Accenture MDR Quick Start Guide for Windows Defender

This quick start guide will help Accenture MDR customers configure Windows Defender to send logs to the Log collection Platform (LCP).

The document includes the following topics:

1 Supported Versions
2 Port Requirements
3 Configuring Windows Server
4 LCP Configuration Parameters

Supported Versions

A list of supported versions is available in the Accenture MDR Supported Products List document (Accenture_MDR_Supported_Products_List.xlsx) which can be found in

Accenture MDR Portal - https://mss.accenture.com/PortalNextGen/Reports/Documents

Port Requirements

Table 1-1: Port requirements for LCP communication.

Source

Destination

Port

Description

Windows server

LCP

514 (UDP) or

601 (TCP)

Default port

Configuring Windows Server

Note: NXlog is supported to collect Windows Defender logs via Syslog.

Install the NXlog Agent on the windows host in order to get the Windows Defender AV logs,

Configuring NXLog Agent to Send Syslog Messages

Edit the file nxlog.conf: The nxlog configuration file, nxlog.conf is available at C:\ProgramFiles\nxlog\conf or C:\ProgramFiles (x86)\nxlog\conf on 64bit architectures.
Using a text editor, open nxlog.conf.
Configure nxlog: The most common use-case for nxlog on windows is to collect logs from the EventLog subsystem and forward it over the network. Here is a simple configuration which reads the EventLog and forwards it over UDP.

## This is a sample configuration file. See the nxlog reference
## manual about the configuration options. It should be installed 
## locally and is also available online at 
## http://nxlog.org/nxlog-docs/en/nxlog-reference-manual.html


## Please set the ROOT to the folder your nxlog was installed into,
## otherwise it will not start.


#define ROOT C:\Program Files\nxlog
define ROOT C:\Program Files (x86)\nxlog
Moduledir %ROOT%\modules
CacheDir %ROOT%\data
Pidfile %ROOT%\data\nxlog.pid
SpoolDir %ROOT%\data
LogFile %ROOT%\data\nxlog.log
<Extension _json>
    Module xm_json
</Extension>
<Extension fileop>
    Module xm_fileop
</Extension>
<Input in>
    Module im_msvistalog
    Query <QueryList> \
           <Query Id="0"> \
            <Select Path="Microsoft-Windows-Windows Defender/Operational">*</Select> \
            <Select Path="Microsoft-Windows-Windows Defender/WHC">*</Select> \
            </Query> \
          </QueryList>   
</Input>
# Send the read log lines out to nxlog server
<Output out>
  #Send to central nxlog listener on tcp port 514, change host address
    Module      om_udp
    Host        198.19.131.21
    Port        514
    #CAFile      C:\Program Files (x86)\nxlog\cert\cert.pem
    OutputType  LineBased
    Exec $Hostname = hostname_fqdn();
    Exec    $raw_event = "NXLog|" + $Hostname + "|WINDEF|" + $Filename + "|000|000|" + $raw_event;
</Output>
<Route 1>
    Path        in => out
</Route>

4. Start nxlog services using one of the following methods:

Start the Service Manager. Select ’nxlog’ in the list and, then start the service. (or)
Double-click on nxlog.exe.

LCP Configuration Parameters

Table 1-2: The Windows Defender event collector sensor properties to be configured by MDR are shown.

Property	Default Value	Description
Protocol	UDP	The default protocol for syslog. The collector can also accept logs in TCP. Note: While TCP offers guaranteed delivery of log packets, it places a larger overhead on the LCP. To balance TCP for reliability over UDP for speed/simplicity, contact the Accenture Security MDR onboarding team.
Host Names/IP Address	*	Specify the IP addresses or names of windows host. Possible values: IP, hostname, comma separated list of hostnames, or 'ANY', 'any', or '*'
Signatures	\|WINDEF\|	Specify the list of signatures (comma-separated list of strings) that are used to filter the incoming syslog messages from various collectors. Depending on the signature that is specified, the message is consumed by that collector. If the signature list is empty, then no signature based filtering of messages happen
Port Number	514	The default port number for syslog. For TCP, the default port is 601. Note: The LCP can be configured to listen on a non-standard port, please advise the Accenture Security MDR onboarding team if this is a requirement