New security solutions to help secure small and medium businesses

The commercialization of cybercrime has led to an increase in the frequency and sophistication of attacks on small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Business interruption is a top concern, especially from a cyber-attack such as ransomware (Allianz Risk Barometer 2022). For smaller businesses this type of impact can be hard to manage with potential financial, operational, and customer trust implications.

Today we’re pleased to announce the general availability of Microsoft Defender for Business for Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers, bringing cross-platform endpoint security capabilities to many small business customers worldwide.

Because we know how important partners are in helping small businesses, we are also announcing the general availability of Microsoft 365 Lighthouse which delivers a unified portal for multi-customer management to help partners simplify operations and increase profitability. 

Microsoft Defender for Business now rolling out to new and existing Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers

At Microsoft Ignite 2021 we introduced Microsoft Defender for Business, specially built to bring enterprise-grade endpoint security to businesses with up to 300 employees, in a solution that is easy-to-use and cost-effective. Defender for Business goes beyond traditional antivirus and delivers threat and vulnerability management, attack surface reduction, next-generation protection, endpoint detection and response, and automated investigation and remediation capabilities in a single solution. Review our documentation for more detail.

Defender for Business has started rolling out to existing Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers. No action or additional transactions are required for existing customers, the service will become available within the Endpoint section of the Microsoft 365 Defender security portal over the next few weeks. For new Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers, you will see Defender for Business available immediately.

Defender for Business makes Microsoft 365 Business Premium an even more compelling offer for small and medium businesses

Microsoft 365 Business Premium is an all-in-one productivity and security offering, designed to help SMBs run their business in the new hybrid work world, with peace of mind. It brings together your favorite collaboration solutions like Microsoft Teams and Office along with comprehensive security – including Defender for Office 365 for protection against phishing and other cyberthreats, Microsoft Intune for managing devices, Azure AD Premium Plan 1 for identity protection and helping enable secure remote access, Azure Information protection and DLP for data protection for sensitive data, Exchange Online Archiving, and much more. The addition of Defender for Business further strengthens Business Premium’s existing offering by adding cross-platform endpoint protection for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android, elevating endpoint security against sophisticated ransomware attacks through enterprise-grade technologies like Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Automated Investigation and Remediation. Microsoft 365 Business Premium provides SMBs an easy to use, comprehensive and cost-effective package, eliminating the need for managing multiple point solutions, saving time and money.

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse helps IT partners scale security for customers

Businesses often rely on trusted IT partners to keep their business secure, and a single partner typically manages these services for many customers. At Inspire 2021 we announced the preview of Microsoft 365 Lighthouse, a unified administration portal for managed service providers to help them scale security.

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse provides an aggregated view of customer environments across users, devices, and data and recommends minimum security baselines to help IT partners standardize their operations to achieve scale and profitability.

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse home aggregates threats, device compliance, and user alerts into a single location for managed service providers to gain efficiency with a view across customer environments without the need to manually log into each one.

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse is an IT Partner service only. If you are an IT Partner enrolled in the Cloud Solution Provider program and are managing customers with Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E3, or Microsoft Defender for Business subscriptions you can onboard their tenants into the Lighthouse portal.

Since launching preview we’ve been adding new capabilities to help improve security outcomes and drive operational efficiency for you. The latest updates for Microsoft 365 Lighthouse can be found in the What’s new in Microsoft 365 Lighthouse card on the homepage. They include:

• Improved tenant management experiences
• In-product customer email workflows to communicate with customers directly from Lighthouse
• Device compliance actions for multiple tenants
• Windows 365 monitoring and management
• Microsoft 365 E3 subscription tenants
• Tenant tagging and filtering for easier customer management
• Assign deployment steps to groups Azure AD group
• View Microsoft 365 Usage Data in Microsoft 365 Lighthouse
• Review Microsoft 365 Lighthouse actions via Audit Logs