Microsoft Secure Score is more than a number. It's a roadmap to strengthening your organization's security posture across Microsoft 365. This hands-on guide will walk you through the exact steps to access, set up, interpret, and optimize Secure Score, helping you turn recommendations into real risk reduction.
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Microsoft Secure Score is your organization’s essential tool for quantifying and improving Microsoft 365 security. This guide provides clear, step-by-step instructions for accessing, setting up, and optimizing Secure Score, turning Microsoft’s recommendations into actionable protections. Learn to navigate the dashboard, avoid common pitfalls, automate improvements, and leverage advanced reporting for ongoing compliance. By understanding Secure Score’s tactical and strategic value, you’ll reduce risks, benchmark your security against industry peers, and align with frameworks like NIST and CIS.
Microsoft Secure Score is a built-in measurement tool in Microsoft 365’s Defender Portal. It helps organizations to quantify their security posture against recommended best practices, track security improvements over time, align with compliance frameworks such as NIST and CIS, and benchmark themselves against industry peers.
The higher your Secure Score, the better your environment is protected from common threats. Secure Score is included with all Microsoft 365 tenants, but the recommendations you get will depend on which M365 license you are using. For example, if your tenant has insufficient licensing to use Defender for endpoint, you will not get those recommendations.
Accessing Microsoft Secure Score is easy. You just need to sign in to your Microsoft 365 or Defender portal with administrator credentials, then navigate to the dedicated Secure Score page either directly at security.microsoft.com/securescore or by finding the "Secure Score" tile on the overview page of the Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Defender portals.
1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Defender Portal
2. Navigate to Secure Score:
3. Role requirements:
With Microsoft Defender XDR Unified role-based access control (RBAC), custom roles can be created who can gain access to and have specific permissions in Secure Score.
Once you’ve accessed Secure Score, it’s time to get it set up for use for the first time.
Laying this foundation ensures that Secure Score accurately reflects your environment and provides meaningful recommendations tailored to your business needs.
With the basics in place, you’re ready to begin strengthening your security posture right from the dashboard.
The Secure Score dashboard is your control center. It lets you monitor your Microsoft 365 security posture and track improvements (or deteriorations). It provides a clear, actionable overview of your current score, the maximum achievable score, and a list of recommended improvement actions across identity, devices, apps, data, and infrastructure.
With insights and benchmarking tools, the dashboard empowers administrators to easily track progress, prioritize security measures, and address vulnerabilities, ensuring that your environment stays protected according to Microsoft’s best practices.
With Secure Score implemented and your baseline established, it’s time to focus on tactical optimization.
The following step-by-step process will guide you through prioritizing high-impact actions, layering in advanced protections, and continually refining your security measures.
By systematically following these best practices, you can boost your Secure Score and build a more resilient, well-defended Microsoft 365 environment.
Microsoft Secure Score is an invaluable tool for strengthening and improving your security posture. However, it’s not infallible or a fix-all. It’s important to be aware of potential pitfalls that could undermine your efforts.
This section highlights frequent mistakes or blind spots that get in the way of optimal Secure Score use. Steer clear of missteps and ensure that your Secure Score approach is as effective as possible.
Not every action fits every business. Assess risk vs. operational impact.
Secure Score is a guide. Context matters. Don't compromise business functions for superficial points.
Always verify successful deployment and ongoing enforcement of security actions; don't rely solely on dashboard updates.
While implementing quick wins makes sense in terms of resources and visible, rapid improvements, over the long-term this is not an effective security strategy. It is important to think of security improvements as ongoing activities – not just a checkbox exercise of one-and-done fixes. Without a more strategic and systematic improvement plan, the score becomes stagnant and true improvement isn’t the priority.
Making fixes based on Secure Score recommendations alone is short-sighted and incomplete. Secure Score is great for identifying risk, but it can’t identify all risks and does not offer solutions for all the risks it does identify, let alone those it can’t. It also does not consider business outcomes or user experience – that’s your job.
Similarly, when bigger issues like misconfigurations make up one of the biggest security risks in most enterprises, Secure Score is not an antidote for these issues. It’s important to think of big picture strategy and wider security considerations – and use Secure Score as a part of that approach.
Microsoft Secure Score gives you actionable insights and a measurable path to a more secure environment.
Once you have taken the steps outlined in these guidelines, including accessing your Secure Score, setting a baseline and making a prioritized list of improvements, implementing and verifying changes, and setting up monitoring for regular checkups and adjustments, here are some key next steps to keep your Secure Score healthy:
Ready to level up your Microsoft 365 security posture? Take the first step by logging in to Secure Score today. Contact us for more tactical advice on Microsoft 365 security and cyber resilience.
This guide is based on best practices as of October 2025. Features and navigation may evolve. Always check current Microsoft docs for the latest updates.
