Essential 8 with Microsoft 365

In this post, we’ll explore how the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight framework maps directly to Microsoft 365 security controls—and how you can automate evidence collection and policy checks across your tenant.

Today, we’ll:

• Walk through each of the eight mitigation strategies

• Show the Microsoft 365 tools and licensing needed to implement them

• Highlight user impact, cost considerations, and maintenance overhead

• Introduce CloudCapsule’s automated assessment that handles over 70% of these technical checks in a single scan

Download a Free Self-Assessment

Click here to download a self-assessment workbook you can leverage that covers all of the mappings between the Essential 8 and Microsoft 365 policies. You can leverage this to perform manual checks within the tenant.

What is the Essential Eight?

The Essential Eight is a prioritized set of mitigation strategies developed by the Australian Cyber Security Centre. By adopting these controls at increasing maturity levels, you can systematically harden your environment:

• Maturity Level 1 – Basic cybersecurity hygiene
• Maturity Level 2 – Intermediate resilience with configurable policies
• Maturity Level 3 – High resilience, hard to compromise

At each level, you balance friction, upfront costs, and ongoing maintenance against the risk reduction achieved.

Microsoft 365 Mapping

Microsoft has their own published documentation which outlines the mapping between Essential 8 and M365 which is what I am following: ACSC Essential Eight – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

Emersed within this documentation, you will also see a GitHub repository that host Intune ACSC Windows Hardening Guidelines. This has a bunch of the policies you could upload into a tenant as JSON files that are already preconfigured. I’ve linked this library below:

Intune ACSC Windows Hardening Guidelines

1. Patch Applications

2. Patch Operating Systems

Essential Eight patch applications – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

3. Multi-Factor Authentication

Essential Eight multifactor authentication – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

4. Restrict Admin Privileges

Essential Eight restrict administrative privileges – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

5. Application Control

Essential Eight application control – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

6. Office Macros

Essential Eight configure Microsoft Office macro settings – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

7. User Application Hardening

Essential Eight user application hardening – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

8. Regular Backups

Why Pursue ACSC Essential Eight User Backup Guidelines? – Essential Eight | Microsoft Learn

Automating Essential 8 Assessments with CloudCapsule

We’ve automated about 70% of the technical controls for the Essential 8 as it relates to your configurations/policies in Microsoft. 

Each Policy has automated evidence collection that represents the pass fail values:

Get Started Today with CloudCapsule & Essential 8

Run a free assessment or reach out to our team to learn how to leverage CloudCapsule for your Essential 8 security assessments and drive growth for your security practice.

• Scans take around 60 seconds to perform on average
• Executive, white-labeled PDF reporting is available immediately to share with your customers