These are the official Microsoft references I used to write the Secure Score article, focused on how scoring works, how recommendations are evaluated, and how to document third-party mitigations. If you want to sanity-check a claim or go deeper on a specific section, start here. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-xdr/microsoft-secure-score Microsoft’s main overview of Secure Score: what it is, what it measures, how scoring works (including partial points), and how non-Microsoft solutions/alternate mitigations can still earn points. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-xdr/microsoft-secure-score-improvement-actions How to read the Secure Score dashboard and recommendations list, including the different score views (planned, current license, achievable), recommendation statuses (planned, risk accepted, resolved via third party/alternate mitigation), and typical update timing (24–48 hours). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/monitoring-health/concept-identity-s...
