Dedicated audit vs Microsoft Secure Score: what changes
Microsoft Secure Score is a helpful starting point, but it was never designed to be a full security audit — and it stops at the cloud. If you rely on it alone you are missing depth, prioritisation, named findings, and everything that happens in your directory and your subscriptions. Here is where a dedicated audit takes over.
What Secure Score does well
Secure Score is built into Microsoft 365 and gives a quick, free indication of your cloud posture. It is a fine first signal — it flags obvious gaps and tracks a handful of improvement actions. For a small organisation getting started, it is better than nothing, and it costs nothing to watch.
Where it falls short
1. It stops at the cloud
This is the gap most people underestimate. Secure Score says nothing about your Active Directory — no Kerberoasting, no DCSync, no forgotten ACL delegation, no AD CS template. either. Yet in most ransomware compromises the attacker took control of the directory before encrypting anything.
2. Depth
Secure Score covers roughly eighty checks. The two GUARD tools together run 494 controls — 318 on Entra ID and Microsoft 365 alone, which is already four times the coverage, including areas Secure Score simply does not assess.
3. A number, not an action plan
Secure Score gives you a percentage and some suggestions, but not a prioritised remediation plan with severity, framework references, named objects and concrete steps. It tells you roughly where you are, not clearly what to do next, and it does not tell you which accounts or resources are at fault.
4. No weighting you control
You cannot adjust Secure Score to your context — exclude controls that do not apply, or raise the weight of ones that are critical for you. A dedicated audit lets you define a custom baseline so the score reflects your requirements, and records that baseline in the report.
5. No evidence you can hand over
Secure Score is a dashboard, not a deliverable. It does not produce a dated, branded report you can attach to a NIS2 file, an insurer's questionnaire or a client security review.
Side by side
| Secure Score | Dedicated audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Perimeter | Microsoft 365 and Entra ID | Entra ID & M365, Active Directory |
| Checks | ~80 | 494 across two referentials |
| Named findings | No | Yes — the accounts and resources at fault |
| Prioritised action plan | Limited | Yes, with framework references |
| Custom baseline | No | Yes, and recorded in the report |
| Executive reporting | Basic | Four to six report types, five formats |
They also disagree, sometimes
A Secure Score recommendation is a Microsoft judgement, evaluated on Microsoft's own schedule. Some audit controls deliberately relay that verdict rather than re-implement it — which means they inherit both its freshness and its lag. Others check the configuration property directly and can therefore contradict a stale recommendation. Knowing which of the two you are reading is part of reading a report properly.
Use both
This is not either/or. Keep an eye on Secure Score for a continuous cloud signal, and run a dedicated audit when you need depth, on-premises coverage, a defensible weighted score and a real remediation plan. One is a dashboard gauge; the other is the full inspection.