October 11, 2024
In today’s world, where cyber threats are escalating, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must ensure their security measures are robust, actionable and easy to manage. With Microsoft Secure Score, SMEs can benchmark their security posture and take immediate actions to reduce vulnerabilities.
Microsoft Secure Score is a security analytics tool built into Microsoft 365 that provides a numerical measurement of your organisation’s overall security posture. It evaluates your security setup, identifies vulnerabilities and offers actionable recommendations to help you improve your defences. These recommendations cover critical areas such as identity, data, devices and applications, ensuring that your entire digital environment is assessed and secured.
This tool not only highlights security gaps but prioritises actions that will have the most significant impact on reducing risks, helping you to strike a balance between strengthening security and maintaining productivity.
Why Businesses Should Care
For businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Secure Score offers clear business outcomes:
1. Reduced Risk of Cyber Threats: By following the recommendations, you can significantly reduce your exposure to common threats like phishing, malware and data breaches.
2. Regulatory Compliance: Secure Score helps ensure that your security measures align with regulatory standards such as GDPR or PCI-DSS, reducing the risk of costly fines and improving your compliance posture.
3. Operational Continuity: Strengthening your security defences minimises the likelihood of operational disruption due to cyber incidents. This allows you to maintain business continuity even in the face of cyber threats.
4. Trust and Reputation: A high Microsoft Secure Score demonstrates your commitment to security, which can boost trust with clients, partners and regulators. It reassures stakeholders that your business takes proactive measures to safeguard sensitive information.
5. Maximised Return on Microsoft 365 Investment: Many businesses underutilise the security tools built into Microsoft 365. Secure Score ensures you are fully leveraging your Microsoft investment to protect your organisation, thereby increasing efficiency and reducing the total cost of ownership.
In short, Microsoft Secure Score provides SMEs with clear, actionable insights that translate directly into business value. It empowers you to proactively manage risk, safeguard your operations and demonstrate your commitment to security.
Why Microsoft Secure Score Matters for SMEs
1. Identity: Securing Your First Line of Defence
Identity theft and account compromise remain some of the most common cyber threats, with 61% of breaches linked to compromised identities (Verizon). Microsoft Secure Score helps businesses assess their identity security by suggesting the implementation of multi-factor authentication (MFA), conditional access policies and identity protection measures.
Enabling MFA alone can block 99.9% of identity-based attacks, according to Microsoft research. It’s a simple yet highly effective step to significantly reduce risk.
2. Data: Protecting Your Most Valuable Asset
Data breaches are not only costly but can severely damage a company’s reputation. The average cost of a data breach in 2023 was £3.6 million, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report. Microsoft Secure Score helps protect sensitive data by encouraging the use of data encryption, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies and access controls.
These actions reduce the risk of unauthorised data sharing or theft, making compliance with regulations like GDPR or PCI-DSS easier and more efficient.
3. Devices: Securing Your Endpoints
With the rise of hybrid working, securing endpoints like laptops and mobile devices is more crucial than ever. 70% of remote workers use personal devices for work, according to HP research, increasing the risk of cyber attacks. Microsoft Secure Score evaluates your device security, ensuring you have policies in place like encryption, patch management and Mobile Device Management (MDM) through tools like Microsoft Intune.
These steps help prevent data breaches from lost or stolen devices, ensuring your organisation’s endpoints remain secure and compliant.
4. Applications: Strengthening Your Software Ecosystem
Applications represent a significant attack surface, whether they’re part of Microsoft 365 or third-party tools. A report by Verizon found that web application attacks contribute to 26% of breaches, ranking as the second-most prevalent attack pattern. Microsoft Secure Score reviews application security and suggests best practices for securing configurations, managing access and keeping applications updated.
By following Secure Score’s recommendations, businesses can mitigate risks from application vulnerabilities, safeguarding both internal and external tools.
The Challenges SMEs Face in Building (and Maintaining) Cyber Resilience
While Microsoft Secure Score provides a clear roadmap to improving security, SMEs often face significant challenges when it comes to implementing and maintaining a strong cyber security posture. These challenges can make it difficult to stay protected against today’s sophisticated threats:
1. Limited Time and Resources
Many SMEs operate with lean IT teams that juggle multiple priorities. With limited time and staff available, security can often take a back seat. Managing continuous security updates, policy changes and monitoring across multiple systems is a significant demand that can be hard to meet.
2. Talent Shortages
Cyber security expertise is in high demand and SMEs often struggle to attract or retain qualified talent. According to a 2024 ISC2 Cyber Security Workforce Study, the global shortage of cyber security professionals has reached a new high with an estimated 4.8 million professionals needed to effectively secure organisations. This 19% year-on-year increase is leaving many businesses vulnerable simply because they lack the right skill sets internally.
3. Cost Constraints
Building an effective cyber security programme requires investment in both technology and talent. However, many SMEs find it difficult to justify significant security spending, especially when budgets are stretched across other areas of the business. This can lead to gaps in security measures that could otherwise protect the business from costly breaches.
4. Evolving Threats
Cyber security is not a “set it and forget it” exercise, the threat landscape is constantly evolving, with new attack vectors and vulnerabilities emerging all the time. SMEs need continuous monitoring and real-time updates to ensure they stay protected, but keeping up with these changes requires both time and expertise which are often in short supply.
5. Balancing Security with Productivity
Tightening security can sometimes feel like it conflicts with business operations. Ensuring productivity while implementing rigorous security controls can be a balancing act. Microsoft Secure Score helps businesses navigate this challenge by recommending actions that minimise disruptions while still improving security.
Achieve Cyber Resilience with CyberOne’s Microsoft Secure Score Rapid Remediation
For many SMEs, tackling these challenges on their own can feel overwhelming. That’s where CyberOne can help. Our Microsoft Secure Score Rapid Remediation Service is designed to take the complexity out of improving your security posture.
We provide:
- Expert assessments of your current Secure Score, identifying critical security gaps.
- Quick, actionable improvements that help you achieve up to a 90% Secure Score, rapidly reducing risk.
- Ongoing monitoring and support to ensure your security posture stays aligned with evolving threats.
With CyberOne’s help, you can strengthen your business’s cyber resilience without overburdening your internal resources.
Contact CyberOne today to learn how we can help you secure your business with our new Microsoft Secure Score Rapid Remediation service.