Today, organizations are more focused on safeguarding their data and systems from cyber threats, including cloud platforms like Microsoft 365. To assist with this, Microsoft 365 provides a tool called Secure Score. It helps organizations assess and improve their security posture. The following figure shows the current score.
Figure: Current Secure Score
This article will review the Microsoft Secure Score and explain how it works, its key components, and its benefits for maintaining a secure and compliant environment. We will also explore the scoring methodology and learn how to interpret and use the Secure Score accurately to identify potential vulnerabilities and prioritize security enhancements.
What is Microsoft Secure Score?
Microsoft Secure Score is a valuable assessment tool that calculates a security score by considering various factors, such as security settings, behaviors, and practices within an organization's Microsoft 365 environment. This score indicates the organization's overall security posture, with a higher score indicating a stronger security position. In addition to providing a score, Secure Score offers detailed recommendations to help organizations address any identified weaknesses and enhance their security measures. By leveraging Secure Score, organizations can continuously improve and maintain the security of their Microsoft 365 environment.
How Does Microsoft Secure Score Function?
Secure Score integrates data collection and analysis with a dynamic scoring system. Understanding the mechanics behind its scoring system and the strategic recommendations is essential to easily safeguarding organizational data and infrastructure.
Data Collection and Analysis
Microsoft Secure Score collects data from an organization's Microsoft 365 environment. It analyzes the security configuration, user behavior, and device management settings. The tool evaluates this data against best practices and industry standards and then generates a score reflecting the current security posture.
Scoring System
The Secure Score system assigns points based on implementing recommended security controls. Each recommendation has a specific point value and contributes to the overall score when implemented. The system updates the Score in real time as the organization changes its environment's security settings.
Recommendations
Secure Score provides actionable recommendations to enhance security. These recommendations are prioritized based on their impact on the overall security posture. For example, enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users may carry a higher point value than other actions due to its significant impact on security. The following figure shows the recommended actions for the tenant.
Figure: Recommendations
Critical Components of Microsoft Secure Score
The Secure Score dashboard in Microsoft 365 serves as a comprehensive hub for monitoring and managing security measures. By offering a clear visual representation of the current score alongside trends over time, administrators can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their security practices. The dashboard also shows an overview of the potential score if organizations implement all recommended security measures, enabling them to set clear goals for improvement. The dashboard highlights prioritized recommendations, making it easier for administrators to identify and address critical security issues. The following figure displays the current score, points by category, and the top recommended actions.
Figure: Current score, points by category, and the top recommended actions
These recommendations are tailored to address specific security vulnerabilities and can significantly enhance an organization's overall security posture. The platform offers specific improvement actions recommended by Secure Score to enhance security. Each action comes with detailed information on the necessary steps, the rationale behind its importance, and guidance on implementation. These actions cover a wide range of security aspects, from configuring security settings to educating users about best practices, providing a comprehensive approach to improving security.
The tool allows administrators to delve deeper into the scoring methodology. It provides detailed insights into calculating the score, each recommendation's impact, and historical score data. By utilizing this tool, organizations can better understand the factors influencing their score and track progress over time, ultimately leading to more informed decision-making in strengthening their security measures.
Benefits of Microsoft Secure Score
By comprehensively assessing an organization's security settings, Secure Score helps identify weaknesses and areas for improvement. Implementing the recommended actions can significantly enhance the overall security posture, making it more resilient against cyber threats. Secure Score prioritizes recommendations based on their potential impact on security. This prioritization allows organizations to focus on the most critical actions, ensuring they allocate resources effectively to address the most significant vulnerabilities.
The real-time monitoring capabilities of Secure Score enable organizations to stay up to date with their security posture. Any changes to security settings or user behavior are immediately reflected in the score, providing a current snapshot of security status. Maintaining compliance with industry standards and regulations is a critical aspect of cybersecurity. Secure Score helps organizations align security practices with these standards, reducing non-compliance risk and associated penalties.
Understanding the Scoring Methodology
Secure Score offers two scores: a baseline score that reflects the current security posture and a potential score that indicates the maximum achievable score if you implement all recommended actions. This dual-scoring system helps organizations understand their starting point and possible improvements. Each recommendation in Secure Score is assigned a point value based on its importance and impact on security. Recommendations that significantly influence security posture carry more weight and contribute more points to the overall score. Recommendations fall into categories and subcategories: identity, data, devices, and apps. This categorization helps organizations focus on specific security areas and ensures a comprehensive approach to improving their overall posture.
You can earn points for setting up recommended security features, performing security-related tasks, and addressing recommended actions with non-Microsoft applications or alternate solutions. Some actions will give full points when fully completed, while others offer partial points if completed for some users or devices. If you are unable or unwilling to complete an action, you can accept the risk.
If you have a license for a supported Microsoft product, you will receive recommendations for that product, regardless of the license edition. Access the complete recommendations, understand security best practices, and improve your score. Secure Score indicates that your security posture remains the same, regardless of license variations. Remember to balance security with usability; not every recommendation may work for your environment.
Your score is updated in real time to reflect the information presented in the visualizations and recommended action pages. Secure Score syncs daily to receive system data about the points you have achieved for each action.
Interpreting and Leveraging Your Secure Score
The Secure Score helps organizations in four ways:
Identifying Vulnerabilities
A crucial aspect of utilizing Secure Score is identifying vulnerabilities in your organization's environment by analyzing the recommendations and understanding their impact. It enables organizations to pinpoint weaknesses and take specific actions to mitigate risks.
Prioritizing Security Improvements
Organizations can significantly enhance their security posture by utilizing Secure Score's prioritized recommendations to allocate resources effectively. By concentrating on high-impact actions first, organizations can achieve considerable improvements in security with minimal effort.
Tracking Progress
Secure Score is a valuable tool for organizations. It allows them to monitor their security progress over time. By analyzing historical data and trends, organizations can effectively evaluate the impact of their security enhancements. It enables them to make well-informed decisions regarding future security measures and actions. The following figure shows how the score changed based on the action taken.
Figure: Historical score changes
Continuous Improvement
Cybersecurity is an ongoing process, and Secure Score supports continuous improvement. By regularly reviewing and implementing recommendations, organizations can maintain a strong security posture and adapt to evolving threats.
Conclusion
Microsoft Secure Score is a valuable tool for organizations looking to improve security. It assesses security settings, behaviors, and practices, helping to identify vulnerabilities and prioritize improvements. The real-time monitoring and actionable recommendations that the Secure Score provides enable organizations to maintain a secure and compliant environment. Understanding the scoring methodology and effectively using the score can significantly enhance security, ensuring organizations are well-protected against cyber threats. As cybersecurity evolves, tools like Microsoft Secure Score are essential in helping organizations stay ahead of potential risks and maintain strong security practices.
A note from Rencore
Rencore Governance helps organizations optimize M365 Secure Score, thereby strengthening their overall security posture. Our tool offers a centralized view of all data and activities within Microsoft 365 environments and helps identify and respond to security and non-compliance issues more quickly, allowing organizations to quickly act against potential vulnerabilities.
As a first step, we recommend you download our free Microsoft 365 Security Checklist for actionable insights to get you started with strengthening the security posture of your organization.
