Entra ID Tenant Hardening —
Conditional Access, PIM, and Evidence
Fixed-fee Entra ID (Azure AD) hardening for organizations preparing for SOC 2, HIPAA, or cyber insurance renewal. Conditional Access baseline, privileged identity cleanup, legacy auth shutdown, MFA enforcement, and a written evidence package that survives audit. Microsoft AI Cloud Partner.
Eight Control Domains, One Evidence Package
Every hardening engagement covers the same eight domains — sized and sequenced to your tenant, personas, and compliance obligations.
Conditional Access Baseline
Design and deploy a tiered Conditional Access policy set — MFA enforcement, device compliance, risk-based sign-in, session controls, and break-glass exceptions — mapped to your personas and compliance obligations.
Privileged Identity Management (PIM)
Remove standing Global Admin, Exchange Admin, and SharePoint Admin. Configure PIM just-in-time elevation, approval workflows, access reviews, and audit logging so every admin action is eligible, approved, and recorded.
Legacy Auth & Basic Auth Shutdown
Inventory legacy auth usage, identify SMTP AUTH mailboxes, hunt POP/IMAP connections, and shut down basic auth with a controlled cutover — the single highest-leverage move for stopping password-spray and AiTM attacks.
MFA & Passwordless Enforcement
Phishing-resistant MFA via Microsoft Authenticator number matching, FIDO2 keys for admin roles, Windows Hello for Business rollout, and elimination of SMS fallback for privileged personas.
Identity Signal & Log Retention
Stream Entra sign-in logs, audit logs, and provisioning logs to long-term storage (Azure Monitor / Sentinel / your SIEM). Verify log retention meets SOC 2, HIPAA, and cyber insurance requirements — typically 365 days minimum.
Guest & B2B Governance
Audit external guests, clean up stale B2B relationships, set cross-tenant access policies, restrict consent to approved apps only, and enforce re-verification cadence so your external collaboration is governed, not sprawling.
App Registrations & Service Principals
Inventory every OAuth app, service principal, and managed identity. Revoke over-privileged consent, rotate secrets to managed identities or federated credentials, and document every legitimate integration with an owner and review date.
Audit Evidence & Runbook
Written hardening evidence package — Conditional Access policy inventory, PIM configuration, MFA coverage report, legacy auth attestation, and a living runbook for re-attestation each quarter or before audit cycles.
From Discovery to Evidence in 2–4 Weeks
Predictable fixed-fee engagement with a written deliverable at every stage.
Tenant Assessment
Read-only discovery — Conditional Access inventory, privileged role census, legacy auth usage, MFA coverage by persona, guest population, and app consent audit. Secure Score and Identity Secure Score snapshot captured as baselines.
Hardening Plan & Change Windows
Documented hardening plan with risk-ranked changes, impact analysis for every persona, change windows aligned to business rhythms, and a communication plan for end users. Signed off by your IT leadership before any change.
Execute Hardening
Staged rollout — pilot group first, then phased enforcement. Conditional Access, PIM, legacy auth shutdown, MFA enforcement, guest cleanup, and app consent lockdown all deployed with monitoring at every stage.
Evidence & Handoff
Written evidence package — policy inventory, PIM configuration export, MFA attestation, legacy auth shutdown verification, and re-attestation runbook. Handoff to your team or continued management under ICS M365 Management.
Fixed-Fee. Written Scope. Audit-Ready Evidence.
Every Entra ID hardening engagement is fixed-fee with a written scope and deliverable before work starts. Organizations pursuing hardening as part of cyber insurance renewal or SOC 2 readiness typically see the investment return inside a single audit or insurance cycle.
Microsoft Security & Identity Practice
M365 Tenant Assessment
Broader fixed-fee audit across identity, data, collaboration, security, and compliance. Common starting point before scoping hardening engagements.
Learn More →Microsoft 365 Management
Managed and co-managed M365 operations — keep your hardened baseline hardened with ongoing policy tuning, reviews, and drift detection.
Learn More →CyberSecurity
Full security practice — Defender, Sentinel, SOC operations, and compliance monitoring across the Microsoft security stack.
Learn More →Entra ID Hardening — FAQ
What's the difference between Entra ID hardening and Microsoft Secure Score?+
Secure Score is Microsoft's self-assessment tool — it points at gaps but doesn't close them. Entra ID hardening is the execution work that actually closes those gaps: deploying Conditional Access, removing standing admins, shutting down legacy auth, enforcing MFA, and producing audit evidence. Secure Score typically jumps 15–40 points during hardening, but the real value is the written evidence package that satisfies SOC 2, HIPAA, and cyber insurance requirements.
Will hardening break our users' experience?+
Not if it's staged properly. We pilot every Conditional Access policy against a small group before enforcing tenant-wide, build exception groups for break-glass scenarios, and align change windows to your business rhythm. The most disruptive single move — legacy auth shutdown — is done only after we've inventoried every dependency and given affected users (usually a handful of service mailboxes or legacy scanners) a migration path.
How long does an Entra ID hardening engagement take?+
Standard engagements run 2–4 weeks depending on tenant size and complexity. Smaller tenants (under 500 users) can typically complete in 2 weeks. Larger tenants with heavy app ecosystems, complex guest populations, or strict change-window constraints run 4 weeks. Emergency hardening post-incident or in response to a cyber insurance finding can compress to 1–2 weeks with dedicated engagement.
We just had a cyber insurance renewal with MFA and PIM findings — can you help?+
Yes. Cyber insurance remediation is one of the most common triggers for this engagement. We can produce the written evidence package — MFA coverage attestation, PIM configuration export, legacy auth shutdown verification, and Conditional Access inventory — that insurers and their security teams require for renewal at favorable terms.
Do you work with existing admin partners, or do you take over identity management?+
Both. We frequently run hardening engagements as a fixed-fee project for clients who have a separate managed services partner, handing off the hardened configuration with evidence. Other clients bundle hardening with ICS Microsoft 365 Management so we own identity long-term. Either works.
What Microsoft licenses do we need for this work?+
Conditional Access and basic PIM require Entra ID P1 (bundled with M365 Business Premium, M365 E3, and M365 E5). Advanced PIM with access reviews and approval workflows requires Entra ID P2 (bundled with M365 E5). If you're on E3 without P2, we often pair hardening with a licensing review — sometimes targeted P2 add-ons for admin roles are more cost-effective than tenant-wide E5. See our Microsoft 365 Licensing page.
How much does Entra ID hardening cost?+
Fixed-fee based on tenant size and complexity. Every proposal includes a written scope and deliverable before work starts. Organizations pursuing hardening as part of cyber insurance renewal or SOC 2 readiness typically see the investment return within one audit or insurance cycle. Contact us for a written scope.
Can you help with Entra ID hardening as part of a broader tenant assessment?+
Yes. Many clients start with a broader M365 Tenant Assessment — a fixed-fee audit across identity, data, collaboration, security, and compliance — and then scope hardening engagements from the findings. See our M365 Tenant Assessment page for the combined starting point.
Ready to Harden Your Entra ID Tenant?
Fixed-fee engagement, written evidence package, and a hardened baseline in 2–4 weeks. Ideal for organizations preparing for cyber insurance renewal, SOC 2 readiness, or post-incident hardening.