Automated Microsoft security baselining

New automated tooling will help Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum customers reach and maintain known good Microsoft and Intune configuration baselines more quickly.

We are introducing automated baselining across our Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum Cybersecurity Managed Services.

The new tooling enables us to assess and improve Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Intune configurations against known good baselines, significantly reducing the manual effort previously required to complete this work.

A secure Microsoft environment is not created through licensing alone.  The underlying tenant, identity, device and security settings must be configured correctly and maintained as Microsoft services, security recommendations and customer requirements continue to evolve.

Automated baselining helps us address three common challenges:

• Configuration gaps:  Important security or management settings that have not yet been applied
• Configuration lag:  Delays between identifying an improvement and deploying it across customer environments
• Configuration drift:  Settings that move away from the agreed baseline over time

The tooling allows us to identify configuration differences, accelerate the deployment of improved settings and monitor customer environments for future drift.

Faster onboarding and continuous improvement

For new ctm customers, automated baselining will speed up onboarding by giving our technical teams a clearer view of the existing Microsoft and Intune configuration from the outset.

This helps us bring the environment towards the appropriate baseline more quickly, reducing the time that the Microsoft tenant remains outside the expected specification.

Existing customers will also benefit from faster baseline betterment work.  As our baselines evolve over time, improvements can be assessed and introduced more efficiently, helping customers take advantage of stronger security and management settings without relying on lengthy manual reviews.

More consistent Microsoft environments

Automation does not remove the need for technical expertise or change control.  Instead, it gives our specialists better information and more effective tools with which to manage customer environments.

By combining automation with our Microsoft expertise and managed service processes, we can provide customers with:

• Faster Microsoft and Intune baseline assessments
• Quicker remediation of configuration gaps
• Reduced delays when introducing baseline improvements
• Greater consistency across devices, identities and Microsoft services
• Ongoing monitoring for configuration drift
• Clearer evidence that environments remain aligned with the expected baseline

Automated baselining will form part of the ongoing development of ctm’s Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum Cybersecurity Managed Services, helping customers maintain secure, consistent and well-managed Microsoft environments.