The Real Cost of Cheap M365 Licenses for Financial Institutions

Quick Answer: Not all Microsoft 365 licenses are equal in practice. Buying from a bargain reseller often just gets you a product key and a long support queue. Buying through ABT (a Tier-1 CSP) means your licenses include Guardian Security Insights, fast Microsoft escalations, and expert configuration that prevent misconfigurations, shorten downtime, improve user experience, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Same license – different outcome.

Executive Summary

Nearly every organization runs on Microsoft 365. The real question isn't “Should we use Microsoft 365?” – it's “From whom should we buy our Microsoft 365 licenses, and what do we get along with them?” On paper, a license from a discount reseller looks identical to one from ABT. In reality, the support quality, security posture, and operational efficiency that accompany that license can differ dramatically. In fact, the choice of licensing partner can significantly impact your service quality, support responsiveness, and overall cloud strategy.

This article exposes the hidden costs behind “low-touch” (cheap) licensing, explains why a managed licensing model (license plus visibility & support) is quickly becoming the new standard, and shows how ABT's Tier-1 CSP approach turns Microsoft 365 licensing into a measurable business advantage for both security and productivity.

The “Cheap License” Trap

Myth: All Microsoft 365 licenses are the same, so find the cheapest source and pocket the savings.
Reality: “Cheap” often means no configuration help, no proactive monitoring, slow support, and no accountability when something breaks. The small upfront savings usually reappear later as misconfigurations, downtime, remediation costs, audit headaches, and unhappy users.

What “cheap” licensing removes:

• Configuration & security guidance: No one ensures critical settings (like MFA or Conditional Access) are configured and enforced correctly. It's all on your team. (It's common for companies to think MFA is “enabled” when many users never actually completed registration.
• Ongoing visibility: No one is actively checking your tenant for misconfigurations, admin policy exceptions, stale accounts, or risky devices each week. These issues can go unnoticed for months. (More than half of organizations admit they lack visibility into cloud access and permissions, making it easy for configuration gaps to persist.)
• Responsive escalation: When critical issues arise, a bargain reseller will put you in a generic support queue. There's no direct line to Microsoft engineering – so time-to-resolution balloons. (Working with a Tier-1 (Direct) Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider means faster response and direct ticket escalation to Microsoft. Cheap resellers typically can't do that.)
• Operational empathy: A low-touch provider won't tailor Microsoft 365 to your business workflows. They won't translate complex platform settings into compliant, low-friction setups for your users. It's purely DIY, which often leads to either overly strict policies that frustrate users or lax settings that invite risk.

When you add up the security incidents avoided, hours saved on troubleshooting, faster escalations, and happier users, the “cheapest” licensing provider is rarely the least expensive in the long run. In fact, more than 70% of SMBs prefer working with an IT partner (not buying direct) specifically because of the trust, responsiveness, and tailored guidance they provide.

Where the Money Actually Leaks: Misconfigurations, Downtime, and Rework

CIOs rarely blow the budget on the license SKU itself – they overspend on the fallout from poorly managed tenants and slow support. Here are the hidden costs that “cheap” licenses often ignore:

1. Misconfiguration → Risk & Waste: Perhaps MFA shows as “enabled,” but a chunk of users never finished enrolling their devices. Maybe certain VIP admins were exempted from security policies. Or legacy authentication is still allowed. Each configuration gap is an open door for attackers and a productivity drag when IT later scrambles to fix it. Misconfigurations are no small issue – a recent analysis found 80% of security exposures stem from identity or credential misconfiguration. For example, Microsoft reports that over 99% of password-spray attacks target legacy authentication protocols. If your “cheap” provider isn't helping you close these loopholes, your risk (and cleanup effort) multiplies.
2. Limited visibility → slow fixes: If nobody is continuously surfacing these exceptions and risks, they linger. Small issues (like an admin with too-broad privileges or a device not meeting compliance) can go undetected until they cause a major problem. What should be a quick preventative fix instead becomes weeks of ad-hoc detective work after an incident.
3. Support latency → longer outages: When something does break – say email goes down tenant-wide or a security breach is in progress – every minute counts. If your license provider can't directly escalate to Microsoft's support engineers, you're stuck in a telephone game of referrals. Outages stretch from minutes into hours. The lost productivity compounds across every employee. (Working with a Microsoft Direct CSP avoids those third-party handoffs – issues get to the right engineers faster.)

None of these costs show up on your monthly license invoice – they show up in your P&L as lost revenue, IT overtime, and breach mitigation expenses. Consider downtime alone: Even if your company isn't a Fortune 500 enterprise, downtime hits hard. Industry studies show that the average cost of unplanned IT outages ranges anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 per hour for mid-sized financial organizations—and that's before counting overtime, missed closings, or lost borrower confidence. When an email policy breaks or a Conditional Access setting locks users out, dozens of people can't access loan files, LOS workflows stall, and customers wait. What looks like a “cheap license” can quietly become a five-figure productivity loss in a single afternoon. The economics are simple: shaving a few dollars off a seat license is meaningless if configuration gaps or slow support leave your team idle.

Security and Productivity – Two Sides of the Same License

Poor security configuration slows down work: people get locked out, hit constant auth prompts, or struggle with brittle device policies. But security configured well can accelerate work – users authenticate seamlessly, rarely get tripped up by policies, BYOD devices work without exposing data, and audits become straightforward. This balance of strong security and smooth productivity is central to ABT's philosophy:

“ABT is a guardian of productivity as much as security.” In our view, when Microsoft 365 is set up the right way, security doesn't slow the business – it enables it.

How we achieve that balance:

Guardrails, not roadblocks: For example, we tune Conditional Access policies for real-world use. Instead of a blanket rule that frustrates users. We design Conditional Access and authentication policies that stay secure without slowing people down. Instead of skipping MFA for “trusted locations,” we use modern, passwordless authentication—so users stay protected and friction-free. For example, Microsoft's passwordless sign-in uses the Authenticator app to confirm identity with a number match and biometric (Face ID or fingerprint) on a registered mobile device. That verification serves as both “something you have” and “something you are,” meeting MFA and compliance standards while eliminating the need for passwords.

Human-centric BYOD: We enable bring-your-own-device in a way that protects corporate data without invading employees' privacy. (For instance, using app-level protections instead of full device control, so personal photos or apps stay private.) This encourages security adoption rather than revolt.

Continuous fine-tuning: Because we provide weekly visibility into your Microsoft 365 posture, we catch small issues and user friction points before they escalate. If a policy is overly restrictive or an admin setting is risky, it gets adjusted in an informed, measured way – keeping users happy and data safe.

The bottom line: You shouldn't have to choose between security or productivity. With the proper expertise, you get both – a secure environment that lets your team operate at full speed.

“License-as-a-Service”: What You Actually Get With ABT

When you license Microsoft 365 through Access Business Technologies (ABT), you're not just buying a SKU – you're investing in an operating system for Microsoft 365 success. You pay the same or less as standard license pricing, but you receive far more value built-in. Here's what comes included when you get your licenses from ABT (our Tier-1 Cloud Solution Provider model):

1. Guardian Security Insights – A continuous, executive-friendly scorecard of your Microsoft 365 security posture. This weekly report gives you a clear view of where you stand and what to fix. For example, Guardian will:
2.  
3. Flag MFA gaps (such as users who are marked “MFA enabled” but never finished registering a device). This is one of the most common blind spots in Microsoft 365 tenants—so much so that Microsoft recently added a dashboard in the admin portal specifically to highlight users covered by MFA policies who haven't completed setup. The problem? That visibility usually stops at the security team. Guardian surfaces this same critical information in a format that CIOs and executives can actually see, measure, and act on. It turns a buried technical detail into a leadership-level accountability metric—so gaps don't linger unnoticed simply because they're buried deep in the Microsoft Security portal.
4. Surface any admin accounts or executives operating outside policy (e.g. a VIP with an exclusion from Conditional Access, or too many Global Admins without extra protections).
5. Highlight stale or non-compliant devices, use of legacy authentication protocols, or other risk indicators each week. (Microsoft Secure Score and other tools provide tons of data – Guardian distills it into 12 clear risk checks that you can act on immediately.)
6. Translate technical complexity into simple, actionable insights. In one glance, your IT team and business leaders can see “we have X issues to address this week” – and those issues are described in plain language. This ongoing visibility means small problems are fixed before they become costly incidents.
7. Managed Extended Detection & Response (MXDR) – 24/7 threat monitoring and response for your Microsoft 365 environment. When Microsoft 365 (Entra ID, Defender, etc.) fires a high-severity alert – say, an “impossible travel” login or a malware detection – we see it and respond immediately**. Depending on the service tier you choose, our security team will:

• Alert your team instantly and guide you through next steps,
• Co-investigate and contain the threat alongside your team, or
• Fully handle containment and remediation on your behalf (for example, disabling a compromised account, removing malware, etc.), any time of day.

This means incidents that might go unnoticed for hours (or days) with a low-touch provider are addressed in minutes with ABT. Faster detection and containment greatly reduce the impact of security incidents – studies show that quicker response can shave millions off the cost of a breach. Simply put, our MXDR coverage buys you peace of mind that someone is always watching your tenant's security signals – and ready to act.

1. Tier-1 Escalation to Microsoft – As a Tier-1 (Direct) CSP, ABT has the ability to engage Microsoft support and engineering directly when critical issues arise. There's no “middleman” distributor as with smaller resellers. This means fewer hops and faster resolution for urgent problems. If your Exchange Online goes down or a strange tenant-wide error is impacting work, we escalate through our Microsoft Premier Support channel immediately. Faster escalation = less downtime.
2. Industry-Tuned Configuration – We have years of experience serving mortgage and financial services firms. That means when we configure your Microsoft 365, we already know the compliance and usability tightrope you have to walk. Our team builds in best practices for security, regulatory compliance, and user experience from day one. For example, we ensure your tenant meets the guidelines (like requiring MFA for all employees) that regulators expect, and we configure things like data retention, email encryption, and device compliance in line with industry standards. All of this happens behind the scenes when you get your licenses through ABT' Guardian plans – whereas a generic provider would leave these critical settings for you to figure out.

Bottom line: An ABT-provided Microsoft 365 license may cost the same as one from a bargain reseller, but it works harder for your business. It comes with a built-in team and toolset to keep your environment secure, efficient, and audit-ready – so you're getting far more value for every dollar spent.

Do the Math: “Cheap” vs. ABT – A Practical TCO Comparison

To illustrate the difference in total cost, let's consider a realistic scenario:

Organization: Mid-sized mortgage lender (~250 employees).

• Cheap reseller: Offers Microsoft 365 licenses at a slight discount (maybe 3-5% off list price). Provides access to a licensing portal and a basic support ticket system. No proactive services.
• ABT (Tier-1 CSP): Provides licenses at or below standard rates. Includes Guardian Security Insights, MXDR monitoring, and direct escalation support in the package (no extra line items).

Now, look at one quarter of operations:

• MFA/Policy hiccup: Two minor but tenant-wide issues pop up this quarter. First, several users weren't fully enrolled in MFA, causing intermittent login failures. Second, a misconfigured Conditional Access policy caused some employees to get blocked from email when working remotely.
  • Cheap path: IT spends 6–10 hours troubleshooting and discovering the root cause of these issues. Multiple employees were impacted (couldn't log in), hampering their work until IT resolved it. Productivity took a hit, and IT had to drop other projects to put out the fire.
  • ABT path: Guardian Security Insights had already flagged that a subset of users were “MFA enabled, not registered” and that an admin had toggled an exception in Conditional Access. Those alerts came before users felt pain. The fixes (enrolling the remaining users, adjusting the policy) were scheduled in a planned maintenance window. Issue solved proactively, with no unexpected downtime.

• Security alert: One day, an Azure AD “impossible travel” alert fires – indicating a user's account was likely compromised (login from New York 5 minutes after a login from California). This is a high-severity security incident.

• Cheap path: The alert sits unseen for hours or days because no one is actively watching the security dashboard. In the meantime, that user's account could be used by the attacker. Eventually IT notices it, but by then the user's account was locked out and data may have been accessed. Remediation becomes a panic exercise.
• ABT path: Our MXDR service picked up the impossible-travel alert within minutes at 2 AM. Our team immediately contained the user account (preventing misuse) and notified the company's on-call staff. By the next morning, the incident was essentially handled – the compromised credentials were reset and no damage done. Minutes of exposure instead of hours, and the user was back to work with minimal disruption.

• Audit readiness: Annual, independent IT audits are now a formal requirement for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sellers/servicers—not just a best practice.

• Cheap path: When audit season hits, your team scrambles to pull screenshots, admin lists, and compliance evidence—hoping nothing was missed before the auditor or GSE reviewer finds it.
• ABT path: Because your Microsoft 365 licenses come with Guardian Security Insights, you already have weekly, executive-ready reports showing MFA enforcement, admin access, device compliance, and configuration trends. Come audit time, your evidence is complete, current, and aligned with GSE expectations. ABT can even perform—or coordinate—your annual independent IT/security audit, making licensing and compliance part of the same streamlined program
  • Want the full picture? See how ABT's audit services and licensing program work together to keep your Microsoft 365 environment compliant with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's new independent-audit standards.

TCO outcome: The bargain reseller might have saved you a few bucks per license on paper – say a few thousand dollars that quarter. But just one misconfiguration incident or one slow-to-address security alert can erase those savings almost instantly. In our scenario, the hours of IT time, user downtime, and emergency fixes easily cost far more than the reseller “discount.” With ABT, you might pay slightly more or the same for the licenses, but you avoided a costly outage, a potential breach, and a mad-dash audit prep. The result is you pay less overall because your licenses come with preventative care and support that ensure smooth operations. It's the classic case of “spend a dime to save a dollar.”

Why This Matters Even More in Mortgage & Financial Services

If you're in the mortgage, lending, or broader financial services space, you face a perfect storm of IT challenges: strict compliance requirements, highly sensitive data, distributed workforces, and audit scrutiny. In this environment, simply “having” Microsoft 365 isn't enough – you need it fine-tuned so that front-line users can work fast, regulators can see you're secure, and customer data stays protected.

Key considerations for this industry include:

1. Regulatory expectations: Financial regulators—including the CFPB, FTC, OCC, and now the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac)—are raising the bar for cybersecurity oversight. The CFPB has indicated that failing to implement strong access controls, like multi-factor authentication, may be deemed an unfair security practice. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now go a step further, requiring sellers/servicers to undergo an annual independent IT/security audit to prove those controls are working. ABT's approach ensures that controls such as MFA, encryption, and least-privilege access are not only enforced but documented and audit-ready. Your Microsoft 365 tenant is configured and continuously monitored against GLBA, FFIEC, and GSE audit standards, so you're prepared before regulators—or investors—ask the question.
2. Mortgage workflow realities: Mortgage lending involves unique patterns – users in branches, third-party brokers or vendors accessing systems, loan officers on the go, etc. We understand these workflows. We tailor Conditional Access and device policies to accommodate things like loan origination system (LOS) integrations and the need for secure BYOD for remote loan officers. The result is security policies that fit your business (for example, allowing trusted partner access in a controlled way, or offline access to emails for traveling staff with protections in place).
3. Executive usage and exceptions: In many financial orgs, executives or top producers sometimes get exceptions (e.g. the CEO's phone can bypass certain login rules to “make life easier”). But those exceptions can become huge vulnerabilities. We implement a process where any necessary exception is carefully scoped and automatically reviewed. VIPs get a great user experience without creating a security hole.
4. Compliance reporting: Financial firms spend a lot of time proving they're secure – to auditors, investors, or partners. With ABT's Guardian insights, you have an ongoing report that translates tech jargon into business terms. For example, instead of just “Secure Score of X,” you'll see “MFA: 100% of users enforced” or “Admin roles: 2 Global Admins (names) with MFA, Privileged Identity Management enabled,” etc. This makes it far easier to satisfy auditors and clients that you're on top of security.

In short, your Microsoft 365 license should be a lever for productivity and compliance, not a wildcard. Especially in mortgage and finance, the cost of a misconfigured setting isn't just an IT issue – it could be a legal or reputational issue. ABT's model ensures your licensing comes with the guardrails needed for your highly regulated world, so you can focus on closing loans and serving customers – not worrying about whether Outlook or Teams is a security landmine.

A CIO's 10-Point “License Due Diligence” Checklist

If you're evaluating your Microsoft 365 licensing situation (whether renewing or switching providers), here's a quick checklist to assess where you stand. Ask these questions of your team or provider:

1. MFA Reality Check: How many of our users show “MFA enabled” versus how many have actually completed MFA enrollment? (Hint: many organizations overestimate this by not actually checking the loopholes. Double-check that everyone, including admins and VIPs, truly has MFA enforced without exceptions known or unknown.)
2. VIP & Admin Exceptions: Do we have any executives or admins who bypass MFA or Conditional Access policies? Why, and is that risk justified? (Exceptions should be rare and well-documented – e.g. a break-glass admin account – not just because someone complained.)
3. Legacy Authentication: Is legacy (basic) authentication still enabled for any apps or users in our tenant? (Legacy protocols are a known weakness – 99% of password-spray attacks use legacy auth. If it's still on, plan to turn it off!)
4. Privileged Roles: How many Global Admins (or equivalent) do we have, and do those accounts have extra protections (MFA, privileged access management) in place? Fewer is better – and any standing admin access should require MFA every time at minimum.
5. Device Compliance: What percentage of our devices (PCs, phones) are meeting compliance policies consistently? Do we even have compliance policies defined for things like requiring disk encryption, OS patch levels, AV software, etc.? Non-compliant or unmanaged devices could be a blind spot.
6. Alert Monitoring & Response: Who (if anyone) is watching for security alerts from Microsoft 365 (Entra ID risky sign-ins, Defender detections) outside of business hours? If a critical alert fires at 2 AM, will someone see it and act? Or will we only find out later?
7. Time-to-Escalate: If we have a Microsoft 365 service outage or a serious issue, can our support partner escalate directly to Microsoft to get it resolved fast? Or are we stuck filing a support ticket and waiting? (Delays here can mean thousands in lost productivity per hour – it's crucial to have a direct escalation path.)
8. Audit Evidence Readiness: If an auditor or regulator asked tomorrow for proof that our Microsoft 365 is secured (MFA logs, security configurations, etc.), how quickly could we provide that? Do we have regular reports or a dashboard for security posture? Or would it be a manual scramble?
9. User Experience Feedback: Are we hearing complaints about Microsoft 365 from our users? For example, “I keep getting locked out,” “Teams is slow over VPN,” “I hate using my personal phone because IT controls it,” etc. These can be clues of misconfigurations or areas where better tuning is needed so that security measures don't impede productivity.
10. License TCO Analysis: Beyond the per-license price, what did we spend last quarter on Microsoft 365-related issues? This includes IT hours on support, downtime losses, breach remediations, consultant fees, etc. When you factor those in, are you really saving money with the current approach? Or would a more managed license model reduce these ancillary costs?

If your current provider or internal team can't answer these questions confidently – or if the answers reveal gaps – it's a strong sign that a managed licensing partner like ABT could save you money and headaches. Use this checklist as a conversation starter with any potential CSP (or with us during a review) to ensure you're not leaving easy wins on the table.

Case in Point: A Short Real-World Story

Sometimes the difference between “license only” and “license with support” comes to life in one incident. Here's a composite example from the field:

A 180-user mortgage lender believed their tenant was in good shape – MFA was “enabled for everyone” and a global Conditional Access policy was in place requiring compliant devices. All good on paper. Once they partnered with ABT, our first Guardian Security Insights report told a different story: it flagged 14 users who were listed as “MFA enabled” but had never completed registration (including two external vendor admins!), and it revealed that a Conditional Access exception had been created for the CFO's device (to bypass the policy requiring device compliance). These were latent risks. We helped the client fix those issues within a day – enrolling the remaining MFA users and removing or justifying the CFO exception with proper approvals.

Two weeks later, one of those previously unprotected vendor admin accounts experienced a serious incident – an “impossible travel” login, indicating the account password was likely stolen. Normally, this could have been a disaster (an outsider accessing an admin account!). But thanks to MXDR, our team caught the suspicious sign-in immediately (in the middle of the night) and froze the account. By morning, the admin user's credentials were reset and the threat was neutralized. The client's CFO, who had been the exception earlier, was never affected or even aware – business continued as usual.

Same Microsoft 365 licenses, different outcomes: In the “before” scenario, that company would have likely missed the MFA gaps and learned of them only after a breach occurred. And the compromised account could have led to a major incident. With ABT's managed license approach, a potential breach was prevented, countless IT hours of emergency response were saved, and the client's leadership slept better knowing someone had their back. The cost of going the “cheap” route could have been a multi-thousand-dollar security incident (or worse, a compliance violation in a regulatory exam). Instead, they gained a safety net and operational clarity – effectively insurance and optimization bundled with the license.

Why ABT, and Why Now

In the rapidly changing world of cloud IT, having the right partner is more critical than ever. Microsoft 365 is not a set-and-forget product – it's an evolving ecosystem that needs active management. Here's why ABT stands out as the partner of choice for Microsoft 365 licensing:

1. Tier-1 CSP Partner: We are a Direct (Tier-1) Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider. This means we meet Microsoft's highest standards for support and expertise, and we work directly with Microsoft (no distributors in between). As mentioned, this gives you faster escalations and more reliable service when it counts. We're big enough to have clout with Microsoft, but focused enough to give you personal, boutique service.
2. Guardian Security Insights (Proactive Posture Management): No more flying blind. Our security reports give you continuous insight into your environment's security and configuration. It's like getting a mini-audit and optimization list anytime you want it. This not only improves security but also keeps your environment efficient – users aren't slowed down by lingering misconfigs or policy bloat because we catch and fix them.
3. Managed XDR Security (24/7 coverage): Cyber threats don't keep office hours. With ABT, your Microsoft 365 environment is under watch around the clock. Whether it's a suspicious login, a malware detection, or any anomaly, our team is on it. You get enterprise-grade SOC monitoring without having to build one. That drastically lowers your risk of a costly breach or prolonged compromise.
4. Mortgage/Financial Services Expertise: We speak your language. Our solutions are tailored to industries where data security and compliance are non-negotiable. We know the regulatory acronyms, the audit routines, and the common pitfalls for banks, credit unions, lenders, and fintech firms. This means faster onboarding and value for you – we don't have a learning curve about your business; we're already seasoned in it.
5. Security + Productivity Together: Many providers can offer you security add-ons, and many can sell you productivity tools – ABT's philosophy is that these should reinforce each other. Every security improvement we implement is done with an eye to user experience, and every productivity feature is enabled in a secure way. For example, if you're looking to leverage the latest Microsoft 365 innovations like Copilot AI, we ensure your data governance and security are ready so you can adopt these tools confidently. The result: you stay on the cutting edge (AI, automation, cloud workflows) without inviting undue risk.

Lastly, consider the timing. The cloud licensing and services market is consolidating and evolving. Microsoft's New Commerce Experience (NCE) is changing how licenses are managed, and many smaller resellers are struggling to keep up on support. Generic resellers might tempt you with slightly lower prices, but as we've shown, they often slip on service – and you end up paying the price in other ways. With rising cyber threats and increasing compliance pressures in 2025, this is not the time to have the “lowest bidder” managing your organization's keys to the kingdom (which is essentially what Microsoft 365 is – your email, files, Teams, user identities, all in one place). You want a partner who is accountable for outcomes, not just transactions.

The ABT difference: We measure our success in your uptime, your security incident count, your user satisfaction – not just license sales. We turn a commodity (a license) into a catalyst for better IT and business performance.

Let's Turn Licensing into an Advantage

It's time to stop treating Microsoft 365 licenses like a commodity purchase. You can get much more value and peace of mind from the same licenses by choosing a partner that is invested in your success.

Take the next step with a no-obligation Microsoft 365 review. We offer a Guardian Security Insights assessment where we'll analyze your current Microsoft 365 configuration and security posture. In plain language and in just a couple of hours, you'll:

1. See where misconfigurations or gaps may be hiding in your tenant (before they become problems).
2. Understand how ABT's Guardian and MXDR services would change your day-to-day – see a sample weekly report for your own environment, so you know exactly what you'd get.
3. Get a clear TCO comparison tailored to your situation – what “license + support” would cost vs. what “license only” might be costing you in hidden ways.

You'll come away with actionable insights regardless of whether you decide to switch licensing to us or not. We're confident that the data will speak for itself.

Same Microsoft 365 – less risk, more productivity, lower overall cost. That's the ABT promise. Let's make your Microsoft 365 licenses truly work for you.

Ready to stop overpaying for Microsoft 365? Talk to an ABT licensing specialist about right-sizing your M365 investment.

Q&A -- Common Questions