SC-200 Respond to security incidents Practice Question
Exhibit
{
"alertRuleTemplate": "5a5b5c5d-6e6f-7071-7273-747576777879",
"displayName": "Suspicious Activity from Compromised Account",
"query": "IdentityLogonEvents | where Timestamp > ago(1d) | summarize count() by AccountUpn, IPAddress",
"queryPeriod": "1d",
"queryFrequency": "1h",
"triggerOperator": "GreaterThan",
"triggerThreshold": 10,
"severity": "High",
"suppressionDuration": "4h",
"suppressionEnabled": false
}Refer to the exhibit. A security analyst creates a scheduled analytics rule in Microsoft Sentinel based on the JSON shown. After enabling the rule, the analyst notices that the rule generates alerts every hour for the same user accounts even after the incidents are resolved. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
SC-200 often tests the difference between rule scheduling parameters (query period, frequency, threshold) and suppression settings, catching candidates who blame alert frequency on severity or thresholds instead of the missing suppression configuration.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Suppression is disabled, so the rule fires every hour with overlapping results
In Microsoft Sentinel, an analytics rule with suppression disabled will fire every time its query period elapses and the query returns results, even if those results overlap with previously generated incidents. Since the rule runs hourly and the query period likely covers a window that includes the same user accounts, it repeatedly generates alerts for the same entities. Enabling suppression (or configuring the rule to group and suppress duplicate alerts) prevents this repetitive firing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The severity is set to High, causing multiple alerts
Why it's wrong here
The severity field only assigns a priority or criticality label to the generated alert after the rule executes; it does not influence the rule's scheduling, query logic, or how many times the detection runs. Setting severity to High may make each incident appear more urgent in the SOC queue, but it cannot cause the rule to produce multiple or duplicate alerts. Duplicate alerts here stem from the rule firing repeatedly without suppression, not from severity metadata.
- ✗
The query period is too short, causing the rule to refetch old data
Why it's wrong here
The query period (lookback window) is 1 day, and the rule runs hourly, so each scheduled run queries the last 24 hours of log data. This does not cause old data to be "refetched" in a problematic way; rather, it means consecutive hourly runs use overlapping windows that include the same events in multiple runs. If the query period were shorter than the run frequency, you could miss data, but here the problem is that no suppression is configured to stop repeated firing on the same underlying results.
- ✓
Suppression is disabled, so the rule fires every hour with overlapping results
Why this is correct
When suppression is disabled, the scheduled rule has no mechanism to pause or stop additional runs after an alert is created, so it executes every hour exactly as scheduled. Because each hourly run uses a 1-day query period, the same events fall into multiple overlapping lookback windows, causing the rule to generate a new alert each time the query returns results that meet the threshold. Enabling suppression would suspend the rule for a defined period after an alert is generated, preventing overlapping and duplicate alerts from the same activity.
- ✗
The trigger threshold is too low, causing the rule to fire too often
Why it's wrong here
The trigger threshold of 10 only determines the minimum number of query results needed to create an alert for a single run; it is a sensitivity control, not a duplication control. Lowering the threshold would make the rule fire on smaller query result counts, but the rule would still potentially fire once per hourly run when the threshold is met, producing duplicate alerts across overlapping time windows. Even with a threshold of 10, the rule can generate multiple alerts for the same events if suppression is disabled, because each new hourly run evaluates the same overlapping query period.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Microsoft exam blueprint
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