Microsoft 365 Security Assessment

A Microsoft 365 Security Assessment is the fastest way to find out where your business is actually exposed. Chewing IT's assessment runs more than 95 critical security checks across the Microsoft 365 services your team relies on every day — Entra ID (Azure AD), Exchange Online, Intune, SharePoint and Teams — and measures your configuration against the benchmarks set by the Center for Internet Security (CIS) and the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

The result is a clear, written picture of your current security posture: what is configured correctly, what is leaving you open, and which fixes matter most. No jargon, no scare tactics — just a prioritised list of the gaps that attackers actually use.

Why workplace cyber security can't wait

Cybercrime is no longer something that only happens to big corporations. A survey by the NSW Small Business Commission found that one in nine small businesses had been the victim of a scam in the past 12 months — and that figure rises to one in seven for businesses based in regional NSW. Thirty per cent of small businesses reported being targeted by scams every month, a further 20 per cent every week, and 9 per cent every single day. For one in five victims, the financial loss topped $10,000.

For businesses on the Central Coast, in Newcastle and across the Hunter — all regional NSW — that data is a warning. You are statistically more likely to be hit than a comparable business in metropolitan Sydney, and far less likely to have an in-house IT team to catch it early.

The cyber threats facing your workplace

Most breaches don't begin with a sophisticated hack — they begin with an everyday action by a busy staff member. These are the threats we see most often inside Microsoft 365 environments:

• Phishing and business email compromise (BEC). A convincing email tricks a staff member into handing over a password or paying a fraudulent invoice. BEC is consistently one of the costliest attacks for Australian businesses.
• Ransomware. Malware encrypts your files and demands payment to release them. Without immutable, tested backups, a single click can take a business offline for days.
• Credential theft and weak identity controls. Re-used passwords and accounts without multi-factor authentication (MFA) let an attacker walk straight in. Identity is the new security perimeter.
• Misconfiguration and oversharing. SharePoint and OneDrive links shared "with anyone", legacy authentication left switched on, audit logging turned off — quiet gaps that accumulate over years.
• Unmanaged devices and former staff. A personal laptop with no protection, or the ex-employee account nobody disabled, is an open door straight into your data.

What the assessment actually checks

Our free Microsoft 365 Security Assessment inspects your tenant read-only — nothing is changed — across the exact areas attackers target: MFA coverage, conditional access, mailbox forwarding rules, external sharing defaults, OAuth app consents, device compliance and audit-log retention. Every finding is risk-rated from critical to low, with a recommended fix and an effort estimate, so you can see at a glance what to tackle first.

From assessment to real protection

An assessment tells you where you stand; the next step is closing the gaps. Most businesses move from the report into a layered defence — identity hardening and MFA first, then managed cyber security with endpoint protection, 24/7 managed detection & response watching for intrusions, and ongoing security awareness training so your people become the first line of defence rather than the weakest link.

Local IT and cyber security support across NSW

Chewing IT delivers IT support and cyber security for businesses across the Central Coast, Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Hornsby and the wider Sydney North Shore. Most security work is delivered remotely with same-day turnaround, and on-site support is dispatched from our Wyong office on the Central Coast and our Hornsby office in Sydney.

Want to know where your business stands? Book your free Microsoft 365 Security Assessment, or get in touch for a straight conversation about your security.