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Brandon Koeller's avatar
Aug 12, 2016
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Announcement: Office 365 Secure Score Released to Public Preview

Microsoft is pleased to announce the preview availability of a new security analytics service called the Office 365 Secure Score. The Secure Score is a security analytics tool that will help you understand what you have done to reduce the risk to your data in Office 365, and show you what you can do to further reduce that risk. We think of it as a credit score for security. Our approach to this experience was very simple. First, we created a full inventory of all the security configurations and behaviors that our customers can do to mitigate risks to their data in Office 365 (there are about 77 total things that we identified). Then, we evaluated the extent to which each of those controls mitigated a specific set of risks and awarded the control some points. More points means a more effective control for that risk. Lastly, we measure the extent to which your service has adopted the recommended controls, add up your points, and present it as a single score.

 

The core idea is that it is useful to rationalize and contextualize all of your cloud security configuration and behavioral options into one simple, analytical framework, and to make it very easy for you to take incremental action to improve your score over time. Rather than constructing a model with findings slotted into critical, moderate, or low severity, we wanted to give you a non-reactive way to evaluate your risk and make incremental changes over time that add up to a very effective risk mitigation plan.

 

The Office 365 Secure Score is a preview experience, so you may find issues, and you will note that not all of the controls  are being measured. Please share any issues on the Office Network Group for Security. You can access the Secure Score at https://securescore.office.com.

 

The Secure Score does not express an absolute measure of how likely you are to get breached. It expresses the extent to which you have adopted controls which can offset the risk of being breached. No service can guarantee that you will not be breached, and the Secure Score should not be interpreted as a guarantee in any way.

 

Your Secure Score Summary

The first, most important piece of the Secure Score experience is the Score Summary. This panel gives you your current Secure Score, and the total number of points that are available to you, given your subscription level, the date that your score was measured, as well as a simple pie chart of your score. The denominator of your score is not intended to be a goal number to achieve. The full set of controls includes several that are very aggressive and will potentially have an adverse impact on your users’ productivity. Your goal should be to optimize your action to take every possible risk mitigating action while preserving your users’ productivity.

 

As mentioned, the Office 365 Secure Score is in a preview release. Over the coming months you will see us continue to add new controls, new measurements, and improvements to the remediation experiences. If you like what you see, please share with your network. If you see something we can improve, please share it with us on the Office Network Group for Security. We’re looking forward to seeing your scores go up, and making the Secure Score experience as useful, simple, and easy as it can be.

 

Read More Here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/office365security/new-security-analytics-service-finding-and-fixing-risk-in-office-365/

  • Another issue with Secure Score.

     

    "You should require that all of your users reset their password at least every 60 days"

     

    This is no longer current best practice where strong passphrases and 2FA are used since more rapid enforced change of passwords leads to the use of weaker ones.

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