RichardHam.co.uk Blog

Tag: SME

  • The M365 Audit You Can Run Before Calling a Consultant

    The M365 Audit You Can Run Before Calling a Consultant

    Last month I published a post about the M365 security baseline most SMEs skip — the default tenant configuration that leaves businesses exposed because no one with security expertise has reviewed it since the initial migration.

    That post explained what to check. This one gives you the tool to check it.

    I built an open-source M365 Audit Toolkit and put it on GitHub. It is a set of read-only PowerShell modules that connect to your tenant using your credentials, interrogate the configuration, and produce a structured report of what is misconfigured, missing, or ranging beyond what you would reasonably accept. It does not change anything. It does not write data. It reads, evaluates, and reports.

    And it is designed so that you can run it yourself — before you pick up the phone to a consultant.

    Why a Self-Service Audit

    Most UK SMEs operate in a state of confident uncertainty about their M365 tenant. The IT provider set it up. It works. Email flows. SharePoint files sync. Teams calls connect. Everything appears fine.

    But “fine” is not a security posture. It is an absence of visible failure.

    The problem is that the gaps in an M365 tenant are invisible until they are not. A compromised account exposes every SharePoint site the user can reach. A forgotten guest account with access to a shared folder persists indefinitely. A mailbox that has never been audited leaves no trail when something goes wrong. These gaps do not generate alerts. They do not appear in the admin console with a red warning icon. They sit quietly until a breach unmasks them, a subject access request forces you to find every piece of personal data in the tenant, or a client’s due diligence questionnaire asks questions you cannot answer.

    I built the toolkit because the cost of a structured audit should not be a barrier to knowing where you stand. You should not need to engage a consultant just to find out whether your conditional access policies are configured, your admin roles are clean, or your retention policies align with your data retention schedule.

    Run the audit first. Understand your gaps. Then decide whether you need help closing them.

    What the Toolkit Covers

    The M365 Audit Toolkit is modular. You can run the full audit or pick the modules relevant to your situation currently and build from there. At present it covers five areas.

    Security Baseline Assessment. Checks MFA enforcement across all users, verifies that legacy authentication protocols is blocked, reviews conditional access policy configuration, mailbox auditing status, and DLP label deployment. This maps directly to the seven controls most SMEs skip.

    Admin Role Hygiene. Identifies every global administrator in the tenant, flags accounts that should not hold that role, checks for service principal permissions that grant equivalent access, and reports on role-based access control adoption for other administrative functions. If your tenant has four, six, or eight global admins, this module will tell you exactly who they are and what they can do.

    Guest Access Audit. Enumerates every external guest account in the tenant, what they can access, when they were last active, and whether access reviews are configured. This is the module that finds the former contractor who still has access to your shared folders three years after their engagement ended — which is more common than you would think.

    SharePoint and OneDrive Governance. Reviews site-level sharing settings, detects externally shared content, checks for orphaned sites, and reports on storage allocation and versioning configuration. If you have ever wondered how much of your organisation’s data is sitting in personal OneDrive accounts that the business does not back up and cannot access, this module provides the answer.

    AI Readiness Evaluation. Assesses your tenant’s readiness to adopt Copilot and other AI services safely — reviewing sensitivity label coverage, data loss prevention configuration, and access controls that would govern what an AI service can surface to users. This is increasingly relevant as Microsoft bundles Copilot into enterprise and business tiers.

    How to Run It

    The toolkit uses interactive MFA authentication, meaning it connects as you and inherits your permissions. It does not require app registrations, client secrets, or service accounts. If you have global reader access to the tenant, you can run the audit.

    The general workflow:

    1. Clone the repository from GitHub and review the modules.
    2. Connect to your tenant using interactive browser-based MFA authentication.
    3. Select the modules relevant to your assessment — security baseline, guest access, governance, AI readiness, or all of them.
    4. Review the output as a structured summary showing what passed, what failed, and what needs attention.

    The entire process can be completed in under an hour for a typical SME tenant. The output is a point-in-time snapshot — it does not persist data, and it does not leave artefacts in your tenant beyond the sign-in logs generated by your own authentication.

    When to Call a Consultant

    Running the audit yourself is the right first step. But there are situations where the findings will tell you that it is time to bring in expertise.

    • The report is long and you do not know where to start. If every module returns significant findings, the remediation effort is material and benefits from prioritisation and sequencing — which is exactly what a structured engagement provides.
    • You lack the permissions or authority to make changes. If the audit reveals that conditional access policies need to be reconfigured but your IT provider controls the tenant, the value of the report is in telling you exactly what to ask for and why.
    • You are preparing for client due diligence, a cyber insurance application, or a regulatory review. The audit output gives you a factual baseline, but remediation may need to be documented, evidenced, and in some cases certified.
    • You are adopting Copilot or other AI services. The AI readiness module will tell you where your gaps are, but closing them — sensitivity labels, access controls, DLP policies — is a project that benefits from experience doing it.

    The point is not to avoid consultants. The point is to arrive at that conversation informed, with a clear picture of what needs to be done rather than starting from a blank page.

    The Checklist Before You Pick Up the Phone

    If you want to understand your M365 tenant before committing to an engagement, here is the minimum viable assessment:

    • [ ] Run the security baseline module and resolve any critical MFA or conditional access findings
    • [ ] Run the admin role module and reduce global administrators to two or three accounts
    • [ ] Run the guest access module and revoke access for accounts no longer needed
    • [ ] Review the SharePoint governance report for externally shared sites and orphaned content
    • [ ] Review the AI readiness output if Copilot adoption is on your roadmap

    If you can work through that list and resolve the findings, your tenant is in materially better shape. If you cannot, you now have a specific, evidenced brief for what needs to happen next.

    The M365 Audit Toolkit is available now on GitHub. It is free, read-only, and built for exactly this use case.

    If you run it and the findings warrant a conversation, the Security & Compliance Strategy service covers M365 tenant configuration as part of a broader engagement. Or get in touch with your report — I can tell you within a 30-minute call whether the gaps are ones you can close yourself or whether it is time to bring in support.

  • The M365 Security Baseline Most SMEs Skip

    The M365 Security Baseline Most SMEs Skip

    If your business runs on Microsoft 365 — and in the UK, that covers the vast majority of SMEs, law firms, and healthcare practices — there is a reasonable chance your tenant is less secure than you think.

    Not because Microsoft has failed. Not because your IT provider has been negligent. But because the default configuration of an M365 tenant is designed to get you up and running, not to protect a regulated business handling sensitive client data.

    Most organisations I work with assume that because Microsoft provides the platform, Microsoft secures it. That assumption is wrong, and it is the single most common gap I find when reviewing an SME’s security posture.

    The Shared Responsibility Model, Explained Simply

    Microsoft operates what is called a shared responsibility model. Microsoft secures the platform: the physical data centres, the hypervisor, the network infrastructure, the availability of the service. That part is genuinely well handled.

    What Microsoft does not do is secure your tenant. Your tenant is your configuration: who can log in, from where, with what level of verification. What happens to data when it leaves your mailbox. Who has access to your SharePoint sites. Whether a former contractor’s guest account is still active three years after they left.

    These are your decisions. Microsoft gives you the controls. It is up to you to turn them on and configure them correctly.

    The problem is that most SMEs never have this conversation. The tenant was set up when the business migrated to M365, the defaults were accepted, and no one with security expertise has reviewed the configuration since.

    The Seven Controls Most SMEs Skip

    When I conduct a baseline M365 security review, the same gaps appear with striking consistency. Here are the seven controls that are most commonly missing or misconfigured.

    1. MFA enforcement for all users. Multi-factor authentication is the single most effective control against credential-based attacks. It is also the one most likely to be partially deployed. I regularly find tenants where MFA is “enabled” but not “enforced” — a distinction that means users can still bypass it. Every account should have MFA enforced, without exception.

    2. Conditional access policies. MFA alone is not enough if it can be triggered from any device, on any network. Conditional access lets you require compliant devices, block legacy authentication, restrict access by location, and require step-up authentication for sensitive applications. Most SMEs I review have no conditional access policies configured at all.

    3. Mailbox auditing. M365 includes mailbox auditing as a standard feature, but it is not always enabled by default on older tenants. Without it, you have no record of who accessed a mailbox, what they did, and when. If a compromised account is used to exfiltrate email, you will not know. For law firms and healthcare organisations, this is a basic compliance requirement.

    4. DLP labels and policies. Data loss prevention lets you define sensitivity labels and apply policies that prevent data from leaving the organisation — for example, detecting when someone emails a document containing a National Insurance number or bank account detail to an external address. Most SMEs have no DLP policies. Those that do often run them in “test mode” that generates alerts but takes no action.

    5. Guest access controls. By default, M365 allows users to invite external guests to SharePoint sites, Teams channels, and shared folders. Without controls, a member of staff can share a folder containing sensitive client documents with an external address, and that access persists until someone manually revokes it. Guest access should be restricted by domain and subject to regular review.

    6. Retention policies. Without retention policies, everything stays in the tenant indefinitely — including data the business no longer needs, data it is not legally permitted to retain, and data that would be damaging in a breach or subject access request. Retention policies should reflect the organisation’s actual data retention schedule.

    7. Admin role hygiene. Global administrator grants full access to every service and every piece of data in the tenant. Most SMEs I review have between four and eight global administrators. The correct number is two or three, used exclusively for administration. Every additional global admin is an additional high-value target. Role-based access control should be used for everything else.

    Why This Matters: The Blast Radius of One Compromised Account

    The business risk here is not theoretical. A single compromised M365 account — obtained through phishing, credential stuffing, or a brute-force attack against an account without MFA — gives an attacker access to that user’s email, their OneDrive files, the SharePoint sites they can reach, the Teams channels they belong to, and every third-party application connected to the tenant.

    For a law firm, that could mean access to client matter files, privileged correspondence, and case strategy documents. For a healthcare practice, it could mean patient records and clinical communications. For any business, it could mean the ability to send convincing phishing emails from a trusted internal address to every contact in the organisation.

    The attacker does not need to breach your firewall. They do not need to exploit a vulnerability in your infrastructure. They need one set of credentials, and the default M365 configuration hands them the keys to everything.

    The Baseline Checklist

    If you want to assess where your organisation stands, here is a practical checklist. You can work through this with your IT team or your IT provider. Every item should be a yes or a concrete plan — not a “we think so” or “it should be on”.

    • [ ] MFA is enforced for every user account, without exceptions
    • [ ] Legacy authentication protocols are blocked via conditional access
    • [ ] Conditional access policies restrict access by device compliance and location
    • [ ] Mailbox auditing is enabled and logs are retained for at least 90 days
    • [ ] DLP policies are configured for sensitive data types and set to enforce, not just test
    • [ ] Guest access is restricted by domain and subject to regular access reviews
    • [ ] Retention policies are configured and aligned with the organisation’s data retention schedule
    • [ ] Global administrator roles are limited to two or three accounts, used only for administration
    • [ ] Role-based access control is used for all other administrative functions
    • [ ] A regular access review process is in place for both internal and external users

    If you can tick every box, your baseline is in good shape. If you cannot, you have a clear picture of where to start.

    Where to Start

    You do not need to fix everything at once. The highest-impact changes — MFA enforcement, blocking legacy authentication, and reducing global administrator count — can be implemented in a single afternoon and will meaningfully reduce your exposure.

    The rest can be prioritised based on your risk profile. A law firm handling privileged client data will prioritise DLP and mailbox auditing differently than a professional services firm with a smaller client base. The point is to make deliberate decisions about your configuration, not to accept the defaults and hope they are enough.

    If your organisation runs on M365 and you are not confident that your tenant is configured to a standard that would withstand scrutiny — from a regulator, a client, or an attacker — a structured security baseline review is the right first step. The Security & Compliance Strategy service covers M365 tenant configuration as part of the broader risk framework. Or get in touch for a 30-minute conversation about where your organisation stands.

  • The M365 Security Baseline Most SMEs Skip

    The M365 Security Baseline Most SMEs Skip

    If your business runs on Microsoft 365 — and in the UK, that covers the vast majority of SMEs, law firms, and healthcare practices — there is a reasonable chance your tenant is less secure than you think.

    Not because Microsoft has failed. Not because your IT provider has been negligent. But because the default configuration of an M365 tenant is designed to get you up and running, not to protect a regulated business handling sensitive client data.

    Most organisations I work with assume that because Microsoft provides the platform, Microsoft secures it. That assumption is wrong, and it is the single most common gap I find when reviewing an SME’s security posture.

    The Shared Responsibility Model, Explained Simply

    Microsoft operates what is called a shared responsibility model. Microsoft secures the platform: the physical data centres, the hypervisor, the network infrastructure, the availability of the service. That part is genuinely well handled.

    What Microsoft does not do is secure your tenant. Your tenant is your configuration: who can log in, from where, with what level of verification. What happens to data when it leaves your mailbox. Who has access to your SharePoint sites. Whether a former contractor’s guest account is still active three years after they left.

    These are your decisions. Microsoft gives you the controls. It is up to you to turn them on and configure them correctly.

    The problem is that most SMEs never have this conversation. The tenant was set up when the business migrated to M365, the defaults were accepted, and no one with security expertise has reviewed the configuration since.

    The Seven Controls Most SMEs Skip

    When I conduct a baseline M365 security review, the same gaps appear with striking consistency. Here are the seven controls that are most commonly missing or misconfigured.

    1. MFA enforcement for all users. Multi-factor authentication is the single most effective control against credential-based attacks. It is also the one most likely to be partially deployed. I regularly find tenants where MFA is “enabled” but not “enforced” — a distinction that means users can still bypass it. Every account should have MFA enforced, without exception.

    2. Conditional access policies. MFA alone is not enough if it can be triggered from any device, on any network. Conditional access lets you require compliant devices, block legacy authentication, restrict access by location, and require step-up authentication for sensitive applications. Most SMEs I review have no conditional access policies configured at all.

    3. Mailbox auditing. M365 includes mailbox auditing as a standard feature, but it is not always enabled by default on older tenants. Without it, you have no record of who accessed a mailbox, what they did, and when. If a compromised account is used to exfiltrate email, you will not know. For law firms and healthcare organisations, this is a basic compliance requirement.

    4. DLP labels and policies. Data loss prevention lets you define sensitivity labels and apply policies that prevent data from leaving the organisation — for example, detecting when someone emails a document containing a National Insurance number or bank account detail to an external address. Most SMEs have no DLP policies. Those that do often run them in “test mode” that generates alerts but takes no action.

    5. Guest access controls. By default, M365 allows users to invite external guests to SharePoint sites, Teams channels, and shared folders. Without controls, a member of staff can share a folder containing sensitive client documents with an external address, and that access persists until someone manually revokes it. Guest access should be restricted by domain and subject to regular review.

    6. Retention policies. Without retention policies, everything stays in the tenant indefinitely — including data the business no longer needs, data it is not legally permitted to retain, and data that would be damaging in a breach or subject access request. Retention policies should reflect the organisation’s actual data retention schedule.

    7. Admin role hygiene. Global administrator grants full access to every service and every piece of data in the tenant. Most SMEs I review have between four and eight global administrators. The correct number is two or three, used exclusively for administration. Every additional global admin is an additional high-value target. Role-based access control should be used for everything else.

    Why This Matters: The Blast Radius of One Compromised Account

    The business risk here is not theoretical. A single compromised M365 account — obtained through phishing, credential stuffing, or a brute-force attack against an account without MFA — gives an attacker access to that user’s email, their OneDrive files, the SharePoint sites they can reach, the Teams channels they belong to, and every third-party application connected to the tenant.

    For a law firm, that could mean access to client matter files, privileged correspondence, and case strategy documents. For a healthcare practice, it could mean patient records and clinical communications. For any business, it could mean the ability to send convincing phishing emails from a trusted internal address to every contact in the organisation.

    The attacker does not need to breach your firewall. They do not need to exploit a vulnerability in your infrastructure. They need one set of credentials, and the default M365 configuration hands them the keys to everything.

    The Baseline Checklist

    If you want to assess where your organisation stands, here is a practical checklist. You can work through this with your IT team or your IT provider. Every item should be a yes or a concrete plan — not a “we think so” or “it should be on”.

    • [ ] MFA is enforced for every user account, without exceptions
    • [ ] Legacy authentication protocols are blocked via conditional access
    • [ ] Conditional access policies restrict access by device compliance and location
    • [ ] Mailbox auditing is enabled and logs are retained for at least 90 days
    • [ ] DLP policies are configured for sensitive data types and set to enforce, not just test
    • [ ] Guest access is restricted by domain and subject to regular access reviews
    • [ ] Retention policies are configured and aligned with the organisation’s data retention schedule
    • [ ] Global administrator roles are limited to two or three accounts, used only for administration
    • [ ] Role-based access control is used for all other administrative functions
    • [ ] A regular access review process is in place for both internal and external users

    If you can tick every box, your baseline is in good shape. If you cannot, you have a clear picture of where to start.

    Where to Start

    You do not need to fix everything at once. The highest-impact changes — MFA enforcement, blocking legacy authentication, and reducing global administrator count — can be implemented in a single afternoon and will meaningfully reduce your exposure.

    The rest can be prioritised based on your risk profile. A law firm handling privileged client data will prioritise DLP and mailbox auditing differently than a professional services firm with a smaller client base. The point is to make deliberate decisions about your configuration, not to accept the defaults and hope they are enough.

    If your organisation runs on M365 and you are not confident that your tenant is configured to a standard that would withstand scrutiny — from a regulator, a client, or an attacker — a structured security baseline review is the right first step. The Security & Compliance Strategy service covers M365 tenant configuration as part of the broader risk framework. Or get in touch for a 30-minute conversation about where your organisation stands.

  • The M365 Security Baseline Most SMEs Skip

    p

    If your business runs on Microsoft 365 — and in the UK, that covers the vast majority of SMEs, law firms, and healthcare practices — there is a reasonable chance your tenant is less secure than you think.

    Not because Microsoft has failed. Not because your IT provider has been negligent. But because the default configuration of an M365 tenant is designed to get you up and running, not to protect a regulated business handling sensitive client data.

    Most organisations I work with assume that because Microsoft provides the platform, Microsoft secures it. That assumption is wrong, and it is the single most common gap I find when reviewing an SME’s security posture.

    The Shared Responsibility Model, Explained Simply

    Microsoft operates what is called a shared responsibility model. Microsoft secures the platform: the physical data centres, the hypervisor, the network infrastructure, the availability of the service. That part is genuinely well handled.

    What Microsoft does not do is secure your tenant. Your tenant is your configuration: who can log in, from where, with what level of verification. What happens to data when it leaves your mailbox. Who has access to your SharePoint sites. Whether a former contractor’s guest account is still active three years after they left.

    These are your decisions. Microsoft gives you the controls. It is up to you to turn them on and configure them correctly.

    The problem is that most SMEs never have this conversation. The tenant was set up when the business migrated to M365, the defaults were accepted, and no one with security expertise has reviewed the configuration since.

    The Seven Controls Most SMEs Skip

    When I conduct a baseline M365 security review, the same gaps appear with striking consistency. Here are the seven controls that are most commonly missing or misconfigured.

    1. MFA enforcement for all users. Multi-factor authentication is the single most effective control against credential-based attacks. It is also the one most likely to be partially deployed. I regularly find tenants where MFA is “enabled” but not “enforced” — a distinction that means users can still bypass it. Every account should have MFA enforced, without exception.

    2. Conditional access policies. MFA alone is not enough if it can be triggered from any device, on any network. Conditional access lets you require compliant devices, block legacy authentication, restrict access by location, and require step-up authentication for sensitive applications. Most SMEs I review have no conditional access policies configured at all.

    3. Mailbox auditing. M365 includes mailbox auditing as a standard feature, but it is not always enabled by default on older tenants. Without it, you have no record of who accessed a mailbox, what they did, and when. If a compromised account is used to exfiltrate email, you will not know. For law firms and healthcare organisations, this is a basic compliance requirement.

    4. DLP labels and policies. Data loss prevention lets you define sensitivity labels and apply policies that prevent data from leaving the organisation — for example, detecting when someone emails a document containing a National Insurance number or bank account detail to an external address. Most SMEs have no DLP policies. Those that do often run them in “test mode” that generates alerts but takes no action.

    5. Guest access controls. By default, M365 allows users to invite external guests to SharePoint sites, Teams channels, and shared folders. Without controls, a member of staff can share a folder containing sensitive client documents with an external address, and that access persists until someone manually revokes it. Guest access should be restricted by domain and subject to regular review.

    6. Retention policies. Without retention policies, everything stays in the tenant indefinitely — including data the business no longer needs, data it is not legally permitted to retain, and data that would be damaging in a breach or subject access request. Retention policies should reflect the organisation’s actual data retention schedule.

    7. Admin role hygiene. Global administrator grants full access to every service and every piece of data in the tenant. Most SMEs I review have between four and eight global administrators. The correct number is two or three, used exclusively for administration. Every additional global admin is an additional high-value target. Role-based access control should be used for everything else.

    Why This Matters: The Blast Radius of One Compromised Account

    The business risk here is not theoretical. A single compromised M365 account — obtained through phishing, credential stuffing, or a brute-force attack against an account without MFA — gives an attacker access to that user’s email, their OneDrive files, the SharePoint sites they can reach, the Teams channels they belong to, and every third-party application connected to the tenant.

    For a law firm, that could mean access to client matter files, privileged correspondence, and case strategy documents. For a healthcare practice, it could mean patient records and clinical communications. For any business, it could mean the ability to send convincing phishing emails from a trusted internal address to every contact in the organisation.

    The attacker does not need to breach your firewall. They do not need to exploit a vulnerability in your infrastructure. They need one set of credentials, and the default M365 configuration hands them the keys to everything.

    The Baseline Checklist

    If you want to assess where your organisation stands, here is a practical checklist. You can work through this with your IT team or your IT provider. Every item should be a yes or a concrete plan — not a “we think so” or “it should be on”.

    • [ ] MFA is enforced for every user account, without exceptions
    • [ ] Legacy authentication protocols are blocked via conditional access
    • [ ] Conditional access policies restrict access by device compliance and location
    • [ ] Mailbox auditing is enabled and logs are retained for at least 90 days
    • [ ] DLP policies are configured for sensitive data types and set to enforce, not just test
    • [ ] Guest access is restricted by domain and subject to regular access reviews
    • [ ] Retention policies are configured and aligned with the organisation’s data retention schedule
    • [ ] Global administrator roles are limited to two or three accounts, used only for administration
    • [ ] Role-based access control is used for all other administrative functions
    • [ ] A regular access review process is in place for both internal and external users

    If you can tick every box, your baseline is in good shape. If you cannot, you have a clear picture of where to start.

    Where to Start

    You do not need to fix everything at once. The highest-impact changes — MFA enforcement, blocking legacy authentication, and reducing global administrator count — can be implemented in a single afternoon and will meaningfully reduce your exposure.

    The rest can be prioritised based on your risk profile. A law firm handling privileged client data will prioritise DLP and mailbox auditing differently than a professional services firm with a smaller client base. The point is to make deliberate decisions about your configuration, not to accept the defaults and hope they are enough.

    If your organisation runs on M365 and you are not confident that your tenant is configured to a standard that would withstand scrutiny — from a regulator, a client, or an attacker — a structured security baseline review is the right first step. The Security & Compliance Strategy service covers M365 tenant configuration as part of the broader risk framework. Or get in touch for a 30-minute conversation about where your organisation stands.

  • The M365 Security Baseline Most SMEs Skip

    The M365 Security Baseline Most SMEs Skip

    If your business runs on Microsoft 365 — and in the UK, that covers the vast majority of SMEs, law firms, and healthcare practices — there is a reasonable chance your tenant is less secure than you think.

    Not because Microsoft has failed. Not because your IT provider has been negligent. But because the default configuration of an M365 tenant is designed to get you up and running, not to protect a regulated business handling sensitive client data.

    Most organisations I work with assume that because Microsoft provides the platform, Microsoft secures it. That assumption is wrong, and it is the single most common gap I find when reviewing an SME’s security posture.

    The Shared Responsibility Model, Explained Simply

    Microsoft operates what is called a shared responsibility model. Microsoft secures the platform: the physical data centres, the hypervisor, the network infrastructure, the availability of the service. That part is genuinely well handled.

    What Microsoft does not do is secure your tenant. Your tenant is your configuration: who can log in, from where, with what level of verification. What happens to data when it leaves your mailbox. Who has access to your SharePoint sites. Whether a former contractor’s guest account is still active three years after they left.

    These are your decisions. Microsoft gives you the controls. It is up to you to turn them on and configure them correctly.

    The problem is that most SMEs never have this conversation. The tenant was set up when the business migrated to M365, the defaults were accepted, and no one with security expertise has reviewed the configuration since.

    The Seven Controls Most SMEs Skip

    When I conduct a baseline M365 security review, the same gaps appear with striking consistency. Here are the seven controls that are most commonly missing or misconfigured.

    1. MFA enforcement for all users. Multi-factor authentication is the single most effective control against credential-based attacks. It is also the one most likely to be partially deployed. I regularly find tenants where MFA is “enabled” but not “enforced” — a distinction that means users can still bypass it. Every account should have MFA enforced, without exception.

    2. Conditional access policies. MFA alone is not enough if it can be triggered from any device, on any network. Conditional access lets you require compliant devices, block legacy authentication, restrict access by location, and require step-up authentication for sensitive applications. Most SMEs I review have no conditional access policies configured at all.

    3. Mailbox auditing. M365 includes mailbox auditing as a standard feature, but it is not always enabled by default on older tenants. Without it, you have no record of who accessed a mailbox, what they did, and when. If a compromised account is used to exfiltrate email, you will not know. For law firms and healthcare organisations, this is a basic compliance requirement.

    4. DLP labels and policies. Data loss prevention lets you define sensitivity labels and apply policies that prevent data from leaving the organisation — for example, detecting when someone emails a document containing a National Insurance number or bank account detail to an external address. Most SMEs have no DLP policies. Those that do often run them in “test mode” that generates alerts but takes no action.

    5. Guest access controls. By default, M365 allows users to invite external guests to SharePoint sites, Teams channels, and shared folders. Without controls, a member of staff can share a folder containing sensitive client documents with an external address, and that access persists until someone manually revokes it. Guest access should be restricted by domain and subject to regular review.

    6. Retention policies. Without retention policies, everything stays in the tenant indefinitely — including data the business no longer needs, data it is not legally permitted to retain, and data that would be damaging in a breach or subject access request. Retention policies should reflect the organisation’s actual data retention schedule.

    7. Admin role hygiene. Global administrator grants full access to every service and every piece of data in the tenant. Most SMEs I review have between four and eight global administrators. The correct number is two or three, used exclusively for administration. Every additional global admin is an additional high-value target. Role-based access control should be used for everything else.

    Why This Matters: The Blast Radius of One Compromised Account

    The business risk here is not theoretical. A single compromised M365 account — obtained through phishing, credential stuffing, or a brute-force attack against an account without MFA — gives an attacker access to that user’s email, their OneDrive files, the SharePoint sites they can reach, the Teams channels they belong to, and every third-party application connected to the tenant.

    For a law firm, that could mean access to client matter files, privileged correspondence, and case strategy documents. For a healthcare practice, it could mean patient records and clinical communications. For any business, it could mean the ability to send convincing phishing emails from a trusted internal address to every contact in the organisation.

    The attacker does not need to breach your firewall. They do not need to exploit a vulnerability in your infrastructure. They need one set of credentials, and the default M365 configuration hands them the keys to everything.

    The Baseline Checklist

    If you want to assess where your organisation stands, here is a practical checklist. You can work through this with your IT team or your IT provider. Every item should be a yes or a concrete plan — not a “we think so” or “it should be on”.

    • [ ] MFA is enforced for every user account, without exceptions
    • [ ] Legacy authentication protocols are blocked via conditional access
    • [ ] Conditional access policies restrict access by device compliance and location
    • [ ] Mailbox auditing is enabled and logs are retained for at least 90 days
    • [ ] DLP policies are configured for sensitive data types and set to enforce, not just test
    • [ ] Guest access is restricted by domain and subject to regular access reviews
    • [ ] Retention policies are configured and aligned with the organisation’s data retention schedule
    • [ ] Global administrator roles are limited to two or three accounts, used only for administration
    • [ ] Role-based access control is used for all other administrative functions
    • [ ] A regular access review process is in place for both internal and external users

    If you can tick every box, your baseline is in good shape. If you cannot, you have a clear picture of where to start.

    Where to Start

    You do not need to fix everything at once. The highest-impact changes — MFA enforcement, blocking legacy authentication, and reducing global administrator count — can be implemented in a single afternoon and will meaningfully reduce your exposure.

    The rest can be prioritised based on your risk profile. A law firm handling privileged client data will prioritise DLP and mailbox auditing differently than a professional services firm with a smaller client base. The point is to make deliberate decisions about your configuration, not to accept the defaults and hope they are enough.

    If your organisation runs on M365 and you are not confident that your tenant is configured to a standard that would withstand scrutiny — from a regulator, a client, or an attacker — a structured security baseline review is the right first step. The Security & Compliance Strategy service covers M365 tenant configuration as part of the broader risk framework. Or get in touch for a 30-minute conversation about where your organisation stands.

  • What a Cyber Essentials Plus Audit Actually Involves

    What a Cyber Essentials Plus Audit Actually Involves

    What a Cyber Essentials Plus Audit Actually Involves
    Published: April 8, 2026

    Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus are often mentioned in the same breath, but they’re meaningfully different certifications. Cyber Essentials is self-assessed — you answer a questionnaire about your controls and a certification body reviews your answers. Cyber Essentials Plus involves an auditor actually testing whether your controls work.

    If you’re being asked to achieve CE Plus — by a public sector client, a large enterprise in your supply chain, or your cyber insurance provider — it helps to know what you’re walking into.

    The Five Technical Controls

    Both certifications are built around the same five technical control areas. Cyber Essentials Plus tests all five through active assessment:

    1. Firewalls — boundary firewalls and internet gateways are configured to block unauthorised access
    2. Secure configuration — devices and software are configured securely, unnecessary services removed
    3. User access control — user accounts are managed, access is limited to what’s needed, admin rights are controlled
    4. Malware protection — protection against malicious software on devices
    5. Patch management — operating systems and software are up to date and vulnerabilities are patched promptly

    The assessment tests these controls against your actual devices and environment. It’s not a paper exercise.

    What the Assessment Actually Looks Like

    The assessment is conducted remotely in the vast majority of cases, using a combination of automated scanning tools and manual verification. The auditor will need access to representative sample devices across your environment — typically a mix of Windows, macOS, and mobile if applicable — as well as access to your network boundary.

    External vulnerability scan — the assessor scans your internet-facing infrastructure for open ports, accessible services, and known vulnerabilities. Anything exposed that shouldn’t be is a finding.

    Internal device sampling — the assessor will check a sample of user devices. They’re looking at: is the OS up to date, are software patches current, is malware protection active and updated, are there unnecessary admin rights on user accounts, is the device configured securely (screensaver lock, auto-update, no unnecessary services).

    User account review — they’ll look at your Active Directory or Entra ID (Azure AD) to check for unused accounts, accounts with unnecessary admin privileges, and whether your admin accounts are separate from day-to-day user accounts.

    Browser configuration — browsers are specifically assessed. Extensions, default security settings, and whether browser-based malware protection is active.

    The whole process typically takes half a day to a day depending on the size of your environment.

    Where Businesses Fail

    Having supported a number of UK businesses through CE Plus, the failure points are consistent:

    Patching lag on end-user devices. The standard requires that high and critical vulnerabilities are patched within 14 days of a patch being released. Most businesses aren’t meeting this. Laptops that are rarely connected to the corporate network, personal devices used for work, and machines that haven’t been restarted in months are the typical culprits.

    Admin rights on standard user accounts. This is extremely common. Users who were given admin rights to install something three years ago and still have them. Sometimes it’s the entire organisation because “it was just easier”. CE Plus will fail on this.

    Unsupported software. An application that hasn’t received a security update in over a year, or is running on an end-of-life OS version, is a straight failure. This catches people out when they have legacy line-of-business software that the vendor no longer patches.

    Scope creep surprises. Businesses sometimes underestimate what’s in scope. If a personal mobile phone is used to access company email or data, it’s in scope. If a contractor’s laptop connects to your network, it may be in scope. Agreeing the scope boundary clearly before assessment avoids surprises.

    External exposure they didn’t know about. Open ports, misconfigured cloud services, old VPN endpoints — the external scan sometimes surfaces things the business genuinely didn’t know were there.

    How to Prepare

    If you’re planning to pursue CE Plus, give yourself at least six to eight weeks of preparation time — more if you know patching or access control is in a poor state.

    Start with a self-assessment against the Cyber Essentials requirements document. Work through each of the five controls honestly. Where you can’t answer yes confidently, that’s where you need to focus.

    Fix patching first. This is the most common failure point and the one that takes the longest to fix systematically. You need a repeatable process, not a one-off catch-up before the audit.

    Audit your admin rights. Pull a full list of accounts with local admin or domain admin privileges. Anything that isn’t explicitly needed and documented should be removed before the assessment.

    Check your software inventory. Identify anything running on an unsupported version. Either update it, replace it, or make a decision about scope exclusion (with appropriate compensating controls).

    Agree scope in writing before the assessment starts. Be explicit about what’s included: which devices, which network segments, which cloud services.

    Is It Worth It?

    Aside from the contractual requirements — and CE Plus is increasingly required for UK government supply chain and some financial services clients — the process is genuinely useful. Going through it forces a structured review of controls that most businesses have never done systematically.

    The businesses I’ve seen come through it well are the ones that treated preparation as an IT improvement project, not a box-ticking exercise. The ones that struggle are the ones that try to do the minimum to pass rather than fixing the underlying issues.

    If you need support preparing for Cyber Essentials Plus, I offer a structured readiness assessment that works through all five control areas and produces a prioritised remediation list before you engage a certification body. It sits inside the Security & Compliance Strategy service.

    Get in touch to discuss CE Plus preparation.

  • 2026 AI Threats for UK SMEs: What’s Actually Changed

    2026 AI Threats for UK SMEs: What’s Actually Changed

    2026 AI Threats for UK SMEs: What’s Actually Changed
    Published: April 1, 2026

    Every year brings a new round of threat reports telling SMEs that cyber risk is increasing. That’s been true for twenty years. What’s different in 2026 is that AI has genuinely changed the threat landscape — not just the scale of attacks, but the nature of them. The traditional advice still applies, but it’s no longer sufficient on its own.

    Here’s what I’m seeing, and what UK SMEs actually need to be thinking about.

    Phishing Has Crossed a Quality Threshold

    For years, phishing emails were easy to spot if you knew what to look for: odd phrasing, generic greetings, suspicious sender domains, poorly formatted logos. Staff training focused on these signals, and it worked reasonably well.

    AI-generated phishing has removed most of those signals. Emails are now grammatically perfect, contextually appropriate, and personalised using data scraped from LinkedIn, company websites, and previous data breaches. I’ve seen examples targeting UK SME directors that reference their specific clients, their recent hires, and their company structure — all publicly available, all assembled automatically at scale.

    The implication isn’t that training is useless. It’s that training needs to evolve. Spotting typos is no longer the point. The question to train staff on is: was I expecting this request? Does this ask me to do something — click, pay, approve, share credentials — and if so, have I verified it through a separate channel?

    Deepfake Audio and Video Are Becoming Operational

    This was theoretical eighteen months ago. It’s operational now. UK businesses have experienced losses from voice-cloned fraud — attackers using AI-generated audio of a senior person in the business to instruct a finance team member to make a payment.

    The attack is effective because it bypasses the email security controls most businesses have invested in. It’s a phone call. It sounds like the CFO. It says there’s an urgent payment that needs to go today.

    The defence is procedural, not technical: any payment instruction, regardless of how it arrives or who it appears to be from, above a threshold amount requires verification via a pre-agreed method. That policy needs to be written, communicated, and tested.

    Shadow AI Is Creating Data Exposure You Don’t Know About

    Your staff are using AI tools. If you haven’t explicitly told them which tools are approved and what data they can put into them, they’re making those decisions themselves — and the decisions aren’t always good ones.

    I’ve spoken to business owners who didn’t know their team had been pasting client contracts into ChatGPT to summarise them, or putting commercially sensitive proposals into AI writing tools, or using consumer AI assistants for analysis that contains personal data. None of it was malicious. None of it was authorised either.

    The fix isn’t to ban AI — that’s both impractical and counterproductive. The fix is a clear AI use policy: which tools are approved, what data categories can be used with each, and what’s prohibited. It doesn’t need to be long. It needs to exist.

    Automated Vulnerability Exploitation Has Accelerated

    AI tools have significantly reduced the time between a vulnerability being disclosed and active exploitation in the wild. The window between a patch being released and attackers using the underlying vulnerability against unpatched systems is now measured in hours in some cases, not weeks.

    For SMEs running on-premise infrastructure or self-managed cloud services, this puts a new premium on patching speed. Monthly patching cycles — which were never ideal — are now genuinely inadequate for critical vulnerabilities. Critical patches need a 24–72 hour response window as a minimum.

    If you’re running an MSP or internal IT team, this is worth an explicit conversation: what is your current patching SLA for critical CVEs, and can you demonstrate that it’s being met?

    Prompt Injection Is a Real Risk If You’re Using AI in Your Workflows

    This one is less widely understood but increasingly relevant for businesses that have started integrating AI into their operations — customer-facing chatbots, AI-assisted document processing, automated workflows.

    Prompt injection is an attack where malicious instructions are hidden in content that an AI system processes — a document, an email, a form submission — and those instructions cause the AI to behave in unintended ways. In a customer service chatbot, that might mean the AI leaks internal information or gives incorrect advice. In an AI-assisted finance workflow, the implications can be more serious.

    If you’re deploying AI in any operational context, your vendor or developer needs to demonstrate they’ve thought about this. It should be on your checklist when evaluating any AI-powered tool.

    What This Means in Practice

    None of this requires a large security budget. It requires clear thinking about where your exposure is and proportionate controls.

    For most UK SMEs in 2026, the immediate priorities are:

    1. Update your phishing awareness training to reflect AI-generated threats — not just “spot the typo”
    2. Implement a payment verification policy that can’t be bypassed by a convincing phone call
    3. Publish an AI use policy before something goes wrong
    4. Review your patching SLA for critical vulnerabilities with your IT team or MSP
    5. If you’re using AI in any operational workflow, get a basic security review of how it’s been deployed

    If you’re not sure where to start, a Discovery Audit will give you a prioritised picture of your current exposure across all of these areas. The AI-specific side of this — governance, threat modelling, and safe deployment — sits in the AI & Automation Architecture service.

    Book a call to discuss your security position.

  • Your M365 Tenant Has More Exposure Than You Think

    Your M365 Tenant Has More Exposure Than You Think

    Your M365 Tenant Has More Exposure Than You Think
    Published: March 24, 2026

    Most small and mid-sized businesses running Microsoft 365 believe they’re reasonably well protected. They’re paying for the licences, they’ve got MFA turned on (probably), and their IT provider or MSP set it all up. What more is there to do?

    Quite a lot, as it turns out. When I audit an M365 tenant — and I’ve audited more than I can count — I consistently find the same set of misconfigurations and over-permissions. Not because anyone did anything wrong, but because the defaults Microsoft ships aren’t designed for your security posture. They’re designed for onboarding speed.

    Here’s what I typically find.

    Legacy Authentication Is Still Enabled

    This is the single most common finding, and it’s the one that matters most. Legacy authentication protocols — Basic Auth, SMTP AUTH, IMAP, POP3 — don’t support modern multi-factor authentication. If they’re enabled, an attacker who gets hold of a username and password can authenticate without needing to pass MFA at all.

    Microsoft has been moving to block legacy auth for years, but many tenants still have it partially or fully enabled — often because someone needed it for an old application or printer, and nobody ever turned it off again.

    The fix is to create Conditional Access policies that block legacy authentication across the board, with explicit exceptions only where you have a genuine and documented business need.

    Too Many Global Admins

    Almost every tenant I audit has more Global Administrators than it should. In some cases I’ve seen five or six people with Global Admin — in a company of 40 people.

    Global Admin is the highest privilege level in a Microsoft 365 tenant. Anyone with it can create accounts, access all data, modify security settings, and disable MFA. It should be used sparingly, with dedicated admin accounts (not day-to-day user accounts), and protected with phishing-resistant MFA.

    The principle of least privilege applies here. Most people who are Global Admins don’t need to be. Exchange Administrator, User Administrator, and Security Reader roles cover 90% of what people actually need to do.

    MFA Is On, But Not Enforced Everywhere

    MFA adoption in SMEs has improved significantly. But “MFA is enabled” and “MFA is enforced” are different things.

    In many tenants, MFA is configured via the legacy Per-User MFA panel rather than Conditional Access. This approach has gaps — it doesn’t cover service accounts, doesn’t handle different risk levels, and gives users the option to skip registration. I’ve seen tenants where MFA is “enabled” for all users but 20% of them have never actually registered a method.

    Conditional Access gives you proper control: require MFA for all users, all apps, with no exceptions except explicit break-glass accounts. If you’re on Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you have the licences for it. Most businesses aren’t using them properly.

    External Sharing Is Wide Open

    SharePoint and OneDrive external sharing defaults are permissive. In a default or lightly configured tenant, users can share files externally with anyone, with no expiry, no notification to IT, and no audit trail in a place anyone looks at.

    I’ve found tenants where sensitive commercial documents — contracts, financials, client data — had been shared externally via “anyone with the link” and had been sitting that way for two or three years. Nobody knew.

    The fix is to review and restrict your SharePoint sharing settings at tenant level, enable sharing expiry for external links, and configure alerts for broad external sharing events.

    Email Security Is Incomplete

    SPF is usually configured — it’s been standard practice for long enough that most tenants have it. DKIM and DMARC are a different story.

    Without DKIM signing, emails from your domain can be spoofed with a reasonable success rate. Without a DMARC policy at enforcement (p=reject or p=quarantine), you have no mechanism to prevent or monitor spoofing of your domain. Most tenants I audit have DMARC either missing entirely, or set to p=none — monitoring only, no protection.

    For a business of any size, a properly configured email authentication stack (SPF + DKIM + DMARC at enforcement) is non-negotiable. It’s not complex to implement, and the protection it provides against phishing and impersonation is significant.

    Audit Logging Isn’t Turned On Properly

    M365 has a unified audit log that captures sign-in events, admin actions, file access, mail forwarding rules, and much more. It’s invaluable when you’re investigating an incident — or trying to demonstrate compliance.

    In many tenants it’s not enabled, or it’s enabled but the retention period is set to 90 days (the default for most licence types). If you need to investigate something that happened four months ago, that’s a problem.

    Check that unified audit logging is enabled, review your retention settings, and make sure you have alerts configured for high-risk events: impossible travel sign-ins, mass download events, new mail forwarding rules.

    What to Do With This

    None of this is exotic. These are all configurations within the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and the Security portal — no additional tooling required. But they take time to work through properly, and they require someone who knows what they’re looking at.

    If you want to know exactly where your tenant stands, I run a structured M365 security audit that covers all of the above and more, with a prioritised findings report. It typically takes half a day and gives you a clear picture of your exposure. It sits inside the broader Security & Compliance Strategy service.

    Get in touch to discuss an M365 audit for your business.

  • What is a Fractional CISO?

    What is a Fractional CISO?

    What is a Fractional CISO?
    Published: March 17, 2026

    If you’ve started looking at your cyber risk and realised you need someone senior in the room — but a full-time CISO at £120,000–£180,000 a year isn’t on the cards — a Fractional CISO is probably what you’re looking for.

    The term gets used loosely. Let me give you a straight answer about what it actually means, what a Fractional CISO does day-to-day, and how to tell whether you need one.

    The Short Version

    A Fractional CISO is a senior security leader who works with your organisation on a part-time or interim basis — typically one to three days a week, often on a fixed-term engagement. You get the strategic judgement and hands-on experience of someone who has run security at enterprise level, without hiring them full-time.

    The “fractional” model exists because most SMEs and growing businesses don’t need a full-time CISO. What they need is serious security leadership a few days a week — someone who can set the direction, own the risk, talk to the board, and make sure the technical team is pointed the right way.

    What a Fractional CISO Actually Does

    This varies by engagement, but in practice the work falls into a few consistent areas:

    Security strategy and governance — defining your security posture, setting policy, building a roadmap that’s proportionate to your risk and your budget. Not a 200-page document nobody reads. A working plan the business can execute.

    Risk and compliance — owning your risk register, preparing for Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus, supporting ISO 27001 if that’s relevant, making sure you’re meeting your contractual and regulatory obligations. For many UK businesses this increasingly means GDPR accountability as well.

    Incident readiness — making sure you have a plan before something goes wrong, not after. Running tabletop exercises, reviewing your backup and recovery position, knowing who calls who at 2am.

    Board and leadership communication — translating technical risk into business language. A board doesn’t need to understand CVE scores. They need to understand what they’re liable for and what it would cost if something went wrong. That’s a skill most technical security people don’t have, and it’s where a good CISO earns their fee.

    Vendor and supplier oversight — reviewing what your MSP is actually doing, checking your cloud configuration, making sure the security tooling you’re paying for is configured correctly. In my experience, most SMEs have the right tools and the wrong settings.

    What a Fractional CISO Is Not

    They’re not a one-off consultant who delivers a report and disappears. That’s a security audit. Useful, but different.

    They’re not a managed security service (MSSP). An MSSP monitors your environment and responds to alerts. A Fractional CISO sets the strategy that determines what you’re monitoring and why.

    They’re not a replacement for a good IT team or MSP. They work alongside your existing technical resource, not instead of it.

    Who Needs a Fractional CISO?

    The businesses I typically work with fit one of a few patterns:

    • Growing SMEs (50–500 people) who have outgrown “IT does security” but aren’t ready to hire a full-time CISO. Often triggered by a new enterprise customer asking about your security posture, or a cyber insurance renewal that suddenly requires evidence.
    • PE-backed portfolio companies where the fund needs consistent security governance across multiple portfolio businesses. One fractional CISO across two or three companies is far more cost-effective than three separate hires.
    • Businesses going through change — acquisition, cloud migration, rapid headcount growth. Security debt accumulates fast in these moments. A fractional engagement through the transition prevents problems that are very expensive to fix later.
    • Businesses post-incident who need someone to come in, stabilise, and build something better. This is the most urgent version of the engagement and usually the most intensive.

    What It Costs

    Engagement structures vary, but a typical fractional CISO arrangement in the UK runs between £3,000 and £8,000 per month depending on days committed and scope. Compare that to the fully-loaded cost of a permanent hire — salary, NI, benefits, pension, recruitment fees — and the economics are usually straightforward.

    For most SMEs, the right entry point is a Discovery Audit: a structured review of your current security posture that produces a prioritised roadmap. It gives you a clear picture of where you stand and what to fix first, and it’s the starting point for any ongoing engagement.

    The Question Worth Asking

    Most businesses don’t call a Fractional CISO until something prompts them — a near-miss, a contract requirement, a board conversation. The ones that get the most value engage before that moment, when there’s time to build something properly rather than fix something broken.

    If you’re not sure whether your business is in a good position, the honest answer is: you probably don’t know, and that’s worth finding out. The way I structure this work is described on the Security & Compliance Strategy service page.

    Book a 30-minute call to talk through your situation — no pitch, just a frank conversation.

Powered by