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BrandonKoeller'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.

72 Replies

  • HI Brandon,

    when I try to access my demo tenant, I do not get any current scoring.

    The box  "Your Secure Score is:" is missing.  Instead I see only a target score.

     

    Do I need a valid subscription in Azure first to setup Scure Score?

     

     

     

    • BrandonKoeller's avatar
      BrandonKoeller
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Hey Ole,

      Thanks for the feedback! You are reading our minds. We are working on publishing the secure score data through API end points that will live in the same place as the Management Activity API endpoints (which provide activity and audit data), so that our third party ISV partners can /super/ easily include this data in their stores. OMS is one of those key partners.

      Thanks!

      Brandon Koeller

  • David Macintire's avatar
    David Macintire
    Copper Contributor

    Was looking at my admins, and notice I have a Dirsync Admin, how do I setup the Dirysync admin with MFA?

     

    I also have an admin my vendor setup as the initial admin, and said we did not need to use this but it had to be there MFA, is this true?

     

     

    • VasilMichev's avatar
      VasilMichev
      MVP

      Newer versions of AADConnect support MFA, using a GA account with MFA enabled should not be a problem.

      • BrandonKoeller's avatar
        BrandonKoeller
        Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

        Hey!

        Vasil's got it right. I should also note that the Secure Score gives MFA credit to organizations that have MFA enabled in dirsync'ed on-prem directories, so long as the federated directory configuration includes the 'SupportsMFA' flag in AAD.

        Thanks,

        Brandon Koeller

  • Chris Roberts's avatar
    Chris Roberts
    Copper Contributor
    Unable to access this, I get the following:

    403
    Sorry! Access denied :(
    You don't have permission to open this page. If you're a new user or were recently assigned credentials, please wait 15 minutes and try again.

    Anyone else seeing this?
    • Deleted's avatar
      Deleted

      Same thing is happened to me. I'm not a global admin.

       

      Does anyone know what's the minimum access required to access this feature?


       wrote:
      Unable to access this, I get the following:

      403
      Sorry! Access denied :(
      You don't have permission to open this page. If you're a new user or were recently assigned credentials, please wait 15 minutes and try again.

      Anyone else seeing this?

       

    • Anil Komma's avatar
      Anil Komma
      Copper Contributor

      I have the same problem

       

      403

      Sorry! Access denied :(

       


      Chris Roberts wrote:
      Unable to access this, I get the following:

      403
      Sorry! Access denied :(
      You don't have permission to open this page. If you're a new user or were recently assigned credentials, please wait 15 minutes and try again.

      Anyone else seeing this?

       

      • BrandonKoeller's avatar
        BrandonKoeller
        Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

        Hey Anil,

        Are you setup as some kind of admin in the tenancy in question? You'll need to be an admin to get access.

        Thanks!

        Brandon Koeller

    • BrandonKoeller's avatar
      BrandonKoeller
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Hey Chris,

      Sorry for the trouble. The most likely cause is that the acocunt you are using has not been assigned the global administrator role. The Secure Score requires that privilege level at the moment.

      Thanks!

      Brandon Koeller

      • John Knowles's avatar
        John Knowles
        Copper Contributor
        InfoSec teams who'd find securescore useful for GRC purposes wouldnt want or shouldn't get the permission required to access it. Segregation of roles associated with access to this kind of functionality would be v useful.
  • Cian Allner's avatar
    Cian Allner
    Silver Contributor

    Hi Brandon

     

    I have been impressed with Secure Score, I think it has a lot of potential, already it seems very useful.  Incidentally, I have put some feedback in a post on my blog -

     

    https://cianallner.com/find-office-365-secure-score-is-tenant-secure/

  • Will the service be accessible through API? We would like to provide that score to our CSP clients.
    • BrandonKoeller's avatar
      BrandonKoeller
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Hey Jason,

      Thanks for the feedback. That is definitely our intention. API access is on the docket for the near future.

      Thanks!

      Brandon Koeller

  • I'd like to see alerting for score changes. If I do the work to improve security, and then another global admin undoes some of that work maliciously or through error, being notified of a score change would be useful. It would also be helpful to be notified of new items when they are added to the tool.

     

    Just to clarify, the [Not Scored] items such as reviewing reports, is the intention to score them eventually? E.g. if I click through that item and review the report, does Secure Score see that and add points to the score?

     

    Also will Secure Score facilitate the regular reviews? E.g. by emailing/notifying me when a review item is due for another review? Or will I need to self-maintain that via a calendar item or similar mechanism?

    • BrandonKoeller's avatar
      BrandonKoeller
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
      Hey Paul,
      Thanks for the feedback! I'm adding the notification feature to the backlog. We intend to provide an easy way to 'undo' any given action, but I agree that a notification is a good extension of the control framework.
      For your second question, the [Not Scored] items are definitely intended to be scored eventually. It is surprisingly hard to find the source data in the ecosystem, and we wanted to get the experience in the hands of real users sooner rather than later. We exposed the full list of controls because we'd love to hear if you think we've missed anything, or that the identified control is off target.
      Lastly, I think facilitating a regular review cadence is a good suggestion. Several of the controls are for report reviews, which happen weekly or monthly. We explicitly wanted to avoid an 'alerting' framework, but finding ways to poke you to come back is a good suggestion. Possibly might use the Security and Compliance Center 'Action Center' functionality for that. For now, you'll have to manage manually.
      Thanks again for the feedback!
      Brandon Koeller
      • Julian Knight's avatar
        Julian Knight
        Iron Contributor

        BrandonKoeller wrote:
        Hey Paul,
        ... It is surprisingly hard to find the source data in the ecosystem, ...

        Well, at last! Someone from Microsoft acknowledging this. Perhaps you could also raise the visibility of some of the audit issues - like missing data from the audit reports.

         

        Also perhaps you could get someone to finally deal with the issue of trying to identify which users have not used the system recently (e.g. have not logged in in the last 90d). This appears to still be virtually impossible, especially when users are not using Exchange Online.

         

        These issues are causing no end of problems.

         

        I recently tried to identify people not using the system in order to recover licenses. I used the audit reports for the last 180d thinking that at the very least all active users must have changed their password in that time and that should have been audited. Needless to say that resulted in nearly 10% of identified users that were actively using the system.

  • Dennis Feiken's avatar
    Dennis Feiken
    Copper Contributor

    Would be great if this tool was integrated in the Office 365 partner-site, so we can check the health of all our Office 365 customers in a single overview!

    • BrandonKoeller's avatar
      BrandonKoeller
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Hey Dennis,

      Thanks for the suggestion! Adding it to the list.

      Thanks,

      Brandon Koeller

      • Julian Knight's avatar
        Julian Knight
        Iron Contributor

        I assume that this will also eventually be at least linked from the Security & Compliance portal so everything is in one place?

  • Wasn't it in Preview already? Or was that Private? Cause the links were publicly accessible and I've even showcased it on a local user group session... whoops? :)

     

    Anyway, the idea is awesome, the tool was lacking some stuff last time I tried it though. Will give it a spin over the weekend and report back :)

     

    • BrandonKoeller's avatar
      BrandonKoeller
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Hey Vasil!

      Yep, it was in an alpha preview and was based on a manual collection of data via powershell. The new site is a non-alpha preview, and the collection is all automated. We've done a lot of work to refine the consumption experience, and have around 30 controls' worth of data collection automated. Goal is to have all 77 controls automatically collected, and to have all controls with a two-click remediation. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

      Thanks,

      Brandon Koeller

      • VasilMichev's avatar
        VasilMichev
        MVP

        Well, I do miss the PowerShell bit - always good to know what exactly a tool is doing. In this regard I do think you should update the consent part, for example make sure that the publisher is listed as Microsoft, and provide a clear explanation why you need the type of permissions ("write directory data" can be a hard sell to some organizations as it can easily be taken out of context).

         

        Other that that - it's cool. Obviously needs some more work, lots of UI glitches, lots of missing/inactive controls, but overall I like it. A "rescan" button might be handy? Also some sort of filter/template per industry or per security standard, so that people can easily check where they stand in terms of meeting compliance for their particular needs.

         

        Will do a more detailed review/blog post in the next days and send some additional feedback your way. Lots has changed in the service since the last time I spammed o365securescore@microsoft.com :)

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