Full matrix
Reference: every capability, pillar by pillar, tier by tier
Showing 9 of 9 pillars. Exports follow this filter.
| Capability | E3 | E5 | E7 |
|---|---|---|---|
Identity & AccessWho (or what) can reach which resource, under what conditions, for how long, and how that entitlement is proven and removed. | |||
| SSO, MFA & Conditional Access Single sign-on across cloud and integrated on-premises apps with policy-based access conditions on user, device, location and risk signal. | |||
| Risk-based access & Identity Protection Sign-in and user risk scoring that feeds Conditional Access so access tightens automatically when behaviour looks anomalous. | |||
| Privileged access & just-in-time admin Time-bound, approval-gated elevation into admin roles with access reviews, so standing privilege can be driven to near zero. | |||
| Joiner / mover / leaver automation Attribute-driven provisioning, access packages and automated de-provisioning tied to HR source of truth. | |||
| Network access / VPN replacement (GSA) Identity-centric access to private apps and the internet, replacing legacy VPN concentrators and standalone web filtering. | |||
| Verifiable credentials & identity proofing Issue and verify cryptographic credentials for onboarding, contractor validation and helpdesk identity checks. | |||
Endpoint & DeviceGetting a device to a known-good state, keeping it there without manual touch, and proving that state to the access layer. | |||
| Device management & configuration Enrolment, compliance policy, configuration profiles and app deployment across Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. | |||
| Endpoint Privilege Management & advanced analytics Removing local admin rights while allowing elevation of approved tasks, plus deeper endpoint analytics and remote help. | |||
| Update & patch orchestration Ring-based, service-managed delivery of Windows, driver and Microsoft 365 Apps updates with reporting. | |||
| Endpoint detection & response Behavioural detection, automated investigation and remediation, threat and vulnerability management on the endpoint. | |||
| Virtual desktop rights Licence entitlement to run Windows in Azure Virtual Desktop / Windows 365 scenarios. | |||
Threat Protection & SecOpsDetecting, correlating and responding to attacks across mail, identity, endpoint and SaaS as one incident rather than four alerts. | |||
| Email & collaboration threat protection Safe Links, Safe Attachments, anti-phishing policy and detonation for mail, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. | |||
| On-premises identity threat detection Detection of lateral movement, Kerberos abuse and domain-dominance techniques against Active Directory. | |||
| SaaS discovery & control (CASB) Shadow-IT discovery, app governance, session control and OAuth app risk across third-party SaaS. | |||
| Cross-domain correlation & hunting Unified incident queue, advanced hunting across raw telemetry, and automated attack disruption. | |||
| AI-assisted investigation & response Natural-language incident summarisation, script analysis and guided response for analysts. | |||
| SIEM & long-term security telemetry Centralised log retention, custom analytics rules and correlation with non-Microsoft sources. | |||
Data Security & Information ProtectionKnowing where sensitive information is, controlling where it can travel, and detecting when a trusted insider moves it. | |||
| Sensitivity labelling & encryption Classification and persistent encryption applied to documents and mail, enforced by the label rather than the location. | |||
| Data loss prevention Policy enforcement on sensitive content in transit across mail, Teams, SharePoint and the endpoint. | |||
| Insider risk management Behavioural signals (departing user, mass download, policy circumvention) turned into investigable risk cases. | |||
| Data security posture for AI Visibility over which sensitive data AI prompts and agents are touching, plus oversharing remediation. | |||
| Customer-controlled keys Bring-your-own-key and double key encryption for the small set of content that cannot rely on Microsoft-managed keys. | |||
Governance, Records & eDiscoveryMeeting statutory retention and disposal obligations, and being able to answer a legal or FOI-style request without a manual trawl. | |||
| Retention & deletion policy Org-wide and location-scoped retention policies and labels with defensible deletion. | |||
| Records management & disposition Regulatory records declaration, file plan, disposition review and proof-of-disposal reporting. | |||
| eDiscovery & legal hold Search, hold, review-set culling, near-duplicate detection and export for legal or statutory requests. | |||
| Audit depth & retention Availability of high-value audit events and how long audit logs are retained before extra cost. | |||
| Communication compliance Policy-based review of internal communications for code-of-conduct, harassment and regulatory breach. | |||
| Privacy risk & subject rights requests Detecting overexposed personal information and running subject rights requests as a managed workflow. | |||
| Backup & tiered archive Point in time restore of Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive content, and low cost retention of inactive content. | |||
Collaboration & ProductivityThe workload surface itself, largely constant across tiers, which is exactly why it is a poor basis for a tier decision. | |||
| Desktop & web productivity apps Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise across desktop, web and mobile with 1 TB OneDrive per user. | |||
| Teams meetings & chat Chat, channels, meetings and the collaboration substrate the rest of the estate sits on. | |||
| Content platform & intranet SharePoint, OneDrive, Loop and Viva Connections as the content and communications layer. | |||
| Mailbox capacity & archiving Primary mailbox size, in-place archive and auto-expanding archive behaviour. | |||
Analytics & InsightsTurning operational and corporate data into something decision-grade without standing up a separate BI licence estate. | |||
| Business intelligence Authoring, sharing and consuming governed reports and semantic models. | |||
| Workplace & collaboration insights Aggregate patterns on meeting load, focus time and collaboration networks. | |||
| Low-code automation Power Apps and Power Automate for process digitisation, within the seeded M365 connector limits. | |||
AI & AgentsTreating AI as a workload that needs identity, permission, logging and lifecycle, not as a feature toggle. | |||
| Grounded chat & web-grounded AI Enterprise-data-protected chat with the model, including web grounding. | |||
| In-app Copilot across Office & Teams Drafting, summarisation and analysis inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, grounded on tenant data via the Graph. | |||
| Agent building Creating task-specific agents grounded on organisational content and connected systems. | |||
| Agent identity & entitlement Agents registered in the directory with their own identity, owner, permissions and access reviews, governed like a workforce identity. | |||
| Agent observability & control A registry of every agent in the tenant, what it did, what it cost and the ability to suspend it. | |||
| Agent security & data governance Extending Defender detections and Purview DLP, labelling and retention to agent interactions. | |||
Voice & CommsWhether the telephony estate can collapse into the collaboration platform, and what still has to be bought separately. | |||
| Dial-in audio conferencing PSTN dial-in for meetings and dial-out to participants. | |||
| Cloud PBX Call queues, auto attendants, transfer, hold and voicemail, the PBX replacement layer. | |||
| PSTN calling minutes Actual outbound/inbound calling to the public network. | |||
Select any cell for the detail, prerequisites and licensing caveats.