Determine Business Needs
Implementation Effort: Medium – This step requires collaboration across security, compliance, and business teams to align Defender for Cloud capabilities with organizational goals.
User Impact: Low – This is a strategic planning activity handled by internal stakeholders; end users are not directly affected.
Overview
Determining business needs is the first and most critical step when planning a multicloud security strategy using Microsoft Defender for Cloud. This process involves identifying the specific security, compliance, and operational goals of your organization and mapping them to Defender for Cloud’s capabilities. Key questions include whether your organization needs to manage security posture across multiple clouds, comply with specific regulatory standards, or protect critical workloads like containers and databases.
By clearly defining business needs, organizations can ensure that Defender for Cloud is configured to deliver maximum value—providing unified visibility, compliance tracking, and threat protection across Azure, AWS, and GCP. Skipping this step can lead to misaligned configurations, missed compliance requirements, and underutilized security features. This activity supports the Zero Trust principle of "Verify Explicitly" by ensuring that security controls are aligned with business context and risk.