You’ve deployed the Microsoft Defender XDR suite. You’re licensed. Your team is doing their best. But without an independent audit, it’s genuinely difficult to know whether your configuration is working as intended, which risks are sitting unresolved, and whether the licences you’re already paying for are pulling their full weight. CloudGuard’s Microsoft Defender XDR assessment gives you a clear, expert-reviewed picture of your security posture, and a prioritised roadmap to act on it.Â
These are the situations that typically bring organisations to us and if any of them sounds familiar, an assessment is probably the right next step.
Microsoft licenses like Microsoft 365 Business Premium and E5 include powerful security tools. But licences don’t configure themselves. Without proper deployment, you’re paying for capability that isn’t running, and your risk exposure stays exactly where it was before the upgrade.
The Microsoft Secure Score is a useful signal that highlights your organisation’s security posture, but it can plateau, fluctuate, or surface recommendations that don’t reflect your actual risk profile. Without context, it’s hard to separate the high-impact actions from the noise, or explain the number to a board or stakeholders.
Unresolved alerts accumulate. Threat analytics surface findings your team may not have capacity to fully investigate. Without a structured review, it’s difficult to know whether you’re missing something material, or just dealing with noise.
It’s worth knowing the baseline before you make a change. An independent assessment gives you a credible, evidence-based view of your current posture, so any future decision is informed, not reactive.
Each area we look at in the Microsoft Defender XDR Assessment is reviewed against current Microsoft best practice and scored by the impact it has on your specific environment.
High-risk devices and applications identified,  so you know exactly what’s dragging your posture down.Â
Priority actions identified across Identity, Devices, Apps and Data, sequenced by what moves the needle most.Â
 Unused and underlicensed capabilities surfaced, you’re likely already paying for protection you haven’t fully enabled.
Email controls are validated against current best practice.
Detection gaps surfaced, noise filtered, response priorities clear.
Device vulnerabilities ranked by real business impact, not just severity score.Â
Here’s how a Microsoft Defender XDR Assessment works from first conversation to final roadmap.
We align on your environment, priorities, and any areas of specific concern. You tell us what's keeping you up at night; we frame the assessment around it.
You provide read-only access to your Microsoft 365 tenant. We use native Microsoft tooling — nothing is installed, nothing is changed, and there is zero disruption to your environment or your users.Â
Our consultants conduct a structured review across all six assessment areas. Findings are scored by likelihood, impact, and business relevance.
You receive a clear, tenant-specific report covering findings, prioritised recommendations, and an executive summary you can share with leadership or use to support budget conversations. A formal handover call walks you through everything.Â
CloudGuard brings organisations deep Microsoft Defender XDR expertise, and if you choose to act on what we find, it’s the same team who already knows your environment.
Our Microsoft Defender XDR Assessment works best when the conditions are right. Here’s how to know if this is the right engagement for where you are.
You’re on Microsoft 365 E5 or alternative license add-ons that cover the Defender XDR suite, but haven’t had a formal review, and aren’t certain your configuration reflects current best practice.
Your Secure Score has plateaued or surfaced recommendations you don’t know how to prioritise.
Finance or leadership is questioning licence value, or you’re evaluating alternative security tooling or MDR providers, either way, you need a defensible, credible baseline.
CloudGuard is embedded in the cybersecurity industry – recognised, accredited, and trusted to protect real organisations every day.
Six areas: active alerts and threat analytics, device vulnerability analysis, Secure Score posture, high-risk asset identification, email and phishing policy review, and a full Defender XDR capability audit. Read-only access throughout, nothing is changed, nothing installed, no impact on your users. The Assess is purely diagnostic. If you want changes made afterwards, that’s our Accelerate engagement.Â
Internal teams are closest to the environment, which makes it genuinely harder to see it clearly. An external review provides independent validation that configurations are working as intended, flags drift since initial setup, and gives your team a defensible, documented baseline. It’s not a reflection on what your team has done, it’s the kind of external check that competent security programmes build in as standard practice.Â
Three to five business days from access being granted. Your involvement is minimal: a short scoping call at the start, read-only access to your M365 tenant, and a handover session at the end. No prior preparation required, we handle everything in between.Â
A written report covering all findings, a prioritised recommendations list, and an executive summary you can share with leadership. The roadmap is sequenced by impact and effort, you know what to do first, not just what’s wrong. If you want CloudGuard to implement the findings, our ACCELERATE engagement picks up directly from where the ASSESS leaves off.Â
Secure Score is a useful directional indicator, but it doesn’t surface unresolved alerts, flag capability gaps across the full XDR suite, or provide the expert judgement needed to prioritise action in the context of your specific organisation. An assessment translates raw data into risk-ranked recommendations tailored to your environment,  that’s the part that’s difficult to replicate internally without dedicated time and specialist experience.Â
The Defender XDR Assessment is fixed-price at ÂŁ3,598. That covers the full six-area assessment, a written findings report, a prioritised remediation roadmap, an executive summary, and a formal handover call to walk you through everything. No surprises. If you want to act on the findings, our Defender XDR Accelerate engagement is a separate, fixed-price engagement priced on scope.
We’ve designed our cybersecurity assessments to meet your team exactly where it is, whether you need a read-only review of what you already have, or a hands-on engagement where we make the changes for you. Fixed pricing, expert-led, and no surprises.
Read-only technical review of what you already have. Our experts audit existing policies, configurations and controls, compare them to best practice, and hand back a prioritised report and remediation roadmap.
Hands-on engagement where we configure, deploy or adopt a technology or security practice. We make the changes, policies are tuned, baselines applied, capabilities switched on.
Your Defender environment audited, analysed, and reported, with a prioritised roadmap your team can act on immediately.Â
