Microsoft has announced a new feature called Microsoft Secure Score for Devices, which applies to the company’s Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Thanks to Microsoft Secure Score for Devices, the company’s endpoint security platform now helps IT admins secure and identify vulnerabilities in network devices.
Microsoft Defender ATP now covers network devices
While Microsoft Defender ATP examines the network devices to keep network security threats at bay, Microsoft Secure Score for Devices determines the overall state of enterprise network security.
In its updated support document, Microsoft explains:
“Your score for devices is visible in the Threat & Vulnerability Management dashboard of the Microsoft Defender Security Center. A higher Microsoft Secure Score for Devices means your endpoints are more resilient from cybersecurity threat attacks.”
Configuration score, which is now part of Microsoft’s Threat & Vulnerability Management, applies to devices across categories such as Network, accounts, operating system, application, and security controls.
Microsoft Secure Score for Devices card consists of data such as misconfigured assets, configurations to vulnerabilities, best practice configuration benchmarks, and changes of security control configuration state from all assets.
Right now, it supports configurations set via Group Policy.
“Due to the current partial Intune support, configurations which might have been set through Intune might show up as misconfigured.”
However, IT admins can verify the actual configuration status in case your organization’s secure configuration management is handled by Intune.
Enterprise network security recommendations
Enterprise network security can be enhanced by addressing and fixing security threats and issues that show up in the security recommendations list, thus improving Microsoft Secure Score for Devices. From the Threat & Vulnerability Management dashboard, view the list of recommendations by categories. You can also view all security recommendations by clearing the search field.
Once you select remediation options for each recommendation, you can understand the context of the issue, in addition to your future course of action. You can also review the Microsoft Secure Score for Devices card on the dashboard. The number of security controls recommendations will decrease.
Recently, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) extended its support to the new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) scanner that prevents hardware and firmware-level attacks.
