Microsoft Secure Score
Regular review of your security posture is the best way to help mitigate the risk associated with an attack. Microsoft’s Secure Score identifies potential issues for quick remediation.
There is no such thing as a company’s digital assets being too secure, particularly in today’s ever-changing world of malware, viruses, and hackers. There are new variants of malware being discovered weekly, causing antivirus and anti-malware solutions to struggle to keep up. Even the slightest weakness in your network security can be exploited by cybercriminals, making it vital to ensure that you have every possible protection in place. Microsoft has been at the leading edge of cybersecurity for many years, and now their engineers are providing yet another tool to help assess and remediate security: your Microsoft Secure Score.
What is a Microsoft Secure Score?
With their massive install base throughout the world, Microsoft is in a unique position to look across their wide ecosystem and define the best practices that are found. Your Microsoft Secure Score is comprised of a checklist that will help ensure that your organization is taking the appropriate measures to enhance your security in the changing business climate. Per the Microsoft website, Secure Score recommendations help to:
- Report on the current state of the organization’s security posture.
- Improve their security posture by providing discoverability, visibility, guidance, and control.
- Compare with benchmarks and establish key performance indicators (KPIs).
Companies earn points by working through Microsoft’s recommendations, all viewable within the robust analytics framework of the Secure Score dashboard. Plus, you’ll be able to view historical trends and track your security progress over time. This is a valuable tool to share with senior leadership — enhancing the business case showing the value of additional support to remediate essential issues quickly.
How Secure Score Works
Microsoft’s Secure Score recommendations are broken down into several different components, each of which must be addressed separately.
- Identity
- Data
- Device
- App
- Infrastructure
With this updated version of Microsoft Secure Score, you will be able to view both your Microsoft and Office 365 security challenges within a single pane of glass. Plus, you can see how your organization ranks against others in your industry, an important benchmark that will help you determine the resources and budget that need to be assigned to additional security tasks.
Tips for Improving Your Microsoft Secure Score
Recent upgrades to the Microsoft Secure Score make it much easier for IT administrators to capture current-state security while defining the next steps in your remediation journey. Some top tips that you are likely to see within Microsoft Secure Score include:
- Enabling multi-factor authentication
- Include mobile encryption and passwords to employee devices
- Monitor email use to highlight threats and audit data more thoroughly
- Restrict global administrator roles
Microsoft engineers are taking steps towards making the tool a more accurate representation of your relative security to other organizations of your scale. “In the previous experience, the comparison was hardcoded and based on the organization’s size and the industry,” explained Chris Hallum, a senior product manager at Microsoft, in the announcement. “This has been updated to include organizations licensed with similar products, so you’re no longer being compared to organizations who have access to more or fewer technologies.” Part of this upgrade includes implementing a “% upgraded” score so that you can track your success against specific security goals.
Identifying all of the security risks inherent in your business systems can be a challenge, which is why so many organisations turn to IT service providers to help fill any knowledge and execution gaps. With the team at Sydney Technology Solutions by your side, you can be confident that you are identifying key business risks and prioritizing them for remediation promptly. Our team maintains active Microsoft certifications to ensure we stay up-to-date on the latest recommendations for Microsoft Office 365 and other Microsoft platforms. Contact our team at (02) 8212 4722 for more information or schedule your complimentary initial consultation by chatting with our team online.
