Why CIOs Are Choosing ABT for Microsoft 365 Licenses

The Hidden Risks Lurking in “Set-and-Forget” Security

Many organizations assume that once they’ve purchased Microsoft 365 or Azure licenses and toggled on key security settings, their cloud environment is secure. In reality, misconfigurations and human error can leave gaping holes. According to Microsoft, nearly 23% of cloud security incidents are caused by misconfiguration – and 82% of those mistakes stem from human error. Gartner analysts even predict that by 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be due to customer mistakes, underscoring how prevalent these issues are.

I’ve seen this firsthand: a policy gets enabled in the admin center, but a simple oversight means it’s not truly enforced. A classic example is multi-factor authentication (MFA). The policy might show as “enabled” for new user accounts, but until each user completes their MFA setup, those accounts are effectively unprotected. It’s an easy miss with serious consequences – especially considering that 99.9% of hacked accounts lacked MFA protection.

Attackers are constantly probing for the one account without MFA or the one legacy setting left open. Microsoft reports over 300 million fraudulent sign-in attempts to its cloud services every day. All it takes is one unprotected account or one legacy protocol left enabled for an attacker to slip in. According to the 2023 Cloud Security Report, 59% of organizations cite security and compliance challenges as a top barrier to faster cloud adoption. CIOs tell me they worry about what they don’t know in their environment – and rightly so. Without continuous oversight, “set-and-forget” can quickly turn into “set-and-regret.”

Guardian Insights: Your Daily Security Scorecard

To proactively address these risks, CIOs—from mid-sized lenders to large-scale enterprises—are adopting a new best practice: reviewing a Guardian Security Insights report each week. Guardian Security Insights was purpose-built as an executive-friendly security scorecard, giving you a clear overview of your Microsoft cloud environment. Each Monday, a concise summary of the 12 most critical security and compliance checks lands in your inbox, highlighting areas of concern or misconfiguration in straightforward language—no need to dig through admin portals. The report is also available on demand whenever you want a real-time view.

What do these insights cover? They span the most critical areas that auditors and attackers alike tend to probe. For example, Guardian Insights will call out if:

• MFA isn’t fully deployed – e.g. users exist in a “registered” state but haven’t completed MFA setup (a common oversight creating a false sense of security).
• MFA exclusions or bypasses exist – such as accounts or policies exempting executives from MFA. This often happens when someone creates a special exception for convenience, leaving a hole in your defenses.
• Unusual admin configurations – for instance, accounts with global admin rights that don’t have proper protections, or too many users in privileged roles.
• Outdated security settings – like legacy authentication protocols still allowed, or lack of modern protections (no Conditional Access policies, no device compliance enforcement, etc.).
• Alerts and incidents are unresolved – any high-severity security alerts Microsoft has generated (which may be buried in an email inbox or portal) are flagged until they’re resolved.

These are just a few examples. The report distills dozens of complex settings and signals into 12 actionable insights. Each insight is essentially a yes/no check or a short list of exceptions. If everything is configured according to best practices, your report will be blissfully boring – a page of green checkmarks. But if there are problems, you’ll see exactly what needs attention, in priority order.

Real-World Misconfigurations Exposed (And Fixed)

One thing I’ve learned delivering these reports is that every environment has something to fix at any given time. Here are a few real-world misconfigurations Guardian Insights often uncovers, even in well-run IT departments:

• The “MFA Mirage”: A new user account is created with an MFA-required policy, but the user hasn’t logged in to complete enrollment. The admin console shows MFA as “enabled” due to the policy, yet the account is still MFA-disabled in practice. These dormant accounts can sit for weeks or months – a perfect target for hackers. Guardian Insights identifies users who appear to have MFA enabled but not actually set up, allowing IT to prompt them to complete enrollment or disable their account.
• The Stubborn User Exception: Sometimes a user starts the MFA registration process but skips completing it — and then stops logging in. Although Microsoft has closed most loopholes for bypassing MFA enrollment, users who fail to return and sign in can remain in a “not configured” state indefinitely. This creates a silent vulnerability: an account that looks provisioned but lacks any real protection. Guardian Insights catches these stalled MFA enrollments — accounts hanging in limbo — and flags them repeatedly until resolved, ensuring no one slips through the cracks..
• Policy Loopholes for VIPs: It’s not uncommon for busy executives to push back on security steps like MFA or device compliance. To keep the peace, an IT admin creates a special Conditional Access rule or exception group to bypass MFA for certain users (often C-suite members). The intention might be to make an exec’s life easier, but the result is a secret vulnerability. Guardian Insights shines a light on these kinds of policy exceptions. When a CIO sees in the report that they or other leaders are excluded from MFA, it often triggers a re-think. No one wants to explain to the board that the company got breached because the CEO’s account was exempted from security policies.

The beauty of catching these misconfigs early is that they’re usually easy to fix – once you know about them. And fixing them matters: misconfigurations and errors account for nearly one-third of breaches caused by human factors. Each insight in the report is basically a to-do item for the IT team. In fact, many administrators treat the Guardian Insights report as their weekly security checklist. One client joked that before sending the report up to his CIO, he uses it as “my Monday morning to-do list” – clearing each exception one by one. This proactive approach means by the time leadership sees the report, it’s all green.

Accountability from the Server Room to the Boardroom

What started as an executive summary has become a powerful accountability tool at every level. CIOs love Guardian Insights because it gives them instant visibility into their team’s security posture in a format they can easily share with fellow executives. I’ve had CIOs forward our one-page report to the CEO and board with a note saying, “Here’s how we’re doing on security this week.” It speaks volumes. Non-technical leaders appreciate it because it’s not just another vague “we take security seriously” assurance – it’s concrete evidence of what’s in place and what’s being worked on. One more box checked, one more night of sound sleep knowing there isn’t a neglected cyber risk lurking in the tenant.

At the same time, IT administrators (the folks actually implementing security) aren’t threatened by this oversight – they embrace it. In many cases, the IT team eagerly runs the report themselves before the CIO ever sees it. Why? Because it’s a safety net for their own work. Humans make mistakes; settings get overlooked. Knowing the CIO will see that one user without MFA on the report Friday spurs the admins to fix it by Thursday. It creates a healthy “trust, but verify” culture. Rather than waiting for an annual audit or – worse – a breach to catch security drift, the team is continually self-correcting. This weekly rhythm turns security best practices from an abstract ideal into a regular operational habit.

There’s also an unintended but wonderful side effect: collaboration. The report’s findings often spark conversations across departments. For example, suppose there’s an insight about many devices being non-compliant. In that case, IT might reach out to HR about enforcing an updated BYOD policy, or to department heads about installing the latest endpoint security agent. It elevates security from the server room to the whole organization. Cybersecurity truly becomes a shared responsibility – and leadership by example (like the CIO enrolling in MFA with no exceptions) sets the tone.

Beyond Reports: SecOps Monitoring That Never Sleeps

While Guardian Insights helps catch misconfigurations and policy gaps, there’s another piece of the puzzle CIOs must consider: active threat monitoring. Even a perfectly configured system can be targeted by sophisticated attacks. That’s why when you buy Microsoft licenses through ABT, you’re not just getting a product key – you’re getting our Security Operations (SecOps) team as an extra set of eyes on your environment. Our SecOps team, through our Managed Extended Detection & Response (MXDR) service, keeps watch on critical security alerts coming from your Microsoft cloud.

Think about those high-severity alerts that Microsoft Defender or Azure AD Identity Protection might generate – impossible travel sign-in attempts, indications of token theft, malware detections, etc. In theory, your IT admins get emails or portal notifications for those. In practice, we’ve seen many alerts get missed: they might be going to an inbox no one monitors, or occurring at 3 AM when your team is offline. If an alert falls in the forest and no one hears it… it’s not providing any protection. Our team acts as a 24/7 safety net. If a critical alert fires, we make sure it gets attention within minutes, not days.

We’ve literally had instances where a user’s MFA was phished and an attacker tried to log in – our team caught the risky sign-in alert and contacted the company within 5 minutes. By shutting down the account and kicking off incident response that quickly, we prevented damage. Those are the kind of nightmare scenarios that, if unaddressed, turn into headline breaches months later. According to the Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average time to identify and contain a breach is still about 241 days. Speed matters: breaches contained in under 200 days cost ~$3.9M on average, versus $5M when they take longer. A fast response can literally save millions, not to mention your reputation.

Depending on your needs, we offer different levels of response. Some clients prefer a heads-up: “alert me and I’ll handle it.” Others opt for us to remediate issues during business hours. And a growing number entrust us with full 24x7 proactive defense, where our security engineers will neutralize threats anytime, day or night. The point is, with ABT you’re getting much more than a license – you’re getting a partner.

We integrate these security services seamlessly with your licensing agreement. For our clients in highly regulated industries (finance, healthcare, legal, etc.), this is a game-changer. Regulators and cyber insurers love to see that not only do you have Microsoft’s advanced security tools, but you also have a human team watching the console and responding immediately. It’s an added layer of assurance that goes hand-in-hand with the Guardian Insights report. One provides the preventive lens (are we configured securely?); the other provides the detect-and-respond muscle (if something bad happens, will we catch it and stop it?). Together, they dramatically shrink your exposure to risk.

Expertise You Can Trust – Configuration Matters, Especially in Regulated Industries

The biggest reason I would choose to buy Microsoft licenses from ABT comes down to one word: expertise. In highly regulated environments, setting up a Microsoft cloud tenancy the right way is extraordinarily complex. Microsoft gives you a powerful toolbox with endless configuration options – but with great power comes great responsibility. Simply turning on a subscription and clicking through the default setup wizard is nowhere near enough for a security-conscious organization. We’ve seen new customers come to us after trying to DIY their tenant and being shocked at how many holes were left unaddressed.

On the flip side, it’s also possible to misconfigure things by being too strict – blanket disabling features or locking everything down in a way that kills productivity. I often say security that halts the business isn’t really a solution. For instance, you could require lengthy VPN logins and device lockdowns that frustrate your employees and grind work to a crawl. The art is in finding that sweet spot: implementing Microsoft’s best-practice security recommendations in a way that does not bring your business to its knees. That’s exactly what we specialize in. We’ve spent years developing an “exact recipe” for different industries, balancing the needs of owners, employees, and regulators. The result is configurations and policies that actually get deployed (not shelved due to user revolt) and that meet compliance standards without crushing usability.

A great example is Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. Employees want the convenience of accessing email and data on their personal phones, but IT is rightly concerned about security and privacy. There is a way to satisfy both – using Microsoft Intune app protection policies to secure corporate data on personal devices without invading the user’s personal files. Done correctly, a BYOD rollout can improve security and keep employees happy, because they get seamless access without feeling like IT is snooping on them. Done poorly, BYOD attempts often end with angry users and security turning the feature off entirely.

We’ve navigated these waters for banks, healthcare providers, law firms – you name it. Each has unique employee cultures and regulatory requirements, and we tailor the solution accordingly. This kind of nuanced expertise is hard-won through trial and error. It’s not something you get from a manual or a one-time deployment project. It’s another reason our clients stick with us for licensing: they know we have their back on the configuration and consulting side too. According to the 2023 Cloud Security Report, 93% of organizations are concerned about the shortage of skilled cloud security experts – when you partner with us, you effectively gain that expertise on call.

See the Difference for Yourself – Try Guardian Insights (On Us)

We understand that CIOs and IT leaders get bombarded with vendors claiming to have the “secret sauce” for security. Talk is easy; seeing is believing. That’s why we’re offering a no-obligation trial of our Guardian Insights report. Think of it as a test drive for your cloud security posture. We’ll set you up to receive the weekly report for a few weeks, completely free. Each week, you’ll see the actual insights from your own environment – the good, the bad, and (hopefully not) the ugly. Use it in your staff meetings, forward it to your CEO, or simply use it to double-check your team’s work. There’s no better way to understand the value than to experience that “aha” moment when an insight flags something you weren’t aware of.

During the trial, our team will also walk you through the findings and help you remediate any issues identified – again, as part of the trial. By the end of a few weeks, you’ll not only have a cleaner, safer Microsoft cloud; you’ll also have a repeatable process to keep it that way. We’re confident that once you see how Guardian Insights holds everyone accountable (including us as your partner!), you’ll want to make it a permanent part of your toolkit. And when you do, remember that it comes bundled when you license Microsoft 365 through ABT, alongside our vigilant SecOps monitoring. It’s all packaged under the same agreement, making your life simpler and more secure.

In summary, buying Microsoft licenses from ABT isn’t just a transaction – it’s a strategic investment in peace of mind. You get Microsoft’s world-class cloud technology, plus our Guardian Insights to shine a light on misconfigurations, plus our security team watching your back 24/7. The question isn’t really “Why buy licenses from us?” – it’s “Why wouldn’t you?”. In an era where breaches can cost millions and erode customer trust overnight, we’re providing an extra layer of protection and expertise at no extra cost to you. For a CIO juggling compliance, security, and business goals, that’s an easy decision.

Ready to see it in action? Sign up for the trial, or reach out to us for a demo. Let us help you turn cloud security from a headache into a strength – week by week, insight by insight. Your future self (and your CEO) will thank you.