ARTICLE
Sometimes risk hides in the details: an overly permissive policy, a poorly protected privileged account or an authorization granted months ago and then forgotten.
This is where Security Posture comes into play: having the right tools is not enough. You need to understand where you are really exposed, how robust your configuration is and which actions should be prioritized.
Being configured does not mean being truly secure
MFA? Enabled. Defender? Configured. Conditional Access? Done. Checklist completed, so everything is fine? Not quite.
Microsoft 365 security does not depend on a single feature being enabled or disabled, but on how identities, privileges, policies, applications and sharing settings work together.
And this is exactly where unpleasant surprises can emerge: forgotten exceptions, outdated configurations, overly broad permissions or accounts with more privileges than they actually need.
The threat landscape does not help. Identity-based attacks increased by 32% in the first half of 2025 and more than 97% of identity attacks were password attacks (Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025).
In other words, attackers do not always need to break down the door. Sometimes they simply need to find a key that has been left too easily accessible.
That is why it is not enough to ask which security tools have been implemented. The right question is: how well are they configured and which exposures are still open?
What is Microsoft 365 Security Posture
Think of Security Posture as a snapshot of the actual security level of your Microsoft 365 tenant. Except this is not the kind of picture you frame and hang on the wall.
Instead, it is designed to answer three very practical questions:
- Where are we most exposed?
- Which configurations represent the greatest risk?
- And most importantly, where should we start?
A structured assessment allows you to compare your environment against recognized benchmarks and best practices, turning dozens of technical controls into something far more useful: a clear view of priorities.
The 365 Security Posture Assessment by Var Group Suisse independently evaluates the tenant configuration against international benchmarks.
The result is not just another checklist to file away, but a practical foundation for understanding where to intervene and with what priority.
Where the main exposure points are hiding
When it comes to Microsoft 365, risk rarely exists in one single place.
Let us start with identities and access. MFA, Conditional Access, privileged accounts and legacy authentication can make a huge difference between a compromised identity and a real incident.
And Microsoft’s figure showing a 32% increase in identity-based attacks in the first half of 2025 makes the issue far less theoretical (Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025). But stopping at identities would be too easy.
There is email, with anti-phishing configurations, Safe Links, Safe Attachments, SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
Then there are endpoints and devices, where Microsoft Defender, antivirus policies, attack surface reduction and device compliance all come into play.
Then comes collaboration: Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. Extremely convenient for working together. Less convenient when an anonymous link, external federation or overly broad permission remains active longer than it should.
Finally, there is an increasingly important area: governance and AI, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, application consent and retention policies.
All of these areas are included in the Security Posture Assessment. Because the overall security of the tenant is only as strong as its weakest point. And often, that weak point is not the one you expect.
Why looking only at the Security Score is not enough
Microsoft Secure Score is useful, immediate and concise, and it provides an initial indication of how many security measures have been implemented.
But there is one problem: a number alone does not tell the whole story.
Two companies can have a similar score and completely different risks. One may have critical issues with administrator accounts. Another may be exposed through external sharing. Another through email.
So the question should not simply be “What is our score?” but rather “Why do we have this score and which issues really matter?”
This is where you need to move beyond the overall figure and look at the individual controls.
The executive report of the 365 Security Posture Assessment combines Security Score, domain-based analysis and remediation priorities.
The technical report then goes into the detail of each control, with filters by outcome, severity and domain, together with description, rationale and evidence.
In other words: fewer numbers to look at and more actionable guidance.
From snapshot to priorities correcting and monitoring over time
Identifying a weakness is only the first step. The real value comes when the findings are turned into a concrete remediation plan ordered by priority.
Because not everything is equally urgent.
And above all, the picture changes over time: new users, new applications, new permissions and new features.
For this reason, Security Posture should not be seen as a one-off check, but as a continuous cycle:
measure → prioritize → remediate → measure again.
The Managed 365 Security Posture service is built around this logic, with periodic reassessments, comparison with previous results and verification of recommendations that are still open.
The Swiss context makes the issue even more tangible. In the first half of 2025, Switzerland ranked ninth in Europe and 22nd globally in terms of the frequency of cyberattacks detected by Microsoft (Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025).
In summary
Keeping your Security Posture truly under control requires three things:
- Visibility
- Prioritization
- Continuity
Do you really know where your Microsoft 365 is exposed
With the 365 Security Posture Assessment, Var Group Suisse independently analyzes the tenant’s security configuration, identifies areas of exposure and turns the results into concrete remediation priorities.
Measure your Security Posture and discover where to act first.