2023 was the year Microsoft made enterprise security genuinely accessible to small businesses. A look at the most significant changes to Business Premium, Defender for Business, and Intune over the year.
2023 was a watershed year for Microsoft 365 security at the SMB level. Several changes combined to make Business Premium the most complete security product available to businesses under 300 users. Here are the most significant developments.
Defender for Business: full EDR for under $5/user/month
Microsoft made Defender for Business generally available in March 2022, but 2023 saw it mature significantly. The vulnerability management capabilities improved, automated investigation became more reliable, and the simplified management portal made it genuinely usable without a full-time security analyst.
Intune's simplified experience
Microsoft significantly improved the Intune admin console in 2023, making policy creation and device management faster and more intuitive. The guided scenarios were extended, and the integration between Intune and Defender for Business improved — allowing security posture information to flow between the two products more cleanly.
Microsoft Entra ID rebrand from Azure AD
In July 2023, Microsoft rebranded Azure Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID. More than a naming change, this signalled a broader Entra product family covering identity, access, and permissions management. The features remain the same, but the strategic direction — Zero Trust, permissions management, and multicloud identity — became clearer.
MFA Number Matching became mandatory
Microsoft made Number Matching for Microsoft Authenticator push notifications mandatory in May 2023. This significantly reduces the effectiveness of MFA fatigue attacks, where attackers bombard users with push notifications until one is approved accidentally.
What MSPs should have done in 2023
If you have a managed IT provider, they should have updated your Authenticator policies to enforce Number Matching, reviewed your Conditional Access policies for the new ASR rule set, and verified your Intune compliance policies reflect the latest OS version requirements. Optimyze completed these updates for all managed clients as part of quarterly policy reviews.
