What is the CIS Microsoft 365 Benchmark?

More context

Microsoft 365 concentrates identity, email, file sharing, and collaboration in one tenant, so a single misconfiguration class (weak authentication, permissive external sharing, missing mail protections) exposes multiple services at once. The benchmark works through each admin surface so hardening is systematic rather than dependent on which portal an administrator happens to review.

Tenant settings change as administrators adjust sharing, licensing, and collaboration policies, which makes drift a persistent risk in Microsoft 365. Continuous agentless scanning with drift detection catches a loosened sharing policy or disabled protection when it changes, and CISGuard maps results to NIST 800-53, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 for audit evidence.