Cyber maturity is not a badge or a score. It is your ability to withstand disruption while protecting customers, revenue and reputation. Mature programmes have clear ownership, tested controls and regular measurement that keeps posture aligned to reality. They cut tool sprawl, speed up response and make risk decisions visible to the board.
This matters because attackers move faster with automation and AI, regulators expect proof of control effectiveness and boards want resilience on one page. In our recent webinar, MAP Cyber Threats, Evidence and Compliance: Maximise Microsoft ROI - How to Build Your Board-ready Cyber Maturity Roadmap, we showed how to turn tenant evidence into a practical plan, shared poll results from attendees and outlined a simple sequence to measure where you are, align priorities and protect what matters first
Why Maturity, Why Now
Attackers are scaling with automation and AI. They target identity, devices and unprotected data. Boards want to know if you are resilient and how you can prove it quarter by quarter. Just 2% of UK organisations are classed as mature in cyber readiness, a 15% drop in a single year. By 2025, only 20% expect to consider their cyber risk management very mature and fewer than a third align risk with business goals. The gap is widening between intent and evidence.
"This is why cyber maturity matters. It’s not about buying more tools, it’s about building resilience, proving it to stakeholders and being ready for what’s coming next.”
- Nick Wren
The uncomfortable truth is many organisations overestimate readiness. Policies exist on paper but are not enforced. Backups are not tested. Admin privileges sprawl. Tool sprawl adds cost without outcomes. The fix is collaborative truth finding that puts business owners and technology leads in the same room to establish a shared evidence base, then a plan that connects controls to risk reduction.
"When leadership and technical teams work together, the road map becomes something everybody owns.”
- Nick Wren
AssureMAP - The Practical Programme Executives Can Track
AssureMAP is CyberOne’s structured cyber maturity assessment and improvement programme. It gives leaders a clear, evidence-based view of current posture, benchmarked against best practice, then prioritises gaps into a strategic roadmap that drives measurable improvement and resilience.
Measure - Establish the baseline. Short, focused workshops with leadership and technical owners pull live evidence from Microsoft Entra for identity, Microsoft Intune for device compliance, Microsoft Purview for data governance and Microsoft Defender XDR for detection and response. Score against a recognised scale so maturity is visible and auditable, not anecdotal.
Poll Insight - Posture reality: 100% said they are not confident that posture matches reality. Measure fixes that with tenant truth - device compliance state, Conditional Access effectiveness, labelling adoption, alert handling and automated response. No slideware.
Align - Focus spend where it matters. Weight risks and rank four pillars in order of impact: identity, devices, data, security operations. If identity hygiene is poor, it becomes the top priority. If data is unlabelled, data governance rises. This turns abstract risk into real initiatives the board can approve.
Poll Insight - Board evidence pain: The hardest areas to evidence were regulatory alignment and control effectiveness. Align translates DORA and NIS2 into practical Microsoft controls, then sets the assurance tests you will run and report.
Protect - Execute with momentum. Break the plan into now, next and later. Land quick wins like enforcing multi-factor authentication and onboarding devices into Intune. Then deliver medium-term goals such as Privileged Identity Management and sensitivity labels, before advanced automation and insider risk. Measure, report and iterate so progress is visible every month.
What This Looks Like in Your Microsoft Estate
- Identity with Microsoft Entra - Enforce MFA, apply Conditional Access and bring admin roles under Privileged Identity Management so standing rights disappear. If identity falls, everything else follows.
- Devices with Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint - Achieve full enrolment, patching and compliance so unmanaged endpoints stop being open doors.
- Data with Microsoft Purview - Classify sensitive information, apply labels and data loss prevention, monitor insider risk so the crown jewels are protected without slowing business.
How AssureMAP Runs Without Burning Time
Executives do not have spare weeks. AssureMAP is delivered as a handful of focused stations across a few weeks with the right people in the room: technology owners for identity, endpoint and cloud, hands-on technical leads, plus a business sponsor who sets priorities and unblocks decisions. That mix makes the roadmap something everybody owns, not just security.
Station 1 - Aligns on top business risks and the KPIs that matter to the board.
Station 2 - Builds the maturity baseline with live tenant evidence.
Station 3 - Turns findings into a funded plan with milestones, owners and measures.
By the end, you have three tangible assets: an executive summary for the board, a 12-month plan with milestones and owners and a three-year strategic roadmap aligned to your risk appetite and regulatory demands. You can show what changed in identity hygiene, how much device coverage improved, which labels now protect critical data and how automation has reduced time to contain. It is a structured journey, not a loose collection of tasks.
"We want to stay ahead of it. We don’t want to wait until the bill is live before we prepare for it.”
- Luke Elston
What This Means for Your Business
- Risk Down, Evidence Up - Move from assumptions to audit-ready proof of coverage, testing and enforcement
- Fewer Gaps, Less Noise - Integrated Microsoft controls reduce duplication and alert fatigue
- Faster ROI - Activate capabilities you already license before buying more
- Board Confidence - A transparent plan with milestones, owners and metrics beats vague reassurances every time
Status Quo vs. With Microsoft + CyberOne
|
Topic |
Status Quo |
With Microsoft + CyberOne |
|
Identity |
MFA on paper, not enforced |
Conditional Access enforced, PIM on admins, clear exceptions |
|
Devices |
Mixed tooling, patching gaps |
Full Intune enrolment, compliance baselines, Defender coverage |
|
Data |
Unknown sensitivity, risky sharing |
Purview labels, DLP policies, insider risk monitoring |
|
SecOps |
Alert fatigue, manual triage |
Defender XDR plus Sentinel correlation, playbooks, measurable MTTD and MTTR |
What To Do Next
Watch the On-Demand Webinar
Catch up with MAP Cyber Threats, Evidence and Compliance: Maximise Microsoft ROI - How to Build Your Board-ready Cyber Maturity Roadmap to see the approach, demos and poll insights in full:
Schedule An Initial Session
Book an Initial Cyber Maturity Consultation - a 30-minute discussion on what a cyber maturity roadmap would look like for your organisation and how to drive actionable, measurable improvement.
If the pressure is rising, the answer is not another tool. It is a plan that connects controls to business results, validates progress and makes best use of the Microsoft platform you already have. Measure. Align. Protect. Then show the board you are moving from noise to numbers.