Why Higher Standards Beat Microsoft Secure Score's Curve

Microsoft Secure Score tells you how your M365 tenant stacks up against recommended controls. What it does not tell you is whether those recommendations are high enough. For mortgage companies, credit unions, and banks handling regulated financial data, "passing" isn't the standard. The standard is resilience against the threats that actually target your industry.

The average Microsoft 365 tenant scores between 30% and 50%. That means a score of 65% looks strong by comparison. But comparison to the average is a trap. Financial institutions that grade on Microsoft's curve are measuring themselves against organizations that haven't touched their security settings since initial deployment. That's not a benchmark. That's a participation trophy.

The Problem with Grading on a Curve

Secure Score operates like a classroom grading curve. Microsoft sets a maximum based on available controls. You earn points by enabling them. The resulting percentage tells you how far you've come toward your theoretical maximum.

The catch: many organizations score low. When the average sits at 40%, a score of 65% feels like an achievement. It earns a "B" in the comparison charts. But a 65% means 35% of recommended security controls remain disabled. In a financial institution handling borrower Social Security numbers, bank account details, and income verification documents, that 35% gap represents real attack surface.

Three specific problems emerge when financial institutions accept a curved grade.

Unaddressed Identity Gaps

A 65% score often means MFA is enforced for admins but not all users. Legacy authentication protocols remain active for "compatibility." Service accounts lack Conditional Access policies. These are exactly the gaps that attackers exploit. In IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report, compromised credentials remained the top initial attack vector, with an average time to identify and contain of 292 days.

Incomplete Device Compliance

Partial Intune enrollment is common. Company laptops are managed, but personal devices accessing email and SharePoint are not. A curved grade treats partial enrollment as progress. An attacker treats an unmanaged device as an unlocked door to your tenant.

Missing Data Protection Controls

Data Loss Prevention policies are often the last controls organizations enable. They require planning, testing, and user communication. A curved score lets you skip them and still look good on paper. But DLP is where the FTC Safeguards Rule lives. Without it, sensitive borrower data leaves your environment through email attachments, Teams messages, and SharePoint sharing links without anyone knowing.

Why 80% Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling

Microsoft's own research shows that organizations scoring above 80% experience 67% fewer security incidents. That statistic alone should define the minimum standard for any financial institution. But the number also carries regulatory and business implications.

Regulatory Expectations Are Rising

The FTC Safeguards Rule now requires mortgage companies to maintain comprehensive security programs, designate a Qualified Individual, and report breaches affecting 500+ customers within 30 days. The FFIEC IT Examination Handbook pushes banks toward continuous monitoring and risk assessment. NCUA expects credit unions to demonstrate measurable security controls.

None of these regulators grade on a curve. They look for specific controls. The gap between 65% and 80% on your Secure Score often contains the exact controls regulators ask about: DLP policies, device compliance enforcement, application consent restrictions, and automated alerting.

Cyber Insurance Carriers Set Their Own Bar

Insurance underwriters in 2025 pull Secure Score data as part of the application process. They set specific thresholds for MFA, endpoint protection, and email security. A 65% score that "beats the average" may still fall below the carrier's minimum. Coverage exclusions, higher premiums, or outright denial follow.

Board Expectations Follow Industry Headlines

Every financial services breach makes the news. Board members read those headlines. When they ask "Could that happen to us?", the answer depends on your actual controls, not your relative ranking. An 80%+ Secure Score means you've deployed the controls that prevent the most common attack patterns. A 65% means you haven't.

What the Gap Between 65% and 80% Actually Contains

The journey from 65% to 80% isn't about obscure or low-value controls. It typically involves the protections that matter most for regulated data.

• MFA for all users, not just admins. Attackers target loan officers and processors because they have access to borrower data. Admin-only MFA leaves the majority of your workforce unprotected.
• Full device compliance enforcement. Moving from "enrolled" to "compliant" means devices must meet encryption, OS update, and security baseline requirements before accessing data.
• DLP policies covering email, Teams, and SharePoint. Preventing sensitive data from leaving your controlled environment is a regulatory requirement, not an optional enhancement.
• Application consent restrictions. Blocking users from granting permissions to unknown third-party apps prevents OAuth-based attacks that bypass MFA entirely.
• Email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). These controls prevent attackers from spoofing your domain to send phishing emails that appear to come from your organization.
• Automated risk-based Conditional Access. Policies that adapt based on sign-in risk level provide protection that static rules cannot match.

How Guardian Sets Higher Standards

Guardian is ABT's security operating model for Microsoft 365 tenants. It rejects the curve and sets an absolute standard: 80%+ across all four Secure Score categories (Identity, Devices, Apps, Data), maintained continuously.

Guardian achieves this through four functions.

Hardening That Goes Beyond Defaults

Guardian applies a 90-day hardening sprint that addresses every high-impact Secure Score control. But it doesn't stop at the Microsoft-recommended settings. Guardian adds ABT's own baseline configurations developed across 750+ financial institutions. These configurations address attack patterns specific to mortgage companies, credit unions, and banks that Microsoft's generic recommendations don't cover.

Monitoring That Catches Drift

A Secure Score doesn't stay static. Microsoft adds new controls quarterly. IT teams make changes that inadvertently weaken policies. Employees request exceptions that create gaps. Guardian monitors the score continuously and flags degradation before it becomes an exposure.

Security Insights That Translate for Executives

Raw Secure Score data is technical. Guardian's Security Insights translates it into category breakdowns, trend reporting, and risk prioritization that executives and board members can act on. When a category drops below 80%, the reporting identifies the specific controls that changed and the business risk they represent.

Response That Closes the Loop

When monitoring detects an anomaly or an incident bypasses preventive controls, Guardian's response process activates. This closes the gap between detecting a problem and resolving it, which IBM's research shows averages 241 days globally. Financial institutions can't afford that timeline.

The Pure Microsoft Stack Advantage

ABT runs a pure Microsoft technology stack. No ConnectWise. No Kaseya. No SolarWinds. Every security control, monitoring tool, and management platform is Microsoft-native: Entra ID, Intune, Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, Conditional Access, Purview, and Sentinel.

This matters for Secure Score because third-party MSP platforms introduce their own attack surface. The ConnectWise ScreenConnect breach in February 2024. The Kaseya VSA attack in July 2021. The SolarWinds supply chain compromise in December 2020. Each one affected thousands of MSP clients. ABT clients had zero exposure to all three because the architecture doesn't include those platforms.

Your Secure Score measures your Microsoft 365 controls. If your MSP introduces non-Microsoft tools with their own vulnerabilities, your Secure Score can't warn you about that additional risk. A pure Microsoft stack means your score reflects your actual security posture without hidden dependencies.

Building a Culture of Higher Standards

Setting an 80% minimum isn't just a technical decision. It changes how your organization thinks about security.

• Accountability shifts from IT alone to the whole organization. When the score is visible and the target is clear, every department understands their role in maintaining it.
• Audit preparation becomes evidence collection, not scrambling. Regulatory audits ask for the controls that make up your Secure Score. When you're already above 80%, the evidence exists before the auditor arrives.
• Vendor evaluation gains a new dimension. Every third-party tool that connects to your M365 tenant affects your security posture. A higher standard means evaluating vendor access against your score impact.
• Security incidents drop measurably. The 67% reduction in incidents above 80% isn't abstract. It means fewer disruptions, fewer late-night calls, and fewer conversations with regulators about what went wrong.

Stop Grading on a Curve

Your financial institution handles data that attackers want and regulators protect. The standard for your security posture should reflect that reality, not the average configuration of every Microsoft 365 tenant on the planet.

ABT's Security Grade Assessment shows you where your Secure Score stands, what the gaps cost you in risk exposure, and how Guardian's operating model reaches and maintains the 80%+ standard that separates protected institutions from vulnerable ones.

Request your Security Grade Assessment and find out what higher standards look like for your organization.