If you’ve ever been part of a SIEM migration project, you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say it’s one of the most challenging and resource-intensive projects a security or SIEM engineering team can undertake. The manual effort involved in translating hundreds of detection rules, mapping data sources, and ensuring operational continuity while maintaining security posture can take anywhere from weeks to months depending on the size and complexity of the environment.
Microsoft just made this significantly easier.
At Ignite 2025, Microsoft unveiled their AI-powered SIEM migration experience for Sentinel, and they’ve now expanded support to include QRadar alongside the initial Splunk support. This isn’t just another migration tool that does basic syntax translation. What caught my attention is how they’ve approached this with intent-based mapping and continuous optimization to deliver what they’re calling a “future-ready SOC.”
Not just syntax translation
Traditional SIEM migration tools have typically focused on translating query syntax from one platform to another. That’s useful, but it’s only scratching the surface. Microsoft’s approach goes deeper by analyzing uploaded legacy SIEM data and matching techniques and rules to Sentinel’s out-of-the-box detections. The tool suggests appropriate data connectors to ensure complete coverage and inclusion of all data sources post migration
The experience is built around four foundational pillars:
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Discovery & Planning: The tool identifies your existing SIEM detections and helps plan a phased migration using guided, trackable use-cases.
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Detections: This is where the AI really makes thing extremely easy. It identifies, matches, recommends, fine-tunes and enables detections available in Sentinel OOTB to recreate and exceed your origin SIEM’s threat detection coverage.
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Data Sources: The experience identifies, matches and recommends enablement of data connectors based on recommended detections and similar customers’ data connector usage patterns.
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Holistic SOC Engineer Experience: A comprehensive, phased onboarding and migration process with progress tracking, onboarding targets, and SOC optimization enhancements.
Migration Experience
The migration experience is very simple and easy to follows logical workflow that reduces the complexity:
Step 1: Discovery
You start by uploading your exported SIEM configurations. Tool provides you instruction how to export required information from your source SIEM i.e. QRadar or SPlunk and then instead of manually analyzing spreadsheets and configuration files, you can leverage this tool to build actionable inventory of your existing environment. This automated discovery eliminates one of the most error-prone steps in traditional migrations.
Step 2: Analysis
The engine then evaluates the progress and outcomes of the migration recommendations. This provides visibility into the quality and completeness of recommendations, allowing you to validate that all critical detections have been accounted for before moving forward.
Step 3: Guided Migration Planning
SIEM migrations aren’t one time events, they’re phased journeys. The experience provides a stateful, guided migration plan aligned to Sentinel solutions and SOC use cases. You can track progress, prioritize work, and collaborate across stakeholders with full transparency throughout the migration lifecycle.
Step 4: Detection Mapping
This is where things get interesting. The tool uses AI-assisted analysis to match your existing SIEM detections to Microsoft Sentinel analytics rules.
For example scheduled searches and alerts in Splunk written in SPL are matched with KQL analytics rules in Sentinel.
It highlights supported mappings and gaps clearly, focusing on high-confidence, maintainable mappings that help you migrate faster while building trust in the outcome.
Step 5: Data Connector Enablement
Detections are only effective when the right data is connected. The experience automatically identifies and recommends the data connectors required to activate your selected analytics rules, removing guesswork from the onboarding process.
Step 6: Continuous Optimization
Beyond migration, the experience integrates with SOC Optimization to provide a unified view of migration progress alongside ongoing optimization recommendations. This helps you move seamlessly from migration into continuous improvement.
My Trial Run
I wanted to test this out myself to see how it actually works in practice. I spun up my test environment and navigated to the SOC Optimization section in the Microsoft Defender XDR portal. My test SIEM was Splunk Enterprise.
“Setup Your New SIEM” menu is available in Defender XDR portal at https://security.microsoft.com under “SOC Optimization”
When you click this menu, you are greeted with a straightforward wizard that explains the prerequisites.
The next step asks you to upload configuration data from your current SIEM. The tool supports both Splunk and QRadar exports.
You select which SIEM you’re migrating from,in my case it was Splunk so I chose it from drop down available. The interface provides guidance on what data format is expected (JSON in my case).
Unfortunately, this is where my trial hit a roadblock. While I have access to test Sentinel workspaces, I didn’t have a Security Copilot licence enabled in my test tenant at the time. The tool clearly indicates this as a prerequisite, and without it, I couldn’t proceed to upload the SIEM configuration data or see the AI-powered analysis in action.
Even though I couldn’t complete the full workflow, what I saw was promising. The interface is clearly designed to reduce complexity and guide you through each phase of the migration.
The AI Advantage
The experience is powered by Security Copilot, bringing AI-assisted reasoning directly into the migration workflow. During private preview and early customer engagements, Microsoft reports some impressive results:
- Significantly higher detection match rates compared to previous tools
- Improved accuracy and trust through conservative, high confidence recommendations
- Reduced onboarding timelines by months, not weeks
- According to Microsoft ,up to 50% reduction in overall migration time
Why this is important
SIEM migration projects have historically been delayed or avoided because of their complexity and risk. Organizations stick with legacy systems longer than they should simply because the migration overhead seems insurmountable. By using AI to automate the discovery, analysis, and mapping phases, Microsoft is removing significant friction from the process.
What’s particularly clever is how they’ve tied this into the broader SOC Optimization framework. Migration isn’t treated as a separate, isolated project. Instead, it’s integrated into a continuous improvement cycle that extends beyond go-live. This approach recognizes that SOC maturity is an ongoing journey, not a destination.
For security teams managing Splunk or QRadar environments and considering a move to cloud-native SIEM, this tool significantly lowers the barrier to entry. The fact that eligible customers can receive hands-on assistance through Microsoft’s Cloud Accelerate Factory Program, alongside their preferred partner, adds another layer of support to reduce risk.
Getting Started
If you want to try this yourself, here’s what you need:
- Enable Microsoft Sentinel in the Microsoft Defender XDR portal
- Enable Security Copilot in your tenant (The part which I could not complete in my lab)
- Navigate to SOC Optimization → Set up your new SIEM
- Upload your Splunk or QRadar exported SIEM configuration data and follow the guided experience
Microsoft has published detailed documentation on the process: Use the SIEM migration experience - Microsoft Sentinel