Complementary tools, not competitors

Huntress detects threats. We audit configuration. Run both.

Posture audit + compliance evidence beside Huntress's detect/respond. Free 14-day trial.

24,000+
Posture audit rules
10
Compliance frameworks
Same day
First report after consent

No changes to your tenant — read-only access only. Results in minutes.

This is not a zero-sum comparison. Huntress detects attacks in progress. 365 Security Assessment audits how the tenant is configured and produces compliance evidence. A mature M365 security program typically runs both — one for live SOC response, one for posture and audit.

At a Glance

Detect-and-respond versus posture audit — each tool owns a distinct security job.

Capability 365 Security Assessment Huntress Managed ITDR
M365 posture rules 24,000+ audit rules Detection signals, not audit rules
Azure resource-plane coverage
MITRE ATT&CK mapping Not advertised per finding
Compliance framework count 10 frameworks Not a compliance product
Agentless / read-only
Time to first results Same-day audit report Minutes-to-protection
MSP multi-tenant
Public pricing Self-serve free tier $4.80/identity/month
Full support Partial / add-on Not available
Different security jobs

Audit and compliance evidence Huntress is not designed to produce

Huntress proves "we caught this attack" — and does it exceptionally well. A 3-minute mean time to respond with a sub-5% false positive rate is a strong product. It is also a fundamentally different outcome than proving your tenant is configured against 24,000+ control points.

When an auditor asks for evidence that multi-factor authentication is enforced across privileged accounts, that legacy authentication is blocked, that mail forwarding rules are restricted, or that Azure RBAC follows least-privilege — that is a configuration audit question. No ITDR product is designed to answer it. 365SA is.

The compliance frameworks organizations face — HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 2, CMMC — require posture evidence. Huntress does not produce it by design. 365SA does, across all ten frameworks simultaneously.

Huntress answers:

"Is an identity attack happening right now? Did we stop it? What was the full attack chain?"

365SA answers:

"Is this tenant configured to resist attacks in the first place? Can we prove it meets ten compliance frameworks?"

Together they answer:

"Our tenant is hardened, continuously audited, compliant — and we have 24/7 SOC coverage if anything gets through."

What 365SA covers beyond M365 identity

Exchange Online

Anti-phishing, mail flow, forwarding rules, DKIM/DMARC, connectors — 4,100+ rules on email security posture alone.

Azure Resource Plane

RBAC assignments, Key Vault access, NSG rules, storage exposure, Defender coverage — out of scope for any ITDR product.

Intune & Device Compliance

Compliance policies, encryption enforcement, conditional access device state — all surfaced in the same audit.

SharePoint & Teams

Guest access, external sharing, link permissions, DLP policies — data exposure posture that ITDR doesn't inspect.

Full Microsoft estate

Microsoft-deep posture across M365 and Azure together

Huntress Managed ITDR is M365 identity-centric: session hijacking, credential theft, rogue OAuth apps, inbox forwarding rules, BEC patterns. That is a high-value signal layer on the identity plane.

365 Security Assessment covers M365 identity too — but also the Exchange email layer, SharePoint and Teams data exposure, Intune device compliance, and the full Azure resource plane. A single assessment surfaces posture gaps across the entire Microsoft environment, not just the identity attack surface.

For organizations that carry Azure workloads alongside M365, this full-estate coverage in one audit run is material. An ITDR product watching M365 identities will not inspect Key Vault access policies or RBAC sprawl.

Natural pairing

Sits beside Huntress, not instead of it

The natural pairing for MSPs and security teams is Huntress for live SOC detect-and-respond coverage and 365SA for posture, audit, and compliance evidence. These are not competing tools — they answer different questions for the same client.

Both products are MSP-channel friendly and carry published pricing. Huntress publishes $4.80/identity/month. 365SA has a self-serve free tier plus paid tiers. The combined cost is predictable and additive — not a platform consolidation trade-off.

For MSPs who already sell Huntress ITDR, adding 365SA gives clients the compliance audit posture report that Huntress is not designed to produce. It expands the security story from "we protect you in real time" to "we can also prove your tenant is hardened and compliant."

How the stack works together

365 Security Assessment

Runs a full posture audit. Finds 24,000+ control gaps, maps to 10 compliance frameworks, produces auditor-ready evidence. Runs continuously in the background.

Huntress Managed ITDR

Watches for live identity threats 24/7. Session hijacking, rogue OAuth, BEC, credential theft — with a SOC that responds in 3 minutes.

Together

Hardened tenant posture, continuous compliance evidence, and live threat detection. The full M365 security story.

Compliance frameworks covered

GDPR FedRAMP HITRUST NIST 800-53 CIS M365 SOC 2 ISO 27001 CMMC HIPAA PCI-DSS
365 Security Assessment is a Bonelli Systems initiative — 4x Microsoft Solutions Partner with designations in Security, Infrastructure, Data & AI, and Digital & App Innovation.

Common Questions

Answers for MSPs and security teams evaluating both tools.

Yes, if you need posture audit and compliance evidence. Huntress watches for live identity threats. 365SA inspects how the tenant is configured and produces auditor-ready output across ten compliance frameworks — HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 2, CMMC, and seven others. Huntress does not produce this output by design. If clients face compliance audits, the posture evidence has to come from somewhere.
No. Detect-and-respond and posture audit are different jobs. 365SA does not provide a 24/7 SOC, real-time incident response, or live threat detection. Huntress does. Many customers run them side by side — Huntress for the SOC layer, 365SA for the audit and compliance layer. Replacing either with the other leaves a gap.
That is not its job. 365 Security Assessment is a continuous posture and compliance assessment. It identifies configuration weaknesses before an attack happens. For live SOC response and active threat detection, keep Huntress — or your existing MDR — in place. The goal is to use 365SA to reduce the attack surface so Huntress has less to respond to.

Add the compliance audit layer your stack is missing

Huntress keeps watch. 365 Security Assessment proves the tenant is hardened. Start your free assessment today.

Read-only access — no changes to your tenant — results in under 10 minutes.