Hardening Microsoft 365 Without Buying Extra Licenses

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A lot of Microsoft 365 “security” starts with an upsell: Defender for Office 365, Entra ID P1, P2, the Worksuite. But a large share of the highest-impact hardening is already included in the subscription you pay for — it’s just switched off by default. This post is a practical, no-extra-cost checklist: what’s free, what it actually does, and the commands to verify it.

Companion reading: PowerShell + Microsoft Graph — Connection & Command Reference covers the PowerShell/Graph setup used in the verification commands below.

PowerShell + Microsoft Graph + Fedora

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A practical reference for connecting PowerShell to Exchange Online and Microsoft Graph from Linux (Fedora), plus the exact commands used during the SUSF admin MFA registration and legacy auth hardening project.

One-Time Setup on Fedora

Install PowerShell 7

sudo dnf install powershell

If not in Fedora’s repos, add Microsoft’s repo first:

sudo rpm --import https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc
curl -sSL -o /etc/yum.repos.d/microsoft.repo https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/9/prod.repo
sudo dnf install powershell

Launch PowerShell

pwsh

Trust PSGallery (First Run Only)

Set-PSRepository -Name PSGallery -InstallationPolicy Trusted

Connecting to Exchange Online

Install module (once)

Install-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement -Scope CurrentUser

Connect

Import-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
Connect-ExchangeOnline -UserPrincipalName itadmin@yourdomain.onmicrosoft.com

Uses a browser/device-code sign-in flow.

Mfa on IT Admin