Source: Microsoft Security Blog
Author: Rico Mariani
URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/04/29/8-best-practices-for-cisos-conducting-risk-reviews/
ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
Microsoft Deputy CISO Rico Mariani outlines eight structured risk-review areas to shift security from reactive fixes toward proactive Zero Trust controls.
MAIN POINTS:
- Start by identifying and scoping the critical assets attackers most want.
- Enumerate all applications and microservices that expose interfaces and reach assets.
- Prefer standards-based token authentication using proven issuers like Microsoft Entra.
- Minimize token power through fine-grained scoping, short lifetimes, and limited audiences.
- Enforce authorization consistently with declarative patterns to reduce code bugs.
- Apply strong network isolation to constrain lateral movement and limit reachable systems.
- Build threat-model-driven detections across perimeter and internal signals to alert on attacks.
- Maintain robust auditing logs to determine breach extent, impact, and notification needs.
- Include overlooked areas like backups, support systems, and privileged operational tools.
- Scrutinize development and test environments because buggy code can expose production assets.
TAKEAWAYS:
- Consistent risk-review questions convert security data into proactive posture improvements.
- Least-privilege tokens and standard libraries shrink blast radius after inevitable compromise.
- Simple, repeatable authorization patterns reduce exploitable mistakes in enforcement logic.
- Segmentation plus logging makes attacker footholds less useful and improves hunting.
- Comprehensive inventories must cover backups, support, and nonproduction systems to avoid blind spots.