What key feature of Microsoft Defender for Identity helps detect unusual authentication attempts?

Behavioral analytics is a key feature of Microsoft Defender for Identity that helps detect unusual authentication attempts by monitoring user behavior patterns and identifying deviations from these established norms. The system builds a baseline of typical user activities, such as login times, locations, and devices used. When an authentication attempt or access request occurs that significantly deviates from the normal pattern—such as a user logging in from an unusual geographical location or at an atypical time—the system flags this event as potentially suspicious. This enables security teams to investigate further and take appropriate action to mitigate any potential threats.

In the context of the other options, conditional access policies focus on enforcing specific access controls based on conditions like user risk and compliance state, while network segmentation is aimed at dividing a network into smaller segments for security purposes. Data loss prevention is designed to identify and protect sensitive data from unauthorized access or sharing. While these features play critical roles in overall security strategies, they do not specifically emphasize the detection of unusual authentication attempts in the same manner as behavioral analytics does.