SC-200 Respond to security incidents Practice Question
Your Microsoft Sentinel workspace ingests logs from Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft 365 Defender. You need to create an incident response playbook that automatically responds to high-severity incidents. Which THREE components are required? (Choose three.)
⚠ Common exam trap
SC-200 often tests whether candidates confuse visualization (workbooks) and hunting (queries) with the actual automation chain — analytics rule, automation rule, and Logic Apps playbook — that is required for automated response.
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
✓
An analytics rule that generates the incident
Option B is required because an analytics rule is what detects the activity and generates the incident in Microsoft Sentinel; without an incident, there is nothing for the playbook to respond to. Option C is required because an automation rule in Microsoft Sentinel is the mechanism that triggers a playbook automatically when an incident is created, matching conditions such as high severity. Option E is required because the playbook itself is implemented as an Azure Logic Apps workflow that uses the Microsoft Sentinel incident trigger to run the response actions. Option A is not required because a workbook is only a visualization/reporting tool and plays no role in automated incident response. Option D is not required because a hunting query is used for proactive threat hunting, not for automatically triggering a playbook.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A workbook to visualize the incident data
Why it's wrong here
A workbook is an interactive, read-only dashboard that visualizes query results from Sentinel and Azure Monitor, often used for reporting and investigating historical data. It cannot mutate incidents, trigger automation, or invoke any response actions—it only presents data in charts and tables. Since automated incident response requires logic that acts on incidents, a workbook is fundamentally incapable of fulfilling that role, making it incorrect.
- ✓
An analytics rule that generates the incident
Why this is correct
An analytics rule is the foundational component that uses a KQL query to detect a specific security pattern and, when matched, creates an incident in Microsoft Sentinel. Because automated responses (such as playbooks or automation rules) only operate on incidents, an analytics rule is strictly required to generate the incident in the first place. Without this rule, there is no incident object to act upon, regardless of any downstream automation.
- ✓
An automation rule in Microsoft Sentinel
Why this is correct
An automation rule in Microsoft Sentinel is the orchestrator that defines which incidents trigger which playbooks, under what conditions (e.g., severity, analytic rule name), and in what sequence. It can also perform direct actions like assigning tags, adding tasks, or changing severity, without even invoking a playbook. Because it provides the conditional logic that connects incident creation to the playbook execution, it is a necessary part of incident automation, making this option correct.
- ✗
A hunting query to search for similar activity
Why it's wrong here
A hunting query is a proactive, often ad-hoc KQL search run in the Sentinel Hunting blade to discover suspicious activity that may not have triggered any alert or incident. It is not linked to incident generation nor does it have any built-in mechanism to invoke automated workflows; results can be bookmarked but must still be manually triaged. Therefore it cannot serve as the mechanism to automate a response to an existing incident, making it an incorrect solution here.
- ✓
A Logic Apps workflow with Microsoft Sentinel trigger
Why this is correct
A Logic Apps workflow with the Microsoft Sentinel trigger constitutes the actual playbook — the executable set of actions (such as emailing, blocking IPs, or opening a ticket) that runs in response to an incident. This trigger fires when an incident is created or updated, but it only runs when explicitly called by an automation rule; it does not independently decide when to execute. It is an essential component of the automated response pipeline, so this option is correct.
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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
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.