Microsoft 365 Security Assessment Checklist for UAE Organizations

01

Start with identity and privileged access

• Inventory user, guest, service and workload identities.
• Review privileged roles, standing access and role-assignment processes.
• Verify emergency-access accounts and their monitoring.
• Review authentication methods, MFA coverage and legacy authentication exposure.
• Assess identity-risk and sign-in-risk controls where licensing supports them.

02

Review Conditional Access as a policy system, not a list of rules

• Map policy coverage to users, admins, guests, devices, locations and applications.
• Identify gaps, exclusions and overlapping policies.
• Check report-only, staged rollout and emergency-access patterns.
• Review session controls, device requirements and risk conditions.
• Document rollback and change ownership for high-impact policy changes.

03

Connect device, endpoint, email and collaboration controls

• Review Intune enrollment, compliance and security baselines.
• Assess Defender for Endpoint and Defender XDR signal coverage.
• Review email and collaboration protection, anti-phishing and malicious-content controls.
• Check how device health influences access decisions.
• Verify incident ownership and investigation workflows across Microsoft security portals.

04

Assess data protection and monitoring

• Review Purview information-protection and DLP controls where required and licensed.
• Check audit, sign-in and security-log retention needed for investigations and assurance.
• Review alert routing, SIEM/SOC integration and ownership of high-severity events.
• Validate that important configuration changes and exceptions are recorded.

05

The assessment output should support action

• Current-state findings with evidence.
• Risk-ranked remediation actions.
• Named owners and realistic sequencing.
• Dependencies on licensing, device management or business process.
• Change, pilot and rollback considerations.
• A repeatable baseline for reassessment and continual improvement.

06

Secure Score is useful context, not the entire assessment

Secure Score can help identify configuration opportunities, but a meaningful assessment also considers business risk, user impact, licensing, operational ownership, exceptions and whether controls are actually monitored and maintained after implementation.