A phased deployment guide for rolling out Defender for Office 365 and Defender for Endpoint across a tenant.
IT KORR Knowledge Center
Defender Deployment Guide
A phased deployment guide for rolling out Defender for Office 365 and Defender for Endpoint across a tenant.
Phase 1 — Baseline Enablement
Enable Safe Links and Safe Attachments tenant-wide (Defender for Office 365).
Deploy Defender for Endpoint next-gen antivirus and attack surface reduction rules in audit mode.
Phase 2 — Detection & Response
Enable EDR (Plan 2) and review the first two weeks of alerts before tuning.
Move ASR rules from audit to block mode for confirmed-safe rules.
Phase 3 — Correlation
Confirm Defender XDR is correlating signal across Office 365, Endpoint, and Entra ID Protection.
Establish a routine for reviewing correlated incidents.
Related Resources
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint — /knowledge-center/cloud-productivity/microsoft-365-security/microsoft-defender-for-endpoint
This document is a starting-point resource, not legal or compliance advice. Review it against your organization's actual tenant configuration before adoption — see the full Microsoft 365 Security & Entra ID Hub for the reasoning behind each recommendation.
