Scored3 products
Tools14 min
The Microsoft 365 backup tools worth paying for
Native retention is not backup. What that actually means, what separates the products, and the seat count below which none of them are worth buying.
Read the guideSecurity Verdict
Tools
Tools and buyer guides
Side-by-side comparisons of the products teams actually deploy, with the trade-offs vendors leave out of their own datasheets.
Microsoft
Veeam
Acronis
NordLayer
Keeper
Hornetsecurity
Vanta
Rubrik
Huntress
ThreatLocker
Most comparison content is a feature table rewritten from vendor marketing. The columns all say yes, the conclusion is that every product is excellent, and nobody learns anything.
These guides are built the other way round. Each one starts from a decision a team is actually facing, states what each product does badly, names who should not buy it, and prices the renewal rather than the first-year discount.
Guides in this section
Scored3 products
Tools12 min
Zero Trust network access for teams that outgrew the VPN
When the old concentrator becomes the bottleneck, what to replace it with, and why most Zero Trust projects stall at the identity layer rather than the network one.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools9 min
Defender for Business or Defender for Endpoint P1: the honest comparison
Two Microsoft products with overlapping licensing, a 300-seat cliff that catches people out, and a decision most organisations get wrong by exactly one tier.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools11 min
Microsoft 365 email security: when the built-in tier is not enough
Exchange Online Protection is included and is genuinely decent. What the paid tiers add, and the specific attack it is worth paying to stop.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
Password managers for IT teams: what changes above 50 people
The consumer products work fine until you need provisioning, shared vaults with real boundaries, and an answer for what happens when someone leaves.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools13 min
Microsoft Sentinel gets expensive fast. Here is where the money goes
Ingestion pricing punishes exactly the logs people connect first. What to keep hot, what to send cheap, and the settings that cut a bill without cutting detection.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools12 min
Managed detection and response, or build your own SOC
The honest cost comparison, including the part vendors leave out: what a 24 hour rota actually costs once you account for people leaving.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools9 min
Entra ID P1 or P2: what the extra tier actually buys
P1 gives you Conditional Access. P2 gives you the ability to prove who has privilege and take it back. Which one you need depends on one question.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools11 min
Microsoft 365 E3 with add-ons, or E5: the security maths
The jump to E5 is large and the add-on route looks cheaper. Where that stops being true, and the trap of buying three add-ons.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
Which MFA method to standardise on
SMS is still the most deployed and the weakest. What to move to, in what order, and how to handle the people who cannot use an app.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools11 min
Removing local admin rights without breaking everyone
The highest-value endpoint control and the one most often abandoned halfway. Why it fails, and the sequence that gets it done.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools11 min
Getting DMARC to enforcement without breaking your mail
Almost every domain publishes a DMARC record at p=none and stops. The path to reject, and the two sources of legitimate mail that always break it.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
Defender for Cloud Apps: bought often, deployed rarely
It is in E5, most organisations have it, and a large share have never configured a policy. What it is genuinely good at, and the two things to switch on first.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools9 min
Patching the software Microsoft does not patch
Windows Update covers Microsoft. The browser plugins, PDF readers and Java runtimes that get exploited are somebody else's problem, and usually nobody's.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
Security awareness training: what actually reduces clicks
Annual video training does not change behaviour. What does, and why punishing people who click makes your next incident worse.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools12 min
Microsoft 365 Copilot: what to fix before you turn it on
Copilot inherits every permission mistake in your tenant and makes it searchable. The oversharing problem, and the work that has to happen first.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
Securing Microsoft Teams external access without blocking the business
External access, guest access and anonymous meeting joins are three different settings that get conflated. What each one actually controls.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
BYOD or managed devices: the honest cost comparison
Personal devices look cheaper because the hardware is free. The costs are real, they are just somewhere else on the balance sheet.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
Windows 365 or Azure Virtual Desktop
One is a fixed price per user, the other is infrastructure you run. The choice is about who you want owning capacity planning.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools11 min
Defender for Cloud: which plans are worth enabling
The free tier does more than people realise. Which paid plans earn their per-resource cost, and which quietly do not.
Read the guideScored3 products
Tools10 min
Privileged access workstations: worth it or theatre?
A dedicated hardened device for administrative work. When it genuinely reduces risk, and when it becomes an expensive laptop nobody uses.
Read the guideNothing here yet that answers your question?
Tell us what you are trying to decide and it moves up the queue. The order these get written in is driven by what people ask for.
Ask for a guide