You're already paying for one of the most robust security platforms available to businesses today. Microsoft 365 — depending on your plan — ships with enterprise-grade security tools capable of stopping phishing attacks, detecting compromised accounts, enforcing access controls, and more. Yet most organizations use maybe 20% of what's included, leaving the rest dormant while paying for separate security tools that duplicate functionality they already own. That's not a budget problem; it's a configuration problem. Here's what you're missing and how to turn it on.
Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication — For Everyone, No Exceptions
MFA is the single highest-impact security control you can implement, and it's included in every Microsoft 365 plan. According to Microsoft's own telemetry, MFA blocks more than 99.9% of automated account compromise attacks. That number should make this a non-negotiable first step. And yet, plenty of organizations still leave it as optional, or enable it only for admins, which is a meaningful gap — regular user accounts get compromised too, and attackers use them as a foothold into your environment.
The fastest path to full MFA coverage is enabling Security Defaults in the Azure Active Directory portal. Security Defaults automatically require MFA for all users and block legacy authentication protocols — both of which are consistently flagged in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog as attack vectors. If you're on a Business Premium or higher plan and want more granular control, skip Security Defaults and go straight to Conditional Access policies instead (more on that below). But if you're on a basic plan and haven't enabled anything yet, Security Defaults is your fastest win.
Set Up Conditional Access Policies That Actually Reflect Your Risk
If MFA is the lock on your front door, Conditional Access is the entire access control system for the building. It lets you define rules like: require MFA when a user signs in from outside the corporate network, block access from countries you don't operate in, or require a compliant device before allowing access to sensitive data. These aren't hypothetical use cases — they're exactly the scenarios attackers exploit when a set of credentials gets compromised.
Conditional Access is available on Microsoft 365 Business Premium and most Enterprise plans. The CIS Microsoft 365 Foundations Benchmark — one of the most widely referenced security configuration guides — recommends several baseline policies every organization should implement:
- Require MFA for all users (especially all admins, with no exceptions)
- Block legacy authentication protocols across all apps
- Require MFA or compliant device for access to Microsoft Admin portals
- Enable sign-in risk policies to trigger step-up authentication when suspicious behavior is detected
Start with the Microsoft-provided policy templates in the Conditional Access portal — they're pre-built around common risk scenarios and can be deployed in report-only mode first, so you can observe impact before enforcement. That's a smart way to validate before you commit.
Use Microsoft Secure Score as Your Security Roadmap
Microsoft Secure Score is a free dashboard inside the Microsoft 365 Defender portal that evaluates your current configuration against recommended security practices and gives you a numerical score — think of it as a real-time security GPA. It surfaces specific recommended actions, ranks them by potential impact, and shows you exactly how to implement each one. It's the closest thing to having a security consultant run an audit on your tenant at no cost.
Most organizations that discover Secure Score for the first time find immediate wins: legacy authentication still enabled, audit logging turned off, external email forwarding unrestricted, or third-party apps with overly broad permissions. Each of these is a known attack surface. The dashboard tells you what to fix, how difficult the fix is, and what score improvement you'll get. That prioritization is genuinely useful when you're working with limited time and resources.
Activate Microsoft Defender for Business (It's Already in Your Plan)
If you're on Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you have access to Microsoft Defender for Business — a fully featured endpoint detection and response (EDR) platform that many businesses don't realize is included. This isn't just antivirus. Defender for Business provides behavioral threat detection, automated investigation and remediation, device vulnerability assessments, and integration with the broader Microsoft 365 Defender security stack.
Getting it running involves onboarding your devices through the Microsoft Intune admin center or Defender portal, applying baseline security policies, and enabling the automated investigation features. The process is well-documented and, for most small to mid-sized organizations, can be completed without specialized security expertise. Once active, you gain visibility into endpoint threats that would otherwise go completely undetected — and that visibility matters enormously when the average dwell time for a threat actor inside a network is measured in days, not hours.
Start Using What You Already Own
The security features described here — MFA enforcement, Conditional Access, Secure Score, and Defender for Business — aren't exotic additions. They're already in your subscription, waiting to be configured. Together, they address the most common attack vectors: credential compromise, unauthorized access, misconfiguration, and undetected endpoint threats. Implementing all four puts you meaningfully ahead of the average organization and substantially reduces your exposure to the kinds of breaches that make headlines.
If you're not sure where your current configuration stands or need help working through implementation without disrupting users, that's exactly what Bit Lagoon is here for. Our managed IT and Microsoft 365 services include security configuration reviews, Conditional Access deployment, and ongoing monitoring — so you get the full value of your Microsoft investment with expert support behind it. Reach out to our team and let's take a look at what's sitting unused in your tenant.