Microsoft Secure Score: How to use it and improve your security?

Cybersecurity risks are constantly changing, with new and more severe threats emerging each year. It’s important to regularly assess your security measures to protect against both known and unknown vulnerabilities. One effective tool for this is Microsoft Secure Score. In this article you will read:

• What Secure Score is,
• How it operates within your IT setup,
• How to evaluate your security status,
• Methods to enhance your security,
• How to monitor your security score and
• Easy-to-implement strategies to boost your Secure Score 

What is Microsoft Secure Score?

Microsoft Secure Score, offered by Microsoft 365, is a security analytics solution. Its purpose is to assist organisations in enhancing their security stance by offering practical insights and suggestions. Secure Score assesses an organisation’s Microsoft 365 setup and provides a numerical rating along with recommendations for enhancing security. All recommendations are rooted in industry standards and best practices.

The tool offers suggestions to enhance your Secure Score by proposing modifications to your current policies or implementing new ones. These recommendations, endorsed by Microsoft and industry specialists, adhere to best practices. By following these suggestions, you can enhance your overall security position and lower the risk of potential attacks.

Key features of Microsoft Secure Score include:

• Security Recommendations

Secure Score provides actionable security recommendations tailored to an organisation’s specific environment. These recommendations cover areas like identity and access management, data protection, threat detection, and more.

• Point-Based Scoring

Each recommended security improvement has a point value. By implementing the recommendations, your organization can earn points and increase its Score.

• Comparison and Benchmarking

Secure Score allows you to compare your security posture with industry benchmarks and similar organisations. This feature provides valuable insights into how well you are performing relative to your peers.

• Threat Intelligence Integration

The tool integrates with Microsoft Threat Protection, offering real-time threat intelligence and helping you stay ahead of emerging threats.

• Historical Tracking

The system maintains a historical record of progress, enabling you to visualise your security journey and measure improvements over time.

How does it work?

The score is calculated based on various factors, such as the configuration of security features, user behaviour, and the organisation’s adherence to security best practices. By following Secure Score’s recommendations, organisations can enhance their security, reduce risks, and better protect their data.

Step 1: Assessing your security posture

First, we start by assessing your security posture. But what is a “Good” Security posture?

Microsoft Secure Score can help you gauge your security posture in Microsoft 365. A numerical value that indicates how well-protected your data is will enable you to monitor and improve your security posture over time.

Achieving a 100% Secure Score is the ideal objective for both businesses and individuals. However, this can be a daunting task, especially for those lacking expertise in cybersecurity. Setting up robust security systems at a business level demands extensive knowledge. It is worth noting that according to Microsoft Standards, having a Security Score of 80% or higher is also considered sufficiently secure.

If your Security Score is 60% or lower, you are susceptible to security risks and should adopt standard security practices to prevent hackers from accessing your infrastructure. It’s advisable to improve your Security Score promptly to fend off existing and potential threats. Achieving this requires additional technical expertise within your team to strengthen your infrastructure effectively.

Moreover, it is crucial to establish a comprehensive security policy encompassing data, devices, and identity.

We will see at the end of the articles how implementing quick wins can swiftly enhance your Security Score. 

Step 2: How do you take action after the assessment?

After you make an assessment of your security posture, Microsoft provides you with a few recommendations to improve your security score. But, how do you take action after the assessment?

Numerous organisations find it challenging to enhance their Microsoft Secure Score because they lack a clear understanding of its functioning. To elevate your Security Score, it is crucial to begin by prioritising security efforts based on the tool’s highest impact areas. For example, if you have users with weak passwords or disabled multi-factor authentication, these areas should be tackled first. By concentrating on high-impact tasks that are relatively easier to complete, you can swiftly increase your Security Score and build momentum for tackling more intricate challenges. Additionally, implementing policies to maintain consistent security across all users and devices in your organisation can be beneficial.

How to report and track your Microsoft Secure Score?

When initiating a change process, it is vital to track and exhibit progress over time. Fortunately, the Secure Score portal offers a historical perspective of your organisation’s score. It does so by displaying the past 90 days in a trend line that highlights sudden alterations. It also presents a list of suggested actions, indicating changes in each action and whether points were gained or lost. This feature enables you to comprehend abrupt score fluctuations. These might occur due to factors such as deploying new devices or applications that are not yet secure.

Quick wins to improve Secure Score

Now, let’s discuss some quick wins — based on my personal findings — that will improve your Secure Score.

• The first way to improve your Microsoft 365 Secure Score is by leveraging additional security features offered within the platform. Ensure you enable security features like multi-factor authentication, data encryption, data backup, access controls, anti-spam, and more.
• The second way means making sure that mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are configured in a way that demands users to input a password before they can access the device. By requiring a password, the device is better protected from unauthorised access. It adds a layer of security, ensuring that only individuals who know the correct password can use the mobile device. This practice is essential for safeguarding sensitive information. Secondly, it helps prevent unauthorised users from accessing personal or confidential data stored on the device. It’s a fundamental security measure to protect the privacy and security of the device and the data it contains.
• Another quick win is Enabling “Mailbox Intelligence” on Exchange online protection. This feature allows the system to analyse and understand the content, context, and patterns within email messages in a mailbox. It typically employs advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence techniques to recognise important information, detect potential threats (such as phishing emails or malware), categorise emails, and provide insights into communication patterns. By ensuring that mailbox intelligence is enabled, organisations can benefit in several ways.
• Mailbox Intelligence can identify suspicious emails or attachments, helping to prevent phishing attacks or malware from reaching users’ inboxes. The system can automatically categorise emails into different folders or labels based on their content. It makes it easier for users to manage their inbox efficiently. By understanding communication patterns, mailbox intelligence can provide insights or suggestions to improve communication efficiency within an organisation. Intelligent analysis can identify and alert users about potential security risks, ensuring sensitive information is not inadvertently shared. Mailbox intelligence can automate certain tasks. Think of sorting emails, flagging priority messages, or generating automatic responses based on the content of the emails. Overall, enabling mailbox intelligence enhances email security, improves productivity, and streamlines communication processes within an organisation. It leverages the power of artificial intelligence to understand and manage email data effectively.

In conclusion, quick wins in Secure Score refer to immediate, impactful actions that organisations can take to enhance their security posture rapidly. These quick wins typically involve addressing high-priority security tasks that yield significant improvements in the Secure Score. Even better: it prioritises tasks that don’t require extensive resources or time. By identifying and implementing these quick wins, organisations can bolster their cybersecurity defences, mitigate potential risks, and safeguard sensitive data.

Quick wins are only the beginning

It is important to note that quick wins are just the beginning. Quick wins provide an initial boost to the Secure Score, comprehensive security requires continuous effort, ongoing monitoring, and adaptation to evolving threats. Quick wins serve as a foundation upon which organisations can build a robust, long-term security strategy. It will ensure a resilient defence against cyber threats in the continuously changing digital environment.