AKD’s security environment had become fragmented over time. As the company expanded its operations and cloud footprint across Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland, new tools were added to solve specific problems, but they didn’t work together as a coherent whole.

This created several challenges:

• A small IT team was stretched across multiple, disconnected tools.
• Strong endpoint protection, but limited visibility into cloud and identity, which had become the new security perimeter.
• No practical way to provide 24/7 monitoring internally, despite the need for continuous coverage.

By consolidating on the Microsoft security ecosystem—Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Entra, under Microsoft 365 E5 licensing—AKD brought identity, cloud, endpoint, and data protection into a single platform that aligned with its existing Windows, Office, and Azure environment.

This shift helped AKD:

• Reduce complexity and security risk by using one integrated stack.
• Gain unified visibility across users, devices, and cloud workloads.
• Leverage 24/7 SOC monitoring from partners like eSentire to cover what the internal team could not.

In short, AKD moved to a unified Microsoft platform to simplify operations, close visibility gaps, and support its goal of becoming a more data-driven, securely run business.

AKD has seen clear, measurable improvements in its security posture since consolidating on Microsoft Defender, Entra, and Microsoft 365 E5.

Within just three months, AKD reported:

• ~10-point increase in Microsoft Secure Score, indicating a higher overall security maturity.
• ~15% reduction in vulnerabilities, helping the team get ahead of critical issues instead of constantly playing catch-up.

These gains came from centralizing visibility, tooling, and telemetry across identity, cloud, endpoints, and data. With the Microsoft stack in place and 24/7 SOC monitoring from eSentire, the IT team has shifted from reactive incident response to more proactive threat prevention—“stopping threats before they get to us,” as AKD’s Technology and Security Architect describes it.

Beyond the numbers, AKD has also reduced operational strain on its small IT team, removed silos between tools, and gained more confidence that potential threats are being monitored around the clock.

While the initial driver for moving to Microsoft 365 E5 was to strengthen security, AKD quickly found that the change also supported its broader digital and data strategy.

Key benefits included:

• Expanded security capabilities: E5 unlocked advanced Microsoft Defender products for endpoints, identity, and Office 365, plus Microsoft Entra ID P2 for proactive threat detection, investigation, and automated remediation.
• Access to analytics at scale: Tools like Power BI, previously limited by cost and availability, became broadly accessible. This opened the door to more data-driven decision making across the business.
• Foundation for future initiatives: With a unified security posture in place, AKD is now exploring data loss prevention, cloud app security, and more sophisticated governance models for generative AI, while also planning to reduce reliance on legacy systems.

In effect, the move to Microsoft 365 E5 helped AKD reimagine its environment: what began as a security uplift became a catalyst for wider digital capability, supporting both current operations and future innovation.