For years, Sysmon has been the gold standard for IT administrators, security professionals, and threat hunters seeking deep visibility into Windows systems. The Sysinternals tool has been indispensable for detecting credential theft, uncovering stealthy lateral movement, and powering forensic investigations.
However, deploying and maintaining Sysmon across enterprise networks has long been a manual, resource-intensive process. That’s about to change.
Native Sysmon Integration Coming in 2025
Starting next year, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2025 will include native Sysmon functionality, eliminating the need for:
- Separate downloads
- Manual deployments
- Ongoing maintenance across thousands of endpoints
This marks a major shift in enterprise threat detection and security operations.
Why This Matters
Current Sysmon deployment introduces operational friction:
- Manual binary downloads
- Coordinating updates across distributed endpoints
- Maintaining consistency across large environments
When updates lag, security gaps widen. Additionally, Sysmon lacks official customer support in production environments, increasing risk for enterprises.
Native integration solves these challenges by:
- Delivering instant threat visibility
- Supporting custom configuration files
- Automating compliance through Windows Update
- Reducing operational risk and ensuring consistent security posture
How to Enable Native Sysmon
Activating Sysmon will be simple:
- Use Turn Windows Feature On/Off
- Install with a single command:
sysmon -i
This installs the driver, starts the Sysmon service, and applies default settings immediately.
Enhanced Detection Capabilities
The native implementation provides rich diagnostic signals, including:
- Process creation events
- Network connections
- File creation activities
- Process tampering techniques
- WMI events
These signals integrate seamlessly with Windows Event Logs and SIEM platforms, enabling detection of:
- Command-line obfuscation
- Command and Control (C2) traffic
- Credential dumping attempts
- Suspicious script creation
- Malware persistence mechanisms
Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative
This move aligns with Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative, reducing complexity and delivering advanced security telemetry out of the box. Organizations will benefit from:
- Official customer support
- Comprehensive documentation
- Monthly updates with fixes and new features
Future plans include:
- Enterprise-scale management
- AI-powered inference for faster threat detection and reduced dwell time
Key Takeaways
- Sysmon will be natively integrated into Windows 11 and Server 2025.
- Deployment becomes simpler, automated, and supported.
- Organizations gain advanced threat detection without manual overhead.
