Microsoft 365 Security Audit in Hong Kong: Scope, Timeline and Fixed Prices for Local Firms

The short version: A Microsoft 365 security audit in Hong Kong is a one-off, read-only review of your tenant's configuration against the CIS Microsoft 365 Benchmark, delivered by Brocent from our Kwun Tong office at a fixed price set by headcount: US$450 for 1 to 10 users up to US$2,900 for 76 to 150 users. Your Global Administrator consents once, and the report and workbook arrive 5 to 7 business days later.

If you are searching for a Microsoft 365 security audit Hong Kong companies can actually buy, you are most likely in one of two positions. Either someone outside the company has asked a question you cannot answer yet, such as an insurer, a client's procurement team or an auditor, or something has happened that made you wonder whether the tenant everyone signs into every morning is actually set up the way you assumed. In both cases you want a Hong Kong IT company that can look at the tenant, tell you plainly what is wrong, and put a price on it before you commit.

This page explains how a Hong Kong company buys exactly that: a one-off security audit of its Microsoft 365 tenant from a local IT company, with a published scope, a published timeline and a published price. It also says what the audit is not, so that nobody pays for a tenant review when what they actually need is a penetration test or ongoing monitoring. The full price list and the FAQ live on the Microsoft 365 Security Audit pricing page; this article is the Hong Kong buyer's walkthrough.

Who in Hong Kong asks for a Microsoft 365 security audit?

The pattern is consistent across the companies that contact us, and it has little to do with industry. It has to do with a trigger.

• Licensed financial firms. Asset managers, brokers and corporate finance boutiques holding SFC licences are asked by their compliance function, or by an external auditor, to show that email, files and identities are protected. Microsoft 365 is where all three live.
• Insurance brokers and agencies. The cyber insurance renewal form arrives with questions about multi-factor authentication, administrator accounts and email filtering, and nobody in the office knows the current answers.
• Non-governmental organisations and associations. A funder's due-diligence questionnaire asks how member, donor or beneficiary data is controlled. The tenant was set up years ago by someone who has since left. Our composite Hong Kong nonprofit case describes what that review tends to find.
• Trading and sourcing companies. A supplier payment went to the wrong bank account after a convincing email, or nearly did, and the owner wants to know whether the mailbox was the problem.
• Regional offices of overseas groups. Head office wants an independent view of the Hong Kong tenant, or of the Hong Kong part of a shared tenant, before an acquisition, a merger or a Copilot rollout.

What these buyers have in common is that they do not need a security programme. They need a single, ordered list of what is wrong in one specific system, written by someone who has no stake in selling them licences, and they need it within a known number of days at a known price.

What does a Microsoft 365 security audit Hong Kong firms buy actually cover?

The scope is the same in every price band, and it is written down in the sample report we publish. Brocent audits the tenant against the CIS Microsoft 365 Foundations Benchmark at Level 1 and Level 2, including the manual controls that automated scanners skip, and cross-references the findings with Microsoft Secure Score and the ScubaGear baseline. The areas reviewed are:

• Entra ID. Users and guests, MFA registration and the methods in use, Conditional Access policies, privileged roles and Privileged Identity Management, app registrations and consent settings, sign-in risk.
• Exchange Online. Mail flow rules, external forwarding, SMTP AUTH, mailbox auditing, anti-phishing policies, and SPF, DKIM and DMARC for every accepted domain.
• Microsoft Defender. The portal configuration of Defender for Office 365 and Defender for Business: what is licensed, what is switched on, and what is sitting on defaults.
• SharePoint Online and OneDrive. Tenant and site sharing settings, link defaults, guest expiry, and the handling of sensitive sites.
• Microsoft Teams. External access, guest access and meeting policies.
• Microsoft Purview. Data loss prevention, retention, sensitivity labels and audit log retention.
• Secure Score and ScubaGear. Both results are included so you can see where the frameworks agree and where a human reviewer had to make a call.
• Intune. Summarised in this report; full device findings belong to the separate Intune device audit.

Out of scope, and stated as such in the report: the content of mailboxes and documents (the audit reads configuration and metadata only), penetration testing and phishing simulation, third-party SaaS applications outside Microsoft 365 except for their OAuth grants in Entra ID, and physical or on-premises network security.

If you want to see the shape of the deliverable before you buy, the sample Microsoft 365 security audit report uses a fictitious 14-person firm and shows every section: executive summary, posture overview, findings with observation, impact, remediation and rollback, and a phased roadmap. A self-assessment version of the same twelve areas is in our Microsoft 365 security audit checklist, which is a sensible thing to run through before you commission anything.

How long does a Microsoft 365 security audit take in Hong Kong?

The published turnaround is 5 to 7 business days, counted from the moment read-only access is granted. The steps are the same for every client:

1. A short scoping call. Fifteen to twenty minutes to confirm the headcount band, the number of accepted domains, whether Intune is in use, and who will receive the report.
2. Read-only consent. One of your Global Administrators approves a read-only Microsoft Graph application. It takes about fifteen minutes, nothing is installed on any device, and no Brocent account or password is created in your tenant. The consent can be withdrawn at any time by removing the application.
3. Collection and verification. The configuration is read automatically, then re-read on a second date so the report can state when each value was verified. Settings that no API exposes are reviewed in the admin portal with your IT contact on a screen share.
4. The report and workbook. You receive a dated PDF report and an Excel workbook with every finding, its severity, effort estimate, phase and evidence reference.
5. A debrief. We walk through the findings in priority order, by video call or at our Kwun Tong office, and answer questions. There is no obligation attached to the debrief.

Hong Kong public holidays are not business days for this purpose, and the clock starts at consent, not at the scoping call, so a firm that needs the report for a board meeting or a renewal deadline should grant access a full two weeks ahead.

What does it cost, and why is it priced by headcount?

The price is fixed and published, and it depends only on how many licensed users the tenant has:

• 1 to 10 users: US$450
• 11 to 25 users: US$990
• 26 to 75 users: US$1,800
• 76 to 150 users: US$2,900
• More than 150 users: quoted after the scoping call

Headcount is the honest proxy for effort. A 120-person tenant has more administrators to review, more guests, more Conditional Access exceptions, more SharePoint sites with their own sharing settings and more mailboxes with rules that need reading. The scope does not shrink for a small tenant; the number of things to look at does.

Prices are listed in US dollars because that is how the service is priced across every market Brocent serves. If you need a Hong Kong dollar invoice from our Hong Kong entity, or have a question about how your finance team prefers to be billed, ask the consultant on the scoping call rather than converting the figure yourself.

Two things are deliberately not included in the fixed price. The first is remediation: the audit tells you what to fix and how, with rollback steps, but the fixing is a separate job quoted per tenant once you have decided which findings to act on. The second is any form of ongoing monitoring. A one-off audit is a dated photograph of the tenant. Whether you want someone watching it afterwards is a decision the report helps you make, not one it makes for you. Our companion piece on how to scope a Microsoft 365 security audit without surprises explains why we price this way rather than by the hour.

What the audit is not

Buyers in Hong Kong often use "security audit", "IT audit" and "penetration test" interchangeably, and the people asking for evidence sometimes do too. Before you buy, be clear about which one is being asked for.

A Microsoft 365 security audit compared with the alternatives

• A Microsoft 365 security audit reads the configuration of one cloud tenant against a published benchmark and reports the gaps. It does not try to break in. It is the right answer when the question is "is our Microsoft 365 set up safely?"
• A penetration test attempts to exploit systems, usually web applications, external services or an internal network, within an agreed scope and time. It is the right answer when a client, regulator or insurer specifically asks for one, and the Hong Kong market usually means something quite different by it from a tenant review.
• A vulnerability scan looks for known weaknesses in servers, firewalls and devices. It says nothing about who can sign in to your email without MFA.
• A wider IT assessment and audit covers the whole estate: network, servers, endpoints, backup, processes and the Microsoft 365 tenant as one component. Brocent's IT assessment and audit service is the right starting point if the tenant is only part of the question.
• Managed security monitoring is continuous and recurring. It is what you buy after an audit, if the findings and your risk appetite say you should.

If an insurer or a client has asked for "a security audit" and you are not sure which of these they mean, send us the exact wording of the question. Deciding that correctly before scoping costs nothing and avoids buying the wrong thing.

How does this help with the PDPO and with questionnaires?

A Microsoft 365 tenant in Hong Kong usually holds personal data: staff records, client contact details, in some industries far more sensitive material. The Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance expects a data user to take practicable steps to protect that data. A dated, independent review of how the system holding it is configured, with findings and evidence, is a reasonable part of being able to show those steps were taken.

The report is designed to be used as evidence in exactly that kind of conversation: with your own compliance function, with an insurer's questionnaire, with a client's supplier security review or with an external auditor. It helps you meet your obligations under the PDPO and answer the questions others put to you. It is not a certification, and we do not say that any regulator, insurer or scheme accepts it, because that is their decision, not ours. What we can say is that the workbook lists each control, the value found, the evidence file it came from and the date, which is what a reviewer needs in order to form their own view.

What happens after the report?

Most Hong Kong firms do one of three things, and the report is written to support all three.

• Fix the critical and high findings themselves. Every finding carries numbered remediation steps, a rollback and a note on what staff will notice. A competent in-house administrator or your existing IT provider can work through them. The workbook is the tracking sheet.
• Ask Brocent to do the hardening. This is quoted per job after you choose which findings to act on, because the effort depends entirely on what was found. The report's phase plan is the natural scope.
• Move the tenant into a managed IT plan. If the review shows that nobody owns the tenant day to day, continuous ownership is the fix: MFA and Conditional Access enforced as policy, joiners and leavers handled on the day, drift watched, the posture reviewed on a schedule. Brocent's Managed IT plans for Hong Kong are priced per user and published; the quote builder shows the Hong Kong rate for your headcount, and the response targets are on the SLA page.

None of the three is assumed. A fair number of clients run the audit, fix the top items with their existing provider and come back a year later for a second read. That is a perfectly good outcome.

Why buy this from a Hong Kong IT company?

Nothing about reading a cloud tenant requires an engineer to be in Hong Kong, and we deliver the same audit remotely to clients in other markets. What a local provider adds is practical.

The debrief can happen in your office or ours, in Cantonese, Mandarin or English. The consultant understands what an SFC-licensed firm's compliance officer or a Hong Kong insurer's renewal form is actually asking. Invoicing and contracting can be done through our Hong Kong entity. And if the audit leads to hardening work or to onsite help with devices, the engineers who turn up are the same team, dispatching from Kwun Tong to Kowloon, Hong Kong Island and the New Territories. Brocent has operated in Asia since 2007, with group headquarters in Singapore and a staffed Hong Kong office at Capital Trade Centre, 62 Tsun Yip Street, Kwun Tong. The Hong Kong IT support page covers the rest of what we do locally.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a Microsoft 365 security audit cost in Hong Kong?

The price is fixed by headcount: US$450 for 1 to 10 users, US$990 for 11 to 25, US$1,800 for 26 to 75 and US$2,900 for 76 to 150 users. Tenants above 150 users are quoted after a scoping call. The figure covers the full CIS Level 1 and Level 2 review, the report, the workbook and the debrief. Remediation and ongoing monitoring are separate.

How long does it take?

The report and workbook are delivered 5 to 7 business days after your Global Administrator grants read-only access. Add the scoping call before that and the debrief after it, and the whole engagement typically fits inside two to three weeks of calendar time.

Do you need admin access to our tenant?

No. The audit uses a read-only Microsoft Graph application that one of your Global Administrators consents to once. No Brocent user account is created, nothing is installed on devices, and the consent can be revoked at any time by removing the application in Entra ID.

Does the audit read our email or documents?

No. It reads configuration and metadata only: policies, settings, role assignments, sharing defaults and the like. The content of mailboxes and files is explicitly out of scope and is stated as such in the report.

Is this the same as a penetration test?

No. A penetration test tries to exploit systems; a tenant audit reads how one cloud service is configured against a benchmark. If a client or insurer has asked for a penetration test, that is a different engagement. If they have asked whether Microsoft 365 is set up securely, this is the one.

Will the report satisfy our insurer or our client's security questionnaire?

The report and workbook are designed to be used as evidence, and clients use them for exactly those questionnaires. Whether a particular insurer, client or auditor accepts them is their decision. We do not claim acceptance by anyone, and the report is not a certificate of compliance with the PDPO or any other regime; it helps you show the steps you have taken.

We have offices in Hong Kong and Shenzhen on one tenant. Can you audit the whole thing?

Yes. The audit covers the tenant, not the office, so a shared tenant is reviewed once and priced on its total licensed headcount. If the Mainland side runs on a separately operated tenant, tell us on the scoping call and we will scope the two accordingly.

What if we only want the audit and nothing else?

That is a normal outcome and there is no obligation beyond the fixed price. You keep the report and workbook, your own team or provider can act on them, and you are welcome to come back for a re-audit later if you want to measure progress.

Next steps

Start with the Microsoft 365 Security Audit pricing page for the full price list, the sample report and the FAQ, or run through the self-assessment checklist first to see how far you get on your own. When you are ready to scope, contact a consultant with your approximate headcount and what prompted the question, and we will confirm the band and the start date on the same call.