31 min read
Justin Kirsch : Fri, Oct 31, 2025
Microsoft 365 has become standard infrastructure in credit unions. The question isn't "Should we use M365?" – they already are – but rather "How should we license and manage M365 to meet our unique security and compliance needs?"
On paper, a license purchased directly or from a bargain reseller looks identical to one from a specialized partner like ABT. In reality, the support quality, security configuration, and regulatory compliance readiness that come with that license differ dramatically. For credit unions handling sensitive member data under strict oversight, these differences are critical.
This article reveals the hidden costs and risks of "low-touch" (cheap) Microsoft 365 licensing in credit unions. We'll explore why a managed licensing model (where your Microsoft 365 licenses come bundled with security configuration, continuous monitoring, and responsive support) is becoming best practice for credit unions.
Every example, risk, and benefit is tailored to credit union experience: from protecting member information and passing NCUA exams to enabling branch and remote workflows without sacrificing security. We'll also show how ABT's Tier-1 Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) approach transforms Microsoft 365 licensing into a tangible advantage: enhanced security, productivity, and total cost of ownership.
Quick Answer: Not all Microsoft 365 licenses are equal in practice. Buying from a bargain source often results in a product key and a lengthy support queue. Buying through ABT (a Tier-1 CSP) means your licenses include Guardian™ security insights, fast Microsoft escalations, and expert configuration aligned to financial regulations. This prevents misconfigurations, reduces downtime, improves user experience, and lowers total cost of ownership (TCO). It's the same Microsoft license but with a vastly better outcome for your credit union.
Myth: All Microsoft 365 licenses are the same, so find the cheapest seller and pocket the savings.
Reality: "Cheap" licensing often means no configuration help, no proactive monitoring, slow support, and no accountability when something goes wrong. Small upfront savings quickly evaporate as misconfigurations, breaches, audit findings, and unhappy users pile up. These are costs credit unions can't afford.
Here's the picture:
A credit union chooses a low-cost reseller or buys direct from Microsoft. They get licenses but no guidance on critical setup. Nobody ensures vital security settings—like multifactor authentication (MFA), conditional access policies, data loss prevention, and email encryption—are properly configured for a financial institution.
It falls on the credit union's small IT team. As the FFIEC (which includes the NCUA and the OCC) has cautioned, management "should not assume that effective security controls exist simply because systems are in a cloud environment."
Moving to Microsoft 365 doesn't automatically make you secure. You're still responsible for configuring and monitoring it, or ensuring your vendor does.
Configuration & security guidance: A no-frills provider won't help you tailor M365 to meet credit union security standards. If you're not familiar with Microsoft 365's admin centers, it's easy to miss critical settings.
Organizations often think MFA is "enabled" when many users haven't completed registration. We've seen credit unions assume all employees had MFA, only to discover a subset (often executives or vendors) were never fully enrolled. Cheap licensing leaves it up to your team to catch and fix these gaps, if you even know they exist.
Ongoing visibility: A low-cost reseller is unlikely to monitor your tenant for issues. No one reviews your M365 security posture on a weekly basis for misconfigurations, policy exceptions, stale accounts, or risky device logins.
These issues can lurk unnoticed for months, silently undermining your security. For a credit union, such blind spots could lead to a breach of member data or a compliance violation, especially if an examiner discovers the issue first.
Responsive escalation: When a critical issue arises (for example, Exchange Online goes down or a suspicious login is detected), bargain providers direct you to generic support channels. You're stuck in a slow queue with no direct line to Microsoft engineering, and time-to-resolution balloons.
Working with a Tier-1 (Direct) Microsoft CSP, such as ABT, means we can escalate issues directly to Microsoft for prompt action. During an email outage or security incident, every minute counts for member services.
Operational alignment:
Low-touch resellers often fail to customize Microsoft 365 to meet your credit union's specific workflows and compliance needs. They offer a one-size-fits-all approach (basically a DIY tenant), which typically leads to one of two outcomes:
Without guidance, a well-meaning admin might exempt the CEO's devices from specific login rules to "make life easier," inadvertently creating a significant vulnerability.
We've seen executives insist on bypassing MFA or device compliance. It solved a short-term inconvenience but introduced long-term risk. A cheap license provider won't warn you of these trade-offs; a good partner will.
When you add up the security incidents avoided, troubleshooting hours saved, audit findings prevented, and users kept productive, the "cheapest" licensing option is rarely the least expensive in the long run.
You rely on vendors for core processing, lending platforms, and more. Cloud productivity should be no different. Smart licensing through the right partner can mean the difference between a smooth, secure Microsoft 365 experience and a minefield of hidden costs.
Credit union CIOs rarely overspend on the Microsoft 365 license SKU itself. The real cost overruns stem from poorly managed tenants and slow incident response.
Here are the hidden costs that "cheap" licenses often ignore:
Each configuration gap in M365 is an open door for attackers and a potential compliance breach.
For example:
These aren't hypothetical edge cases; they're common issues.
Microsoft reports that over 99% of password spray attacks target legacy authentication protocols, the very protocols that should be turned off in any tenant handling financial data.
If your provider isn't helping you close these loopholes, your cyber risk multiplies. And when IT eventually scrambles to fix things (often after an incident or exam finding), it's a fire drill that distracts from serving members.
Misconfigurations also lead to inefficiencies: users locked out due to a half-baked MFA rollout means lost productivity and a flooded help desk.
If nobody is continuously monitoring your M365 environment, small problems can lurk until they cause big trouble.
A stray admin account with excess privileges, a laptop connecting with an outdated OS, a misrouted email rule forwarding sensitive mail outside: these might go unnoticed for weeks or months without proactive oversight.
By the time you notice (perhaps during an audit or after a breach), what could have been a quick preventive fix has turned into weeks of forensics and cleanup.
One IT manager at a credit union told us they only discovered a batch of unsecured personal OneDrive accounts after an examiner asked about data loss prevention. A simple audit could have flagged it earlier.
This "fix it later" approach costs far more in man-hours and potential fines than addressing issues promptly. Without continuous visibility, you're playing security whack-a-mole with a blindfold on.
When something breaks (say, Exchange Online email flow halts or SharePoint becomes inaccessible), every minute of downtime impacts your staff and members.
Branch employees can't pull up member information, loan officers can't process applications, call centers can't receive emails. Perhaps even your ATM monitoring is affected if alerts rely on email.
The costs add up fast. Even if you're not a mega-bank, downtime hits hard when you're serving members in real-time.
With a bargain license provider, you have limited support to resolve outages. You might file a ticket and wait hours for a callback. Hours that translate into significant disruption.
By contrast, a partner like ABT (with direct Microsoft escalation) can engage the right engineers immediately, often resolving issues in a fraction of the time.
For credit unions, faster recovery isn't just about dollars. It's about trust. Members expect reliable access to services. Prolonged downtime erodes that trust.
None of these costs show up on your monthly Microsoft 365 invoice. They appear in your financials as overtime or incident losses, in your exam reports as findings to remediate, or in the news if you must report a data breach.
Downtime, security incidents, compliance deficiencies: each can quietly turn a "cheap" license into a very expensive proposition. It's the classic penny-wise, pound-foolish scenario.
Too often, credit unions see security and productivity as opposing forces: tighten security and employees complain about inconvenience; make things easy for users and you worry you're exposed.
The truth is, well-implemented security can enhance productivity.
When you configure Microsoft 365 the right way for a credit union, security doesn't slow the business – it enables it.
Conversely, poor configuration does slow down work. People get locked out by clunky policies, spend extra time on workarounds, or stop using secure tools altogether (the classic "shadow IT" problem) because the official systems are too frustrating.
At ABT, we like to say we're "guardians of productivity as much as security." We know credit union employees wear many hats and need to serve members efficiently.
So our approach is to balance strong security with a smooth user experience.
Here are some examples of how smart licensing and management achieve that:
Continuous fine-tuning:
A static configuration will drift out of optimal alignment over time as new threats emerge, staff roles change, and software updates introduce new settings.
That's why ABT provides weekly visibility into your Microsoft 365 posture and actively maintains your tenant. We catch small issues and user-friction points before they escalate.
If our monitoring shows that a new patch caused Teams to prompt too often for login on older devices, we adjust the settings or guide the client on updating those devices.
If we see an admin created a rule that inadvertently blocked a workflow—maybe a strict spam filter blocking an important vendor's emails—we can spot it and correct it.
This ongoing care keeps your security aligned with both evolving threats and your operational needs. Users remain happy and productive, and the security team addresses issues when they're minor tweaks, not major headaches.
The bottom line:
Credit unions shouldn't have to choose between security and productivity. With the right expertise and licensing model, you get both: a secure Microsoft 365 environment that lets your team operate at full speed, serving members without interruption.
In practice, that might look like a teller logging in with seamless MFA in the morning (no password, just a quick phone approval), accessing a member's records in SharePoint knowing that data is encrypted and compliant, and never thinking twice about cybersecurity because it's built in and not getting in their way.
That's the ideal we strive for: security as an enabler of better service.
When you license Microsoft 365 through Access Business Technologies (ABT), you're not just buying a SKU. You're investing in a managed platform for Microsoft 365 success.
You pay the same or less than standard Microsoft pricing, but you get far more value. We're turning a commodity (a license) into a service.
Here's what every Microsoft 365 license from ABT includes under our Tier-1 CSP model:
A continuous, executive-friendly scorecard of your M365 security posture.
This weekly report gives your IT team and leadership a clear view of where you stand and what needs attention. For credit unions, it's like having a mini IT audit every week, so you're never caught off-guard by a control gap.
Guardian will:
Translate technical complexity into simple insights.
Guardian reports are written in plain English for a non-technical audience. Many credit union CEOs or board members aren't cybersecurity experts, but they're responsible for oversight.
Instead of a raw dump of Secure Score data, we provide statements like:
Your management and auditors can quickly understand your security posture. It turns security from an opaque IT topic into a measurable business metric.
Small problems get fixed before they become big incidents, because they're clearly identified and assigned.
This is 24/7 threat monitoring and active response for your Microsoft 365 environment, included with your license.
When Microsoft 365's security tools (Entra ID Identity Protection, Defender for Office 365, etc.) generate a high-severity alert – like an "impossible travel" login indicating a compromised account or malware in a user's OneDrive – our security team sees it and responds immediately, any time of day.
Depending on your service tier, we'll either alert your on-call staff and guide them through response, co-investigate and remediate with your team, or fully handle containment.
For example, if someone breaches a user's account at 2 AM, ABT will notice within minutes and could automatically disable the account and remove malicious inbox rules, stopping the attack in its tracks.
Incidents that might go unnoticed for hours or days (common with low-touch or DIY approaches) get addressed in minutes with ABT.
Faster detection and containment dramatically reduce the impact of security incidents. For a credit union, this could mean the difference between a minor incident and a major data loss or fraud event.
In short, our MXDR coverage gives you peace of mind that someone is always watching your tenant's security signals and ready to act.
(As a side benefit, 24/7 monitoring aligns with regulatory expectations. NCUA examiners increasingly ask how quickly you can detect and respond to threats. With ABT, you can confidently answer "within minutes, 24x7.")
As a Tier-1 Direct CSP, ABT has a premier support relationship with Microsoft.
When there's a critical issue beyond the day-to-day—like Exchange Online acting up in your tenant or strange SharePoint behavior impacting multiple users—we engage Microsoft support and engineering directly. No middleman.
Smaller resellers or distributors can't do this. They add an extra layer that slows everything down.
With ABT, if Outlook goes down or Teams becomes inaccessible, we open a high-priority ticket with Microsoft immediately through our partner channel. No sitting in the generic support queue.
The result: faster resolution and less downtime for your credit union.
This matters because, as discussed, downtime equals member service disruption.
Think of Tier-1 support like roadside assistance for your cloud. When you have a flat tire (incident), we get you the NASCAR pit crew instead of a tow truck that takes hours.
We have years of experience serving financial institutions – including credit unions – so we understand the compliance and usability tightrope you walk every day.
When we set up and manage your M365 tenant, we build in best practices for security, regulatory compliance, and user experience from day one.
We ensure your tenant meets baseline regulatory guidelines:
In short, we configure your cloud environment to align with frameworks like NCUA Part 748, the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool, and other relevant guidelines. And we document everything.
All of this happens behind the scenes as part of ABT's Guardian plans. A generic license provider would leave these critical settings for you to figure out.
The value is twofold: your Microsoft 365 is secure and compliant by design, and you have the evidence (policies, reports, settings) at your fingertips to show your board or examiners.
As a tangible example, one financial institution client showed regulatory examiners a Guardian report confirming 100% of users had MFA and all admin accounts were monitored. The examiners were impressed with that level of oversight, and the organization sailed through that portion of the exam.
Bottom line: an ABT-provided Microsoft 365 license might cost the same as one from a bargain reseller, but it works harder for your credit union. It comes with a built-in team and toolset to keep your environment secure, efficient, and audit-ready. You get more value (and far less risk) out of every dollar spent on Microsoft 365.
To illustrate the difference in total cost of ownership, let's walk through a realistic scenario from a credit union perspective:
Organization: Mid-sized credit union (~250 employees, multiple branches, and an online banking operation).
Now, let's look at one quarter (3 months) of operations:
Two minor but tenant-wide issues pop up this quarter.
First, several users weren't fully enrolled in MFA, causing intermittent login failures and leaving some accounts less secure.
Second, a misconfigured Conditional Access policy began blocking some employees from accessing email when they worked remotely (an unintended side effect that went unnoticed until people complained).
Cheap path:
Your internal IT spends 6–10 hours troubleshooting to discover the root causes.
In the MFA case, they realized that about 15 users simply never completed setup and had been bypassing MFA.
In the Conditional Access case, they find an exception checked for one user's convenience ended up impacting others.
During this time, multiple employees were unable to log in or access their email, which hampered their work. Tellers at branches reverted to slower manual processes, and some lending staff lost half a day of productivity.
IT had to drop other projects to put out these fires. It was a stressful scramble.
While they eventually fixed the configuration, the episode revealed gaps in their monitoring. (Also consider: if an examiner asked "How do you know all users are enrolled in MFA?" before this issue, the honest answer would have been "we didn't know.")
ABT path:
Guardian Security Insights flagged that some users were "MFA enabled, not registered" and that an admin had toggled a Conditional Access exception for one user. These alerts arrived before users felt any pain.
The fixes (enrolling those users in MFA and adjusting the policy) were scheduled during a planned maintenance window (after hours or on Friday evening).
Issues were resolved proactively, with no unplanned downtime or user frustration.
From a TCO perspective, those 6–10 IT hours spent in the cheap path scenario were saved. More importantly, employees didn't lose productivity, and member service wasn't disrupted.
Security alert:
One day, Entra ID (Azure AD) logs an "impossible travel" alert – a user account logged in from California and then from New York five minutes later. This red flag typically indicates a compromised account, often due to an attacker using stolen credentials. It's a high-severity security incident that could lead to an email or data breach if not addressed quickly.
Cheap path:
The alert remains unseen in the Microsoft 365 Security Center for hours or days because no one is actively monitoring those dashboards in real-time. Meanwhile, the attacker could be rifling through that user's mailbox or using the account to phish others.
Eventually, perhaps during a weekly report review or when that user gets locked out, IT notices the alert. By then, the damage may be done. The attacker might have set up forwarding rules to exfiltrate emails or used the account to send fraudulent messages (common tactics in account takeover).
The response becomes a reactive scramble: disable the account, force password resets, and investigate what was accessed. It's nights and weekends work for IT, and a nerve-wracking waiting game to see if any member information was exposed.
If it were, you would now be deep into incident response, with potential notifications, regulators involved, and so on—a massive cost and headache.
ABT path:
Our MXDR service picks up the impossible-travel alert within minutes at 2 AM. Our security team immediately contains the account, preventing further misuse (we can force a password reset or suspend the account). We notify the credit unions' on-call contact according to the agreed-upon process.
By morning, the incident is handled. The compromised credentials have been addressed, and no unauthorized activity has occurred beyond initial detection; the user's account is now secure. The user might not even realize anything happened, except needing to sign in again with a new password and MFA.
The exposure window was minutes instead of hours, drastically reducing risk. IT staff start their day with a full report of what occurred and was remediated overnight, rather than facing an urgent crisis.
The difference in impact is stark: one scenario could have become a costly breach, the other is a non-event.
Audit readiness (or Exam readiness):
It's time for the annual IT audit and regulatory cybersecurity examination. Credit unions are aware that the NCUA and state examiners are becoming increasingly rigorous in their cybersecurity oversight.
You may also need to complete an external GLBA assessment or an independent cyber audit to satisfy your board or insurer. Either way, you need evidence that your controls (like MFA, access rights, incident response, etc.) are in place and effective.
Cheap path:
When audit season arrives, your IT team rushes to gather screenshots, logs, and documentation to demonstrate that your Microsoft 365 environment is secure. You're pulling admin lists from Azure AD, exporting MFA reports (hoping they're accurate), capturing Secure Score graphs, and piecing together evidence after the fact.
It's a mad dash that can consume dozens of hours.
There's also a risk that something was missed. Perhaps you forgot to document the offboarding process, or an examiner requests a report that you don't know how to generate. The result is stress on your team and the possibility of findings (for example, the auditor discovers a user without MFA or an account that wasn't disabled promptly, which becomes a cited issue you must address under a deadline).
ABT path:
Your M365 licenses already include Guardian Security Insights, which provides you with weekly, executive-ready reports covering all key metrics, including MFA enforcement rates, admin account status, device compliance, configuration changes, and more.
When auditors or examiners request evidence, you hand them the latest Guardian report (plus a few screenshots) and you're done. The report stays current by design, so you're always audit-ready.
ABT can even assist directly during audits if needed. We've helped clients through NCUA Information Security Examinations and independent IT audits by providing documentation and answering technical questions.
With ABT's managed licensing, your compliance is continuously maintained, not a once-a-year scramble.
One financial services CFO told us the biggest surprise after switching to ABT was how painless their next exam became: "All the reports the examiner asked for, we already had on hand from ABT. No more hunting and hoping we didn't miss something."
TCO outcome:
The bargain reseller might have saved you a few bucks per license on paper (say a couple thousand dollars that quarter). However, as we've seen, even a single misconfiguration incident or an inefficiently slow-to-address security alert can erase those savings instantly.
In our scenario, the hours of IT time, user downtime, and emergency incident response likely cost far more than the reseller's discount. That's not even counting the potential cost of an actual breach or failed audit (both of which can easily run into the tens of thousands in fines, plus lost member trust).
With ABT, you may pay slightly more (or the same) for the licenses, but you avoid costly outages, prevent breaches, and navigate audit preparation with minimal effort. The result? You pay less overall because your licensing includes preventative care and support that keep operations running smoothly.
It's like the difference between changing your car's oil regularly versus running it dry and blowing the engine. A small investment up front saves you a fortune down the road. Or as the saying goes, spend a dime to save a dollar.
If you're a credit union (or any financial institution), you're facing a perfect storm of IT challenges:
In this environment, simply "having" Microsoft 365 isn't enough. You need it fine-tuned and actively managed so front-line users can work quickly and securely, regulators can see you're in control, and member data stays protected.
Here are a few key considerations for credit unions:
Financial regulators (including the NCUA, state credit union regulators, and agencies like the FFIEC and CFPB) are continually raising the bar for cybersecurity oversight.
The NCUA has made cybersecurity a top supervisory priority, emphasizing that credit unions must implement strong access controls (like MFA for all users), vendor oversight, and treat cybersecurity as an enterprise risk.
The NCUA's regulations (Part 748) explicitly require credit unions to protect the security and confidentiality of member records and guard against unauthorized access. That responsibility extends to cloud systems, such as M365.
You need to enforce robust controls and demonstrate them.
ABT's approach ensures that critical security measures (MFA, data encryption, least-privilege admin roles, etc.) are in place, continuously monitored, and documented. Your tenant is configured and monitored against benchmarks like GLBA guidelines, FFIEC cybersecurity frameworks, and NCUA exam expectations.
When an examiner asks, "How do you protect member information in Office 365?" or "Show me that all users have multi-factor authentication," you can provide clear evidence in seconds.
Smart licensing through ABT keeps you ahead of regulatory demands, not scrambling to catch up.
Credit unions have unique work patterns:
A generic security setup won't account for these scenarios, and when security doesn't fit reality, people find workarounds.
We understand these workflows and build them into your Microsoft 365 configuration.
For example, we tailor Conditional Access policies to handle branch network conditions (so if the branch network goes down, employees can securely connect through alternate means without getting locked out) and third-party vendor access (allowing a trusted outside loan processor to reach a specific SharePoint site with extra MFA, while blocking them from everything else).
If your credit union participates in shared branching or has roaming member service representatives, we'll ensure they can authenticate securely from different locations.
We also enable secure BYOD for board members or volunteers who use personal tablets to access meeting packets, utilizing app protection policies to ensure they don't struggle with complex logins, while keeping your data secure.
The result: policies that fit your business, not fight it.
For instance, one financial services organization emailed monthly reports to an external auditor. Rather than forbid it (which would have driven staff to personal email, a significant security risk), we helped them set up secure guest access in Teams with automatic expiration. This improved security and made the process easier.
Understanding credit union operations means we secure workflows without breaking them.
In many organizations (credit unions included) top executives or veteran employees sometimes get exceptions to IT rules. Perhaps a CEO refuses to give up an old device or wants to bypass a security step for convenience. Or an executive might hold two roles and require additional administrative privileges.
While understandable, these exceptions can become huge vulnerabilities. Attackers often target accounts with elevated access or weaker security measures.
We've encountered, for instance, a financial institution CEO who was allowed to skip VPN and MFA when traveling. That seemed okay until hackers accessed their email on the hotel's Wi-Fi.
Our approach: any necessary exception is carefully scoped, approved, and automatically reviewed on schedule.
If the CEO requires an exemption (for instance, for their phone), we ensure that compensating controls, such as monitored login alerts on that account, are implemented and obtain written approval that's revisited periodically—no permanent free passes.
Exceptions are documented and revisited to ensure they don't become silent holes in your defenses.
With ABT, VIPs can still have a great user experience without creating a security blind spot. In fact, using features like Conditional Access policies combined with modern auth, we can often satisfy the executive's underlying need (convenience) without exception.
For example, we helped one financial institution's CFO who disliked the authenticator app by switching them to a FIDO2 security key. They found it easier than typing passwords, and it actually improved security.
Our familiarity with common executive pushbacks enables us to find a secure solution that typically satisfies everyone.
Credit unions spend considerable time proving they're secure to regulators, auditors, cyber insurance companies, and business partners. Meanwhile, boards are asking detailed cybersecurity questions, given their fiduciary responsibility.
You need a way to communicate your security posture in business terms. However, Microsoft Secure Score and technical audit findings are often too detailed for most board reports.
That's where ABT's Guardian insights come in. We translate tech jargon into plain business language.
Instead of telling your board, "Our Azure AD Identity Protection risk score is Medium due to 3 user risk alerts," you can say, "Last month, 2 employee accounts had suspicious logins, but our security system caught and remediated them. Here's the report. Also, 100% of our users are now on MFA."
Instead of an abstract score, you'll have specifics, such as "MFA: 100% of users enforced" or "Admin roles: 2 Global Admins, both with MFA and just-in-time access enabled."
This makes it easier to satisfy examiners and reassure your board (and by extension, your members) that you're on top of security.
We often hear clients say that after engaging ABT, their board meetings on IT risk went from uncomfortable grillings ("Are we sure we're secure? I heard about another institution getting hacked...") to confident reviews ("We have an external partner monitoring our Microsoft 365, and here are our current risk metrics. All under control.").
In other words, we turn licensing into a governance advantage, providing you with the reports and confidence to demonstrate to anyone who asks that you're doing things right.
In short, your Microsoft 365 license should be a lever for productivity and compliance, not a wildcard.
This is especially true in highly regulated environments, such as credit unions, where the cost of a misconfigured setting isn't just an IT issue—it could become a legal, financial, or reputational crisis.
If a misconfiguration led to a member data breach, you'd face regulators, potential fines, and loss of member trust. If an audit reveals that you didn't enforce encryption on customer data, that constitutes a compliance violation.
The stakes are high, which is exactly why ABT's model incorporates the guardrails that credit unions need.
We handle the heavy lifting to keep your M365 environment within those guardrails, so you can focus on serving your members and growing your organization, without worrying that Office 365 or Teams might pose a security risk.
If you're evaluating your Microsoft 365 licensing (whether renewing or switching providers), assess how well your current approach covers security and compliance basics.
Here's a quick 10-point checklist to ensure your credit union isn't exposed:
What percentage of our users have MFA fully enforced?
Don't accept "MFA is enabled for everyone." Check how many have completed enrollment and are required to use it on every login. This includes all employees, executives, and external accounts.
If it's not 100%, that's a red flag. If you don't know the number, that's a bigger red flag.
Do any executives or IT admins bypass MFA or other security policies? If yes, why, and is that risk justified?
Exceptions should be minimalrequire and well-documented (like a "break glass" admin account that's locked away). "Because the CEO doesn't like it" isn't a good reason. It just paints a target on the CEO's account.
Is legacy (basic) auth still enabled for any users or services in our tenant?
Legacy protocols (like old POP/IMAP, SMTP Basic, etc.) are a known weakness. 99% of password-spray attacks use legacy auth. Microsoft deprecated these protocols for a reason.
If they're still enabled, disable them or require modern auth ASAP. This is low-hanging fruit for security and something examiners will likely check.
How many Global Administrators (and similar high-privilege roles) do we have in M365, and do those accounts have extra protections?
We recommend as few as possible (ideally 2-4 for a mid-size org), and every admin must use MFA for every login (no exceptions), preferably with additional protections like Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) or hardware tokens.
If you have more admins than you can name offhand, audit and reduce that number.
Do we have device compliance policies in place (for PCs and mobile devices), and what percentage of devices meet those policies? For example, are all laptops encrypted and running up-to-date OS and AV? If employees access email on personal phones, do we require a PIN and block jailbroken devices? Unmanaged or non-compliant devices are a common blind spot that attackers exploit. Auditors will also ask how you prevent data loss on personal devices. Ensure you have a well-reasoned response.
Who monitors Microsoft 365 security alerts and logs, especially after hours? If a critical alert fires at 2 AM (e.g., an impossible travel sign-in or malware detection), will someone notice it and take action? Or will it sit until Monday morning? If you rely solely on manual processes or periodic reviews, you're at risk. Cyber incidents don't wait for business hours.
If we experience a Microsoft 365 service outage or major issue, can our support partner (or our team) escalate the issue directly to Microsoft for expedited support? Or are we stuck submitting a portal ticket and waiting? The difference could mean hours of downtime. Ensure you have a clear and efficient path to high-level Microsoft support when you need it. That's part of what you're paying for in a good partnership.
If an auditor or regulator were to ask us for proof tomorrow that our M365 tenant is secure and compliant, how quickly could we provide it? Do we have reports or a dashboard showing our security posture (MFA coverage, recent incident responses, system configurations)? Or would we be scrambling to manually retrieve information? Being audit-ready means having that information readily available.
User Experience Feedback: What are we hearing from our users about Microsoft 365? Complaints like "I keep getting locked out," "Teams is slow when I'm working from home," or "I hate that IT controls my personal phone because of email" can signal misconfigurations or areas needing fine-tuning. Don't dismiss these as whining. A poor user experience with security often leads to workarounds that undermine security. The goal is to minimize friction while enforcing policies.
Beyond per-license price, have we evaluated what we're spending on Microsoft 365-related issues and management?
Look at the last quarter or year and add up:
When you factor those in, are you truly saving money with a bare-bones licensing approach? Or would a managed license model (where many tasks and costs are prevented or included) reduce your overall expenses?
Focus on the total cost of operations, not just the cost of subscriptions.
If your current provider or setup can't answer these questions confidently, or if the answers reveal gaps, it's a strong sign that a more managed licensing partner (like ABT) could save you money and headaches.
This checklist aligns directly with weaknesses we've identified in many credit union Microsoft 365 environments. By asking these questions, you're conducting the same due diligence you would for any critical vendor.
And regulators expect exactly that: the NCUA's guidance on third-party risk management makes clear you must ensure vendors meet your security standards. One way to achieve this is by selecting partners who provide the kind of data and service outlined above in a transparent manner.
Use this checklist as a conversation starter with your team or any potential CSP. If you decide to talk with ABT, we'll be happy to walk you through each item and show you exactly how we address them.
The goal is straightforward: ensure you're not leaving easy wins on the table when it comes to securing and optimizing Microsoft 365.
Sometimes the difference between "license only" and "license with support" becomes crystal clear in one incident. Here's a composite example from the field that hits close to home for financial institutions:
A 180-user financial services organization believed its Microsoft 365 tenant was in decent shape. They had MFA "enabled for everyone" and a global Conditional Access policy requiring devices to be compliant (up-to-date and encrypted) for access.
On paper, they'd checked all the essential boxes.
When they partnered with ABT, our first Guardian Security Insights report painted a different picture.
It flagged 14 users listed as "MFA enabled" who'd never completed registration, including two external vendor admins with tenant access. It also revealed a Conditional Access exception for the CFO's device, allowing it to bypass compliance.
These were latent risks that had been hiding under the radar. The IT manager was stunned. They had no idea about these gaps because the prior reseller never mentioned them, and they didn't know where to look.
Within a day, we helped fix those issues. We guided the 14 users through proper MFA setup and removed the CFO's exception after explaining why it was dangerous and implementing a secure alternative.
Two weeks later, one of those previously unprotected vendor admin accounts experienced a serious incident: an "impossible travel" login, just like the scenario we described earlier.
Someone logged in using that vendor's credentials from overseas, indicating the account was likely compromised. Typically, this could've been a disaster. An external admin account with weak or no MFA, accessed by a malicious actor, is a perfect recipe for a breach.
But thanks to ABT's MXDR, our team caught the suspicious sign-in immediately (in the middle of the night) and froze the account. By morning, we'd worked with the organization to reset the credentials and secure the account.
The attacker never got the chance to do anything beyond that one login.
The CFO, who had undergone that risky bypass procedure on his device before our engagement, was never affected or even aware that anything had happened. Business continued as usual the next day, with most employees not knowing a breach had just been averted.
In the "before ABT" scenario, the organization likely would have missed the MFA gap too late, learning of it only after a breach or audit. The compromised vendor admin account would have led to a major security incident, with outsiders potentially accessing customer data, emails, or worse. It could have resulted in customer notification, damage to reputation, and a devastating exam report.
In the "with ABT" scenario, those hidden risks were identified and closed proactively, and a potential breach was stopped in its tracks. Countless IT hours of emergency response were saved, and leadership slept better knowing someone had their back.
The cost of going the "cheap" route could have been a multi-thousand-dollar incident response and possibly a compliance violation cited in their next regulatory exam. Instead, with ABT's managed license approach, they gained a safety net and operational clarity: insurance and optimization bundled with their license.
This story mirrors what we hear repeatedly from financial institutions: "We thought we were fine until we realized what we weren't monitoring. After partnering with you, it's night and day."
Smart licensing isn't theoretical. It can literally prevent disaster and improve daily operations in tangible ways.
In the rapidly evolving world of cloud IT, having the right partner is more crucial than ever, particularly in the financial services sector. Microsoft 365 isn't set-and-forget. It's an evolving ecosystem that needs active management and informed oversight.
Here's why ABT stands out as the partner of choice for credit unions when it comes to Microsoft 365 licensing:
Tier-1 CSP Partner: We're a Direct (Tier-1) Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider. Microsoft maintains strict standards for partners at this level: support capabilities, technical expertise, and customer satisfaction.
As a result, we work directly with Microsoft. No distributors or middle layers. You get faster escalations and more reliable service when it counts.
We're big enough to have clout with Microsoft support, but focused enough to give you personalized, boutique service.
Many resellers are actually Tier-2 sellers who go through aggregators, meaning you're three steps removed from Microsoft when an issue strikes. With ABT, it's a straight line, which, in our experience, can significantly reduce resolution times during an outage or critical incident.
For example, if you're eager to roll out the latest Microsoft 365 innovations, such as Copilot AI or advanced Teams collaboration features, we won't say "No, too risky." Instead, we'll help you get your data governance and access controls in order, so you can adopt those tools with confidence.
We love seeing our credit union clients leverage new technologies like AI-driven member insights or Power Platform automation to streamline back-office tasks, and our job is to ensure the security groundwork is solid so you can do that without introducing new risks.
The result: you stay on the cutting edge in terms of digital services for your members, without exposing their data or violating compliance.
Lastly, consider the timing.
It's 2025: the cyber threat landscape is more intense than ever (ransomware, phishing, and fraud schemes targeting credit unions are all on the rise), and regulators are enforcing standards more strictly.
At the same time, the cloud licensing market is undergoing significant changes. Microsoft's New Commerce Experience (NCE) has altered how licenses are managed (with more rigid annual commitments, for instance), and many smaller resellers are struggling to keep up with support and billing changes. Some are consolidating or exiting the market entirely.
In this climate, being tempted by the lowest bidder for your Microsoft 365 licenses is a risky proposition. As we've shown, the lowest upfront price often comes with hidden costs and weaker service, and you end up paying in other ways.
With cyber threats and compliance pressures rising, this is not the time to have the "cheapest" provider holding the keys to your kingdom.
And make no mistake: Microsoft 365 is a set of keys to your kingdom. It contains your emails, files, Teams chats, user identities, and even your phone system for some organizations.
You want a partner who is accountable for outcomes, not just there to process a transaction.
The ABT difference is that we measure our success by your outcomes – your uptime, your security incident count (the lower the better), your audit results, your user satisfaction – not just by how many licenses we sold this quarter.
We're a long-term partner, aiming to turn Microsoft 365 from a commodity into a catalyst for better IT and business performance at your credit union.
Stop treating Microsoft 365 licenses like just another line item on the budget.
With the right approach, those licenses can deliver far more value and peace of mind for your credit union. The right licensing partner can transform Microsoft 365 from a basic productivity suite into a fully managed, secure, and optimized platform tailored to your institution's needs.
Next steps: Consider ABT's no-obligation review of Microsoft 365. We can perform a Guardian Security Insights assessment on your current environment. In just a couple of hours, we'll analyze your M365 configuration and security posture, providing you with concrete findings.
You'll be able to:
Regardless of whether you switch your licensing to us, you'll walk away with actionable insights and a clearer understanding of your Microsoft 365 risk and optimization opportunities. We're confident the data will speak for itself.
Same Microsoft 365. Less risk, more productivity, lower cost. That's the ABT promise.
For credit unions entrusted with members' finances and data, this approach transforms Microsoft 365 from a potential liability into a strategic advantage.
Let's make your Microsoft 365 licensing work harder for you: protecting members' data, meeting regulatory requirements, and empowering employees.
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