Help CenterMicrosoft 365 (M365) has become a core platform for organizations worldwide, offering powerful tools for productivity, collaboration, and data management. However, like any complex cloud environment, M365 is susceptible to misconfigurations that can lead to security vulnerabilities, data breaches, and compliance failures. Many of these misconfigurations are common and avoidable, yet they remain a critical risk for organizations that don’t actively monitor or review their security settings.
Here are the top 5 most common misconfigurations in M365, how to avoid them, and how Griffin31 can help you secure your environment by identifying and prioritizing the most critical issues.
1. Weak or Non-Existent Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
The Risk:
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is one of the most effective ways to prevent unauthorized access to your M365 accounts. However, many organizations either fail to enable MFA across all accounts or only enforce it for select users, leaving critical accounts vulnerable to credential theft and phishing attacks.
How to Avoid It:
- Enable MFA across all user accounts, including administrators and privileged users.
- Regularly review MFA enforcement policies to ensure all newly created accounts are properly secured.
- Use conditional access policies to enforce MFA based on user roles, location, or device type.
How Griffin31 Can Help:
Griffin31 continuously monitors your security configurations and can quickly identify where MFA is not enabled, prioritizing those accounts for remediation. The tool presents these misconfigurations alongside a detailed assessment of their impact, allowing you to address critical security gaps faster and with minimal disruption.
2. Over-Permissioned Users and Excessive Access Rights
The Risk:
Granting users excessive access to files, applications, or administrative roles can expose your M365 environment to unnecessary risk. Over-permissioning often occurs when users are given access they don’t need for their job roles, leading to increased risk if these accounts are compromised.
How to Avoid It:
- Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to ensure users only have the access they need to perform their duties.
- Regularly audit user permissions to identify and remove excessive access rights.
- Use Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) to provide just-in-time privileged access, limiting the duration of elevated permissions.
How Griffin31 Can Help:
Griffin31 scans for over-permissioned users and flags accounts with unnecessary access to sensitive data or administrative privileges. It helps you prioritize remediation efforts by showing which permissions pose the greatest risk, ensuring that you can quickly reduce your attack surface.
3. Misconfigured Sharing and Collaboration Settings
The Risk:
M365’s collaboration features, including OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft Teams, make it easy to share files internally and externally. However, if sharing settings are misconfigured—such as allowing “Anyone with the link” access or permitting external sharing by default—sensitive data can be exposed to unauthorized individuals.
How to Avoid It:
- Limit external sharing by default and only allow it for specific, approved scenarios.
- Use sensitivity labels and data loss prevention (DLP) policies to classify and protect sensitive documents.
- Regularly review shared files and folders to ensure no sensitive information is inadvertently exposed.
How Griffin31 Can Help:
Griffin31 provides visibility into misconfigured sharing settings, flagging files and folders that are shared too broadly or in ways that violate your organization’s security policies. It also prioritizes these misconfigurations based on the sensitivity of the data involved, helping you focus on the highest-risk areas first.
4. Lack of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies
The Risk:
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies are essential for identifying and blocking the unauthorized sharing of sensitive information such as personally identifiable information (PII), financial data, or intellectual property. However, many organizations either fail to implement these policies or configure them inadequately, leaving sensitive data vulnerable.
How to Avoid It:
- Set up DLP policies in Microsoft 365 to identify, monitor, and protect sensitive data.
- Apply DLP policies across all communication channels, including email, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams.
- Regularly update and refine DLP policies to account for new types of sensitive data and evolving business needs.
How Griffin31 Can Help:
Griffin31 not only detects where DLP policies are absent or misconfigured but also highlights areas where sensitive data is at risk. With Griffin31’s priority-based recommendations, you can quickly implement or adjust DLP policies to protect your most critical data assets without affecting regular business operations.
5. Unmonitored Security Configuration Changes
The Risk:
Microsoft 365 environments are dynamic, and configurations can change frequently as new users are added, policies are updated, or permissions are altered. Without continuous monitoring, unintentional or malicious changes to security settings can leave your environment exposed, potentially allowing unauthorized access or data leaks.
How to Avoid It:
- Implement continuous monitoring of all security configurations to ensure no unauthorized changes go undetected.
- Set up alerts for critical configuration changes, such as disabled MFA, altered conditional access policies, or changes to administrative roles.
- Regularly review security logs and audit trails to ensure compliance with security best practices.
How Griffin31 Can Help:
Griffin31 excels at monitoring real-time security configuration changes across your M365 environment. It alerts you instantly when critical security settings are altered, providing insights into who made the changes and their potential impact. Griffin31 also helps you prioritize which changes to address first based on their risk level, allowing you to remediate issues faster and prevent security incidents before they occur.
Why Griffin31 is the Best Solution for Managing M365 Misconfigurations
Griffin31 goes beyond merely identifying misconfigurations—it helps you prioritize issues based on impact and ease of remediation. With detailed insights into user impact, you can close security gaps without disrupting business operations. Unlike Microsoft’s Secure Score, which might present a single issue that takes months to resolve, Griffin31 highlights quick wins that allow you to address multiple smaller but equally important issues quickly, improving your security posture faster.
Key advantages of Griffin31 include:
- Detailed user impact assessments before you make changes.
- Built-in compliance tracking, ensuring that your security fixes align with regulatory requirements.
- Project-based prioritization with sprints and stories to help you focus on critical security domains and attack vectors.
- Quick wins that allow you to resolve misconfigurations with minimal effort and user disruption, helping you secure your environment in a fraction of the time.
Conclusion
Misconfigurations in Microsoft 365 can lead to severe security risks, but with the right tools and processes, these risks are entirely avoidable. Griffin31 offers a proactive solution by continuously monitoring for misconfigurations, providing real-time alerts, and helping you prioritize fixes based on the potential impact. By addressing these common misconfigurations, you can significantly strengthen your M365 security posture and protect your organization from emerging threats.