Defender Secure Score Monitor

Defender Secure Score Monitor

Purpose

Track and improve your Microsoft Defender for Cloud Secure Score through focused monitoring, trend analysis, and actionable remediation guidance. Answers "what's our security score and how do we improve it?"

When to use this skill

• User asks "what's our secure score?"
• User asks how to improve security posture
• Weekly security posture check
• Before a security audit or customer questionnaire
• After deploying new resources (to check score impact)

Difference from Compliance/Governance Audit

The Compliance skill does a broad governance audit (policy, RBAC, tagging, locks, naming). This skill is laser-focused on Defender for Cloud Secure Score — the single most important security KPI — and provides targeted actions to improve it.

Assessment procedure

Step 1: Current Secure Score

Get the overall score and per-control breakdown.

az rest --method get --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/<sub-id>/providers/Microsoft.Security/secureScores/ascScore?api-version=2020-01-01"

az rest --method get --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/<sub-id>/providers/Microsoft.Security/secureScores/ascScore/secureScoreControls?api-version=2020-01-01"

Note: The az security secure-scores list CLI command may fail in some environments. The REST API approach above is more reliable. Replace <sub-id> with the target subscription ID.

Report:

• Current Secure Score: X% (X/Y points)
• Trend (if memory available): improved/declined vs. last check
• Top 5 controls with the most room for improvement (highest max - current)

Step 2: Unhealthy assessments (recommendations)

Get the list of active security recommendations.

az rest --method get --url "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/<sub-id>/providers/Microsoft.Security/assessments?api-version=2021-06-01" --query "value[?properties.status.code=='Unhealthy'].{displayName:properties.displayName, severity:properties.metadata.severity, category:properties.metadata.categories[0], resourceId:properties.resourceDetails.id}"

Group by severity:

• 🔴 High: Must fix — significant risk
• 🟡 Medium: Should fix — moderate risk
• 🟢 Low: Nice to have — minimal risk

Step 3: Quick wins (most points for least effort)

Identify recommendations that:

1. Affect the most resources (batch fix possible)
2. Have the highest point value per control
3. Can be fixed with a single CLI command or policy

Examples of quick wins:

• Enable HTTPS-only on App Services
• Enable secure transfer on storage accounts
• Enable Defender plans that are off
• Restrict public network access

Step 4: Defender plan coverage

Check which Defender plans are enabled.

az security pricing list --query "[].{plan:name, tier:pricingTier, subPlan:subPlan}" -o table

Expected plans to be enabled for full coverage:

• Servers (P2 recommended)
• App Service
• SQL (databases)
• Storage
• Containers (with vulnerability assessment)
• Key Vault
• Resource Manager (ARM)
• DNS

Flag disabled plans and estimate score impact of enabling them.

Step 5: Attack surface indicators

Check the most exploitable security gaps.

1. Public management ports (SSH/RDP open to internet):

   az graph query -q "resources | where type == 'microsoft.network/networksecuritygroups' | mvexpand rules = properties.securityRules | where rules.properties.access == 'Allow' and rules.properties.direction == 'Inbound' and (rules.properties.destinationPortRange == '22' or rules.properties.destinationPortRange == '3389' or rules.properties.destinationPortRange == '*') and rules.properties.sourceAddressPrefix in ('*', '0.0.0.0/0', 'Internet')" -o table
   

2. Storage accounts with public blob access:

   az storage account list --query "[?allowBlobPublicAccess==true].{name:name, rg:resourceGroup}" -o table
   

3. SQL servers with public endpoint:

   az sql server list --query "[?properties.publicNetworkAccess=='Enabled'].{name:name, rg:resourceGroup}" -o table
   

4. Key Vaults accessible from public network:

   az keyvault list --query "[?properties.publicNetworkAccess=='Enabled'].{name:name, rg:resourceGroup}" -o table
   

Step 6: Credential and certificate hygiene

Check for expiring secrets that could cause outages or security drift.

1. Key Vault secrets expiring within 30 days (per vault):

   az keyvault secret list --vault-name <vault> --query "[?attributes.expires!=null && attributes.expires<'$(date -u -d '30 days' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)']" -o table
   

2. Key Vault certificates expiring within 30 days (per vault):

   az keyvault certificate list --vault-name <vault> --query "[?attributes.expires!=null && attributes.expires<'$(date -u -d '30 days' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)']" -o table
   

3. App registrations with expiring secrets:

   az ad app list --query "[].{name:displayName, creds:passwordCredentials[?endDateTime<'$(date -u -d '30 days' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)']}" --all -o table
   

Note on date handling: The SRE Agent sandbox runs Linux. Use $(date -u -d '30 days' +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) for date calculations.

Risk scoring

Accepted exceptions (optional)

If the user provides a list of accepted exceptions, do not flag those items. Instead, note them in the report as Accepted Exception with the reason provided.

Example format the user may provide:

When exceptions are provided:

• Skip the flagged checks in scoring
• List them in a separate "Accepted Exceptions" section at the end of the report
• Recalculate the overall score excluding excepted checks

Expected output

Report header (mandatory — use this exact format)

Defender Secure Score Report

Then present the gap summary:

The subscription is earning only ZZ% of its maximum Secure Score. There is a N-point gap to close.

Score improvement plan

Critical findings (fix now)

Items that represent immediate exploitable risk.

Remediation commands

Pre-formatted az cli commands for each quick win, ready to approve and execute. Use GetAzCliHelp to validate the command syntax before suggesting.

# Enable HTTPS-only on App Service
az webapp update --name <app> --resource-group <rg> --set httpsOnly=true

# Enable Defender for Storage
az security pricing create --name StorageAccounts --tier Standard

References

• Defender for Cloud: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/defender-for-cloud/secure-score-security-controls
• Security Recommendations: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/defender-for-cloud/recommendations-reference
• Defender Plans: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/defender-for-cloud/defender-for-cloud-introduction

Recommended cadence

Schedule this skill as a weekly task via SRE Agent scheduled tasks for continuous score improvement tracking.

Sample output

The following is a redacted example of what the report looks like when run against a subscription.

Defender Secure Score Report

The subscription is earning only 69% of its maximum Secure Score. There is a 17.5-point gap to close.

Score improvement plan

Critical findings (sample)

Defender plan coverage

Remediation commands (sample)

# Enable HTTPS-only on App Service
az webapp update --name app-web-prod --resource-group rg-app-prod --set httpsOnly=true

# Enable Defender for Storage
az security pricing create --name StorageAccounts --tier Standard

# Restrict SQL Server public access
az sql server update --name sql-contoso-prod --resource-group rg-data-prod --set publicNetworkAccess="Disabled"