Industry standard baselines: overview

  • Last update on October 28th, 2025

In the “Reconcile” section of Configuration Manager, you can select an industry standard baseline to compare your tenant to. 

You can choose between the following options:

  • CIS M365 foundations baseline: the CIS baseline offers a set of security configurations aligned with 
    • the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Microsoft 365 Foundations Benchmark v5.0.0
    • the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Microsoft 365 Foundations Benchmark v3.1.0 (previous version)

Each setting is designed to meet specific CIS controls and corresponds to either Level 1 (L1) or Level 2 (L2) of the benchmark.

  • Essential Eight baseline: the Essential Eight baseline is a set of cybersecurity strategies developed by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) to help organizations defend against cyber threats. It includes eight prioritized mitigation strategies and is structured across three maturity levels (ML1, ML2, ML3) to allow organizations to progressively strengthen their security posture.