365 Defender to detect lateral movement using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Which table should the analyst join with the DeviceNetworkEvents table to identify processes initiating outgoing RDP connections?
DeviceProcessEvents
DeviceProcessEvents contains process creation events, which can be joined with network events to identify the process initiating the RDP connection.
DeviceLogonEvents
DeviceFileEvents
DeviceRegistryEvents
During an incident investigation in Microsoft 365 Defender, an analyst examines an email that was reported as phishing. The analyst opens the email entity page and looks at the 'Detection details' section. Which piece of information would the analyst find there?
The delivery location and whether the email was delivered to Inbox, Junk, or Quarantine.
The authentication statuses (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) for the sender domain.
The sender IP address and the recipient email address.
The detection technology (e.g., Advanced ML, Reputation) and if the email was part of a phish simulation or a campaign.
Correct. Detection details show how the email was flagged, including specific technologies, simulation tags, and campaign information.
An organization uses Microsoft Defender for Office 365. A security analyst wants to configure automated investigation and response (AIR) for email threats. When a user reports a phishing email using the Report Message add-in, which automated action can be triggered by an AIR playbook?
Trigger a training campaign for the user who reported the email.
Move the email to the tenant's shared mailbox for review.
Remove the Report Message add-in from Outlook to prevent false reports.
Soft-delete the email from the user's mailbox and other mailboxes that received the same message.
Correct. AIR can automatically delete the reported email across the organization to contain the threat.
A security analyst uses advanced hunting in Microsoft 365 Defender to investigate a potential lateral movement attack. The analyst suspects that an attacker used stolen credentials to authenticate to multiple workstations via RDP. Which KQL query would return a list of devices where a single user account (user@contoso.com) had successful interactive logons on more than 5 distinct devices within a 10-minute window?
DeviceNetworkEvents | where RemoteIP == 'user@contoso.com' | summarize dcount(DeviceName) by bin(Timestamp, 10m) | where dcount_DeviceName > 5
IdentityLogonEvents | where AccountUpn == 'user@contoso.com' and LogonType == 'Interactive' | summarize dcount(DeviceName) by bin(Timestamp, 10m) | where dcount_DeviceName > 5
DeviceLogonEvents | where AccountUpn == 'user@contoso.com' and LogonType == 'Interactive' | summarize dcount(DeviceName) by bin(Timestamp, 10m) | where dcount_DeviceName > 5
Correct. This query filters for the user's interactive logons, groups by 10-minute windows, counts distinct DeviceNames, and returns windows where the count exceeds 5.
DeviceLogonEvents | where AccountUpn == 'user@contoso.com' | summarize count() by DeviceName, bin(Timestamp, 10m) | where count_ > 5
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Practice this domainA security operations analyst is reviewing recommendations in Microsoft Defender for Cloud. For a virtual machine that is missing critical security updates, which recommendation category will highlight this issue?
Secure score
Secure score includes recommendations for remediating vulnerabilities like missing critical updates.
Regulatory compliance
Workload protections
Inventory
A security analyst is triaging security alerts in Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Which of the following are valid ways to suppress a specific alert type to reduce noise? (Choose all that apply.)
Create an alert suppression rule based on alert entity
Alert suppression rules can be configured to suppress alerts based on entity, such as specific IP addresses or resources.
Modify the alert's severity
Set an automatic response action
Define a rule to automatically dismiss alerts that meet criteria
You can create suppression rules that automatically dismiss alerts based on criteria like alert type or entity.
A security analyst reviews Microsoft Defender for Cloud recommendations for an Azure virtual machine. The VM has a recommendation titled 'Install endpoint protection solution on virtual machines'. The analyst clicks on the recommendation and sees affected resources. Which of the following best describes the purpose of this recommendation in the context of Defender for Cloud?
It identifies VMs that have an open network security group inbound rule that should be closed.
It suggests enabling Azure Firewall on the virtual network to protect the VM from external threats.
It recommends enabling disk encryption for the VM's OS and data disks.
It advises deploying a supported endpoint protection solution, such as Microsoft Defender Antivirus, to protect the VM from malware and other threats.
Correct. The recommendation prompts installation of endpoint protection software. Defender for Cloud integrates with Microsoft Defender Antivirus and supports partner solutions.
A company uses Microsoft Defender for Cloud's Just-In-Time (JIT) VM access to secure its Azure virtual machines. A security analyst needs to grant a developer temporary RDP access to a specific VM for debugging purposes. Instead of using the default request approval flow, the analyst wants to configure an exemption so that the developer's access request never triggers a recommendation for that VM. Which action must the analyst perform?
Approve the access request once from the JIT blade and set a long expiration.
Add an exemption for the VM on the 'Management ports should be closed on just-in-time based virtual machines' recommendation.
Correct. Exempting the VM from the recommendation disables JIT monitoring for that VM, allowing permanent open ports without alerts.
Configure a custom Azure Policy to allow open management ports for that VM.
Disable the JIT solution for the entire subscription from the Defender for Cloud environment settings.
A company runs its critical workloads on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The security team wants to use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to protect the AKS clusters. After enabling Defender for Cloud on the subscription, they also need to enable the Defender for Containers plan. Which of the following capabilities becomes available specifically after enabling the Defender for Containers plan (with the plan turned on)?
Azure Policy for Kubernetes add-on installation to enforce pod security policies.
Kubernetes audit logs are automatically streamed to the Log Analytics workspace.
Security alerts for container runtime threats, such as privilege escalation in a container.
Correct. The plan enables advanced threat detection, generating security alerts based on behavioral analytics of cluster activities.
Integration with Microsoft Sentinel for monitoring AKS logs.
A security analyst is using Microsoft Defender for Cloud's adaptive application controls (AAC) to allowlist trusted applications on Azure VMs. After enabling AAC and running in 'Audit' mode for a week, the analyst wants to switch to 'Enforce' mode. Which pre-requisite must be met before enforcement can be applied?
The VM must have the Guest Configuration extension installed.
A valid Microsoft Defender for Servers Plan 2 license must be assigned to the VM.
The VM must have a baseline of allowed applications generated from at least two weeks of audit data.
Correct. AAC requires a baseline of known good applications from audit mode before enforcement can block unapproved applications.
The VM must be running on a supported operating system like Windows Server 2016 or later.
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Practice this domainA security operations analyst is creating a scheduled analytics rule in Microsoft Sentinel to detect brute force attempts on Microsoft Entra ID authentication. Which data source is most appropriate for this rule?
Azure Activity Logs
SigninLogs
SigninLogs contain successful and failed sign-in events needed to detect brute force attacks.
Office Activity Logs
SecurityEvent
A security analyst wants to configure a playbook in Microsoft Sentinel that runs automatically when a specific alert is generated. Which trigger concept is used to invoke the playbook?
Azure Logic Apps trigger
Playbooks are Logic Apps workflows; they use a built-in Logic Apps trigger to respond to Sentinel alerts.
Sentinel trigger
Alert trigger
Automation rule trigger
A security analyst is preparing to use a Jupyter notebook for threat hunting in Microsoft Sentinel. Which of the following sequences of actions is correct to start executing the notebook?
Provision compute → Clone Sentinel notebooks → Connect to workspace → Execute cells
This order follows the recommended setup: compute first, then notebooks, then workspace connection, then execution.
Clone Sentinel notebooks → Provision compute → Connect to workspace → Execute cells
Connect to workspace → Provision compute → Clone Sentinel notebooks → Execute cells
Provision compute → Connect to workspace → Clone Sentinel notebooks → Execute cells
A security operations center (SOC) uses Microsoft Sentinel. The team wants to detect anomalous behavior for a specific user account that typically logs in only during business hours from a known IP range. They create a scheduled analytics rule that queries the SigninLogs table for logins outside that range or outside business hours. To reduce false positives, which of the following configurations should the analyst apply?
Set the alert threshold to 5 occurrences within the query lookback period.
Correct. Alert threshold sets a minimum number of matching events required to generate an alert, reducing noise from single anomalous but benign logins.
Enable entity mapping for the user account to correlate with other data sources.
Increase the query scheduling frequency to every 5 minutes from every hour.
Group all events into a single alert and set the suppression limit to 1 hour.
A threat hunter in Microsoft Sentinel writes a KQL query in the Logs blade to find possible data exfiltration. The query uses the CommonSecurityLog table to look for large outbound file transfers from a specific IP address. The analyst wants to include only events where the total bytes sent in a 5-minute window exceed 100 MB. Which KQL operator combination would best achieve this?
CommonSecurityLog | where SourceIp == '10.0.0.1' | summarize totalBytes = sum(BytesSent) by bin(TimeGenerated, 5m) | where totalBytes > 100000000
Correct. This groups events by 5-minute windows, sums bytes sent per window, and filters those windows exceeding 100 MB (100000000 bytes).
CommonSecurityLog | where SourceIp == '10.0.0.1' | extend bin = bin(TimeGenerated, 5m) | where BytesSent > 100000000
CommonSecurityLog | where SourceIp == '10.0.0.1' | summarize make_list(BytesSent) by TimeGenerated | where array_length(make_list) > 100000000
CommonSecurityLog | where SourceIp == '10.0.0.1' | project BytesSent, TimeGenerated | summarize sum(BytesSent) by bin(TimeGenerated, 5m) | where sum_BytesSent > 100000000
A SOC team uses Microsoft Sentinel and wants to ingest custom log events from an on-premises Linux application that writes to a local file. The team sets up the Log Analytics agent on the Linux server and configures a data connector. Which of the following is the necessary configuration step to collect the custom log file?
Create a Syslog data connector and specify the facility and severity to filter the application logs from /var/log.
Configure the Log Analytics agent to collect performance counters for the application process.
Use the Custom Logs feature in the Log Analytics workspace to specify the path to the application log file and define the log type name.
Correct. Custom Logs allow ingestion of text files by monitoring specified file paths and parsing lines into custom logs.
Deploy a Log Analytics gateway and configure the application to write directly to the gateway using the HTTP Data Collector API.
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Practice this domainThe SC-200 exam has up to 60 questions and must be completed in 120 minutes. The passing score is 700/1000.
The SC-200 exam uses multiple-choice, multiple-select, drag-and-drop, and exhibit-based questions. Exhibit questions show CLI output, network diagrams, or routing tables and ask you to interpret them — exactly the format Courseiva uses.
The exam covers 3 domains: Mitigate threats using Microsoft Defender XDR, Mitigate threats using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Mitigate threats using Microsoft Sentinel. Questions are weighted by domain — higher-weight domains appear more on your actual exam.
No. These are original exam-style practice questions written against the official Microsoft SC-200 exam objectives. They are not copied from the real exam. Courseiva focuses on genuine understanding, not memorisation of braindumps.
Courseiva tracks your accuracy per domain and routes you toward weak areas automatically. Free, no account required.