Event timeline with one raised marker circled in amber against faint radar arcs

Where Incidents Actually Start

In our experience, the incidents that reach a professional-services firm are rarely exotic. A password is guessed across thousands of rotating addresses. A shared mailbox is still on basic authentication. A domain has DMARC in monitoring mode, so a spoofed invoice from the managing partner lands in the inbox. A single account without a second factor becomes the foothold for business email compromise. Security operations means closing those doors deliberately, one at a time, with the record to show it.

What We Do

Identity Enforcement

MFA and Conditional Access rolled out in waves, each account checked for a usable factor first
Passkeys and authenticator apps as the standard; SMS, email codes and legacy authentication removed
Password-spray exposure found and shut: basic authentication disabled on shared mailboxes, app passwords discovered and revoked
Privileged accounts placed inside a boundary automation cannot cross

Email Authentication

SPF, DKIM and DMARC published correctly for every domain, plus MTA-STS and TLS reporting
DMARC taken to quarantine and then reject on the basis of parsed aggregate reports, not on principle, so legitimate mail keeps flowing
Spoofing of your domain detected, traced to its source networks, and shut
Phishing that impersonates your own staff analysed, and the control that let it through corrected

Endpoints

Endpoint detection and response through Microsoft Defender for Business, with a managed review layer above it
Daily posture review: patch state, end-of-life systems, unexpected remote-access tools, local administrator changes
Workstation hardening scripted, reviewed and applied consistently
Device compliance reported monthly

Incident Response

Credential-spray attacks characterised from the perimeter device, not guessed at from the directory
Account compromise: sign-in blocked, sessions revoked, malicious inbox rules removed, forwarding checked, factors re-established, all verified
Business email compromise worked through containment, evidence collection and the documents your insurer and bank will ask for
A written incident record, in plain language, with what was found and what changed

People

Security awareness and phishing simulation through Microsoft Attack Simulation Training
Staff guidance for MFA rollouts written for the people receiving it, with the failure modes anticipated
User-reported phishing routed to someone who will actually look at it

Evidence, Monthly

Posture checks aligned to the CIS Microsoft 365 benchmark, external attack surface, email authentication and endpoint state are reported every month through Argos Security Assurance. Something defensible to show an auditor, an insurer, or a client.

Security Operations