Azure gives you hundreds of security knobs. If you try to turn all of them at once, nothing meaningful will stick. This list focuses on the first 10 moves that improve your security posture (and your CMMC readiness) without redesigning everything.

1. Lock down global admins

• Cut the number of permanent global admin accounts to the absolute minimum.
• Require MFA and, ideally, phishing-resistant methods.
• Move admins to privileged access workstations or hardened management profiles.

2. Turn on identity protection signals

If you have Entra ID P1 or P2, enable risk-based policies:

• Flag risky sign-ins and users.
• Require step-up authentication for suspicious activity.
• Feed these events into your SOC and incident response workflows.

3. Enforce conditional access baselines

At minimum:

• Block legacy authentication.
• Require MFA for all users, not just admins.
• Restrict access to high-risk apps from unmanaged or non-compliant devices.

These steps directly support CMMC access control and identity practices.

4. Harden Azure subscriptions with policies

Use Azure Policy to enforce guardrails instead of hoping documentation is followed:

• Require resource tagging and region restrictions.
• Deny public IPs on sensitive workloads.
• Ensure diagnostics and activity logs are always on and retained.

5. Centralize logging and alerts

• Send Azure Activity Logs, resource logs, and Entra ID logs into Log Analytics or your SIEM.
• Build a small set of high-fidelity alerts (e.g., new privileged role assignments, changes to conditional access, anomalous sign-ins).

Start small and tune. Noisy alerts get ignored; precise alerts get investigated. For CMMC, you need logs and evidence. Getting this right early pays off when the assessor asks for it.