Microsoft Office 365 Secure Score Limitations for MSPs
There is no doubt that in the rapidly changing environment of cybersecurity, Microsoft Office 365 Secure Score plays a vital role in organisations attempts to enhance their security postures. Although there is no doubt that there are many benefits to using this tool, especially for single-tenant assessments, there are many limitations that the managed service providers will face when attempting to use it in the context of multiple clients. Therefore, this article aims to provide information regarding the identified limitations, enabling the MSPs to navigate the restrictions in their application of evaluation systems.
Help/Application to Single Tenant Assessment
365SS was undoubtedly designed to offer a quantifiable measure of security posture of an organisation. Titled as M365 Secure Score, it is deemed an overall security tool that evaluates the behaviour of an organisation and provides actionable recommendations with the purpose of enabling the organisation to be more secure. There are many benefits its utilisation as a SES in a single-tenant assessment, and some of them include:
1. Centralised Security Overview
In other words, since all security status can be easily viewed in a centralised manner, administrators will have a higher degree of ability to see some basic vulnerabilities and some challenging spots that they may need to address. This clearly demonstrates how this tool can be beneficial for single-tenant assessments.
2. Actionable Recommendations
Secondly, this tool provides actionable recommendations that can be utilised to improve the status of the tenant. Because these recommendations are based on the specific configurations and the activities of the tenant, the implementation of the recommendations leads to improved security. This benefit can be regarded as another reason for this tool to be explicitly used in the context of single-tenant assessments.
3. Track Progress
Another reason why 365SS is beneficial for single-tenant application is the ability to track progress. In other words, this tool offers the ability to see and understand whether the changes have a positive impact on preventing security issues and security-related risks.
4. Benchmark
Finally, the discussed tool is beneficial for single-tenant assessment application purposes because it allows benchmarking it against industry standards and similar organisations. This provides a critical component of analysis necessary for successfully understating the overall score and the areas that need work the most.
Identifying Limitations of M365SS for MSPs
Even though this tool is beneficial for use in single-tenant assessments, there are many limitations that the MSPs are bound to face in the context of application and managing multiple clients using it. In other words, while it is beneficial for single-tenant evaluations, it is not an effective tool for MSP. This can be attributed to the main limitation of the fact that 365SS is not a multi-tenant security tool and does not support this kind of application. The effective application of this tool requires that MSP should be able to manually view the dashboard, and this can be cumbersome and lead to inconsistencies when they are dealing with multiple clients.
1. Inconsistent Scoring Criteria
The criteria for scoring can differ widely depending on the actual configurations and usage patterns of each tenant. Such inconsistency might present obstacles in normalising security evaluation across the different clients. It could be challenging for MSPs to deploy a uniform approach to security assessment, which can result in oversight over several security aspects.
2. Limited Customisation
The score recommendations affect application based on best practices, which do not always comply with the context and peculiarities of individual tenants. According to the specific operational and regulatory demands of their clients, MSPs need a high level of customisation. Hence, the lack of this possibility naturally impacts the outcome of the client evaluation in a negative manner.
3. Resource Intensive
Running assessments of security status also tend to be resource-specific activities if it were done using the available toolkit. It means that MSPs have to dedicate substantial time and effort for each tenant to assess their security performance and evaluate the recommendations. Such an approach tends to overload the resources of the MSPs, which is critical for smaller companies that might have limited personnel and technical coverage.
How MSPs Can Improve Client Security Evaluation?
Despite the limitations, the MSPs could apply the following approaches to upgrade their security evaluation and provide the highest level of protection to the clients.
1. Implement Automation Tools
MSPs can use various types of automation to ease the manual burden of evaluating the security of multiple tenants. The life can be facilitated in terms of data aggregation from disparate sources, providing a single dashboard for evaluation of the security score, and generation of various reports. The efforts of the MSPs can be used to design more strategic activities, whereas automation can adjust tactical dimension.
2. Standardise Security Frameworks
MSPs can accept standardised and regulated systems to provide a high level of security. The development of unified evaluation methodology would ensure that all the clients are evaluated more thoroughly and fairly. The common vulnerabilities tend to be overlooked if it they are not generalised, and the MSPs risk to fail to apply best practices in all the necessary situations.
3. Customise Security Recommendations
MSPs try to understand the environment of each individual tenant and, according to their unique operation pattern and restrictions, have to redesign the proposals. It is also essential to recreate proposals for the business context and special circumstances of the customer’s implants. It means that they need to make them themselves, if not all, at least some of the recommendations.
4. Continuous Monitoring and Improvement
According to standard evaluations, the main condition for evaluating systems to the client will give rise to new assessment and rating analyzes. Continuous system monitoring should allow at MSPs responsible for evaluating the provision of other applications using other sources and tools to ensure the necessary security tools.
5. Educate and Train Clients
An informed client is indeed your best friend. Therefore, any MSP should encourage its clients to take an active part in the evaluation of their systems. Such education may concern general security principles, the necessity of regular security assessments, or the interpretation of the SS dashboard results. Finally, informing the MSPs customers about a potential threat or an action required after an evaluation increases the probability of taking necessary security measures on time.
Summary: Office 365 Secure Score for MSPs
In conclusion, it can be stated that the application of Microsoft’s M365 Secure Score for single tenants is efficient in many cases. However, there are multiple factors that prevent MSPs IT providers from benefitting from this application to the full extent. Non-multi-tenant support, inconsistency in reporting, inability for customisation in many cases, and a high level of operational investment required to perform manual checks represent the most vivid shortcomings that defy the given application.
To overcome these challenges, MSPs are advised to apply automation, standardise the SSPs, customise different requirements for security checks, perform continuous monitoring with the help of special tools, and, last but not least, educate their clients. Therefore, all of these takes may help to put both the client of an MSP and its infrastructure into safer conditions.
