SC-200 Manage a security operations environment Practice Question
You are a security analyst. You notice that Microsoft Sentinel is not receiving logs from Microsoft 365 Defender incidents. The diagnostic settings in Microsoft 365 Defender are configured to send data to the Sentinel workspace. What should you check first?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently assume diagnostic settings alone are sufficient for data ingestion, but they overlook that the Sentinel data connector is the required bridge to parse and normalize the data into Sentinel-specific tables.
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
✓
Ensure the Microsoft 365 Defender data connector in Microsoft Sentinel is enabled.
The diagnostic settings in Microsoft 365 Defender send raw data to the Log Analytics workspace, but Microsoft Sentinel must have the Microsoft 365 Defender data connector enabled to parse and ingest that data into the correct tables (e.g., SecurityIncident, AlertInfo). Without the connector enabled, the logs arrive in the workspace but are not processed by Sentinel, so incidents won't appear. This is the first and most common check because the connector acts as the ingestion pipeline.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Check if the Microsoft Sentinel solution is installed.
Why it's wrong here
Checking the Microsoft Sentinel solution installation is the wrong first step because solutions are content packs from the Content hub containing workbooks, analytics rules, and playbooks; they do not control data-plane ingestion. The Microsoft 365 Defender data connector is an independent configuration object that must be enabled separately, even if no content solution is installed. Therefore, validating or installing the solution will not establish or repair the incoming incident stream from Microsoft 365 Defender.
- ✗
Verify that the Log Analytics workspace is in the same region as the Sentinel workspace.
Why it's wrong here
Verifying that the Log Analytics workspace is in the same region as the Sentinel workspace is not meaningful because Microsoft Sentinel does not have a separate workspace region—Sentinel is enabled on the Log Analytics workspace itself and uses that workspace's region. Microsoft 365 Defender can send alerts and incidents to a Log Analytics workspace in any supported region, so a regional mismatch also would not block ingestion. Thus this check is irrelevant to why incidents are not flowing.
- ✓
Ensure the Microsoft 365 Defender data connector in Microsoft Sentinel is enabled.
Why this is correct
Ensure the Microsoft 365 Defender data connector is enabled because this connector is the only ingestion path by which incidents generated in Microsoft 365 Defender are pulled into Microsoft Sentinel. When disabled, no SecurityIncident records from Defender are written, and the connector must show a 'Connected' status in the Data connectors blade. The connector uses delegated API permissions to subscribe to Defender incidents; without this enabled configuration, all other workspace and solution settings are irrelevant to the missing data.
- ✗
Check the 'SecurityIncident' table schema for missing columns.
Why it's wrong here
Checking the SecurityIncident table schema for missing columns is misguided because the schema is Microsoft-defined and standard; the table may be empty if the connector has never ingested data, but the table structure itself already contains the expected columns. A schema issue would not cause the connector to stop ingesting entire incidents—and any schema mismatch would typically appear only if an alternative mechanism wrote directly to the table. The actual cause is almost always connector enablement or permissions, not the target table's definition.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SC-200 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the SC-200 exam.