Bruno Lecoq spent twenty years at Microsoft before founding BEMO. He realized that the small and medium business sector lacked practical cybersecurity packages designed for everyday operators. In the latest episode of Trust Issues, Brandon and Bruno Lecoq sit down to discuss the mechanics of building a lasting security program and preparing for rigorous external audits.
"By doing compliance, you bring someone from outside to check that you have good security." — Bruno Lecoq
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Organizations often complicate their IT environments by bolting together multiple software tools. Maintaining separate systems for identity management and endpoint protection requires extensive administrative work and increases your audit scope. BEMO deliberately chose to operate primarily on Microsoft to streamline the security process for SMBs. Using licenses like Microsoft 365 Business Premium or E5 allows companies to consolidate their technology stack effectively. This integration makes patching significantly easier and helps security teams deploy necessary controls efficiently.
Implementing the right tools represents only the beginning of protecting your business. A typical small business generates roughly 65,000 security logs per day. Without a Security Operations Center reviewing this information around the clock, you would never know if someone was actively attempting to breach your network. The BEMO team uses Azure Sentinel to aggregate these massive amounts of data and filter them down to about 120 actionable tickets per month. Security professionals then investigate these specific alerts to determine if they represent genuine threats.
Business leaders often want a simple way to gauge their overall audit readiness. Microsoft Secure Score provides an excellent baseline measurement for your internal IT health. Meeting the required certification standards requires consistent effort and ongoing remediation of vulnerable systems. Organizations generally need to achieve a score around 70 to pass a SOC 2 audit. DOD contractors pursuing CMMC level two will likely need a score closer to 85. BEMO internally maintains a score of 97 out of 100 to ensure they consistently exceed these baseline requirements.
Every business wants to know exactly how long the certification process will take. The timeline depends entirely on internal dedication and resource allocation. One organization might successfully achieve full audit readiness in six months because leadership prioritizes the project. Another company of the exact same size might stretch the process out over three years due to competing internal initiatives and canceled meetings.
Building a robust security culture requires extensive documentation and testing. Transitioning your team to a fully compliant environment involves a significant learning curve. An organization pursuing CMMC needs roughly thirty distinct policies covering everything from password complexity requirements to backup restoration procedures. You must consistently generate evidence proving you actually follow those rules to pass an external audit.
Purchasing expedited compliance services leaves your company completely exposed to modern cyber-attacks. Basic hygiene remains a massive problem across the industry today. Nearly half of all Microsoft tenants currently fail to enforce multi-factor authentication on their global administrator accounts. Turning on basic identity controls eliminates the vast majority of breach risks almost instantly. Real security requires continuous dedication and verification.
Government contractors pursuing CMMC must recognize that their managed service provider falls directly under the scope of their external audit. Your journey will face significant delays if your IT provider lacks the proper framework alignment. Businesses should actively verify their partners through directories like CyberAB to ensure they are working with a Registered Practitioner Organization. Choosing a certified partner drastically reduces the friction of your own audit process.
Taking the time to build a solid foundation protects your reputation and establishes your legitimacy in the market. Security protocols must operate smoothly in the background before you invite an external auditor to review your environment.
Doing things the correct way requires an investment of time and resources. The end result is a resilient organization capable of weathering an evolving threat landscape.
1. Why does adopting a Microsoft-centric approach help with compliance? Consolidating your security tools into a single Microsoft ecosystem reduces your administrative burden and limits the number of separate systems an auditor needs to review.
2. What role does a Security Operations Center play in protecting my business? A Security Operations Center actively monitors your network logs twenty-four hours a day to identify suspicious activity and respond to potential cyber attacks.
3. What is a good Microsoft Secure Score for a government contractor? Companies aiming to pass a SOC 2 audit should aim for a score of around 70, while organizations pursuing CMMC level two readiness typically need a score between 80 and 85.
4. Why do compliance timelines vary between companies? The speed of your compliance journey depends largely on how much internal priority your leadership team assigns to the project and whether you dedicate the resources necessary to implement new policies.
5. How important is multi-factor authentication for my administrative accounts? Enforcing multi-factor authentication across all user accounts is an absolute necessity because it prevents the vast majority of automated access attacks and safeguards your most sensitive data.
6. Why do I need to check the CMMC credentials of my managed service provider? Your IT provider handles your network infrastructure and directly falls into your audit scope, meaning their security posture will be heavily scrutinized by your external assessor.