Recently, a single misconfiguration in Microsoft 365 led to a major data breach at one of the world’s most respected cybersecurity training organizations. An employee fell for a phishing scheme, enabling the attackers to change an auto-forwarding rule in their email environment. Over the course of a month, more than 500 internal emails and over 28,000 user records were quietly forwarded to an attacker-controlled account.

As organizations increasingly depend on Microsoft 365 to power communication and productivity, configuration gaps like these have become a leading source of risk. In fact, a 2024 study ranked misconfiguration of conditional access policies among the top ten vulnerabilities in Microsoft 365 environments.

The problem is compounded by siloed ownership and limited in-house expertise across the increasingly complex configuration landscape of Microsoft 365. Security teams often lack the tools and context to detect configuration drift or risky changes before they escalate into incidents. To solve this, Abnormal is launching Security Posture Management, a powerful new solution that helps security teams detect and correct risky misconfigurations before attackers exploit them.

Many teams rely on Microsoft 365’s native security features and try to compensate with periodic manual audits to keep their environments safe. But built-in protections like Secure Score can generate too much noise, overlook configuration drift, and fail to reflect the evolving needs unique to every organization.

Can manual audits close the gap? They’re time-consuming, error-prone, and quickly outdated. They struggle to keep pace with the rapid changes in cloud environments and often miss critical issues hiding in plain sight, especially when responsibilities are split across teams. The result? Security gaps no one sees until it’s too late.

To help customers address these risks, Abnormal introduced Security Posture Management in 2023. Powered by context from our three Knowledge Bases—PeopleBase, VendorBase, and AppBase—it brought deep visibility into cloud email environments and the misconfigurations that threaten them.

Since our initial release, we’ve partnered with customers to evolve SPM into a tool that delivers instant, point-in-time audits and precisely flags the configuration drift that weakens cloud posture. SPM is no longer just about visibility—it now prioritizes rapid posture assessments, highlights exploitable security gaps like hidden inbox rules and misconfigured conditional access policies, and includes federated threat intelligence and step-by-step guided remediation. As an add-on to Inbound Email Security, it automatically evaluates your security posture, surfaces the gaps adversaries target most, and walks your team through every fix.

As organizations expand their use of Microsoft 365, seemingly minor misconfigurations such as unchecked admin privileges, hidden inbox rules, unauthorized forwarding, and auto-processed calendar invites can open critical security gaps. Attackers routinely exploit these weaknesses to move laterally, phish users, and hijack sessions.

At Abnormal, our API-based architecture processes thousands of behavioral signals from users, applications, and vendors to stop socially engineered attacks. With Security Posture Management, the platform continuously monitors email configurations, detects posture drift, and prioritizes the specific misconfigurations that adversaries use.

Abnormal learns from emerging threats across the customer base to detect risks like hidden inbox rules and token hijacking early. SPM provides targeted, step-by-step remediation instructions and triggers alerts when risky policy changes occur. This capability extends beyond traditional inbound protection to secure internal settings and misconfigurations in Microsoft 365, driving autonomous, AI-powered risk reduction.

Implementation starts with our Graph API integration. Once connected, the solution continuously assesses risk by comparing your email configurations against CIS benchmarks and insights from Abnormal’s collective threat intelligence. This intelligence is built from misconfiguration-based attacks observed across our global customer base and is used to pinpoint the riskiest settings, such as insecure calendar processing, missing MFA for password resets, improper session token access, and other configurations actively exploited in real-world attacks.

Security teams can investigate each finding, access detailed posture insights, and follow clear remediation steps that lead directly to the relevant Microsoft 365 settings. As your environment evolves, Abnormal automatically refreshes its analysis to keep defenses aligned with emerging attacker tactics and industry best practices.

The latest version of SPM, released today, introduces several key enhancements:

1. AI-Powered Posture Assessment

An automated initial posture assessment provides immediate visibility into misconfigurations, saving time on manual audits. Configurations are then continuously validated against leading frameworks from CIS and Microsoft best practices. Abnormal also applies threat intelligence across the customer base to assess posture against emerging and previously unknown attacks.

Example: A user account with administrative privileges is still allowed to authenticate using legacy protocols because Conditional Access policies blocking legacy authentication are not in place. Abnormal flags this as high risk based on CIS benchmarks. The combination of legacy authentication, elevated privileges, and insufficient policy controls exposes the organization to common account takeover techniques.

2. Collective Threat Intelligence

Microsoft configurations are now evaluated against misconfiguration attack patterns observed across our global customer base, ensuring that posture assessments align with the risks adversaries are actively exploiting.

Example: When Abnormal detected a novel hidden inbox rule campaign siphoning messages from one customer’s account, SPM automatically scanned all other customer environments for the same tactic. If a matching rule was found in your environment, it would be flagged within hours, giving your team time to remediate before any data exfiltration occurred.

3. Risky Configuration Changes Log

Abnormal detects risky changes to security posture immediately—whether it’s the addition of an external forwarding rule or the disabling of an audit log policy—and alerts security teams so they can respond before threats materialize.

Example: An administrator accidentally modifies an Exchange transport rule to allow unauthenticated relaying, creating an open relay risk. Security Posture Management immediately detects the change and flags it as a critical issue, based on CIS best practices and known threat patterns.

4. Step-by-Step Guided Remediation

Each misconfiguration includes clear, actionable instructions that eliminate the need for PowerShell scripts or toggling between admin centers. SPM guides teams through precise remediation, reducing dependence on manual processes.

Example: When an application with “Send As” permissions is inactive, Security Posture Management flags it as a security concern—aligning with Microsoft’s guidance that identifies inactive apps with elevated access as potential abuse vectors. It then provides targeted steps to revoke unnecessary permissions or disable the app, reducing overall risk.

Security Posture Management detects hidden misconfigurations and delivers clear, actionable insights powered by the same Graph API that fuels Abnormal’s industry-leading threat detection.

It’s fully integrated into the Abnormal platform and available to all current SPM customers as a free upgrade. Some tenants may require additional permissions for deeper analysis (link accessible to Abnormal customers only). Explore the full range of postures Abnormal evaluates here.

To see how Security Posture Management can help your organization detect critical risks, benchmark against best practices, and streamline remediation across your Microsoft 365 environment, request a demo today.