Unlocking enterprise-grade security and compliance for SMEs: new licensing choices from Microsoft

If you are responsible for the security and compliance of your organisation, you’ve likely been watching the evolution of licence options from Microsoft with interest. Until recently, if you were running Microsoft 365 Business Premium and wanted access to Microsoft’s top-tier security and compliance toolkit you had few options other than upgrading to the full Microsoft 365 E5 licence (or adding E5-level add-ons). That often meant a major jump in licence cost, complexity and budget justification. 

Now Microsoft has introduced two new add-on suites aimed specifically at the SME segment: 

• The Microsoft Defender Suite for Business 

• The Microsoft Purview Suite for Business 

These add-ons allow you to retain your Microsoft 365 Business Premium base licence (for up to 300 users) yet unlock many of the advanced security and compliance features previously reserved for E5. The value proposition for SMEs is compelling: enterprise-grade tools but at a far more accessible price point. 

In this article we’ll walk you through: 

1. Why this is significant for SMEs 

2. What business premium gives you today (baseline) 

3. What the Defender and Purview suites bring on top (features & benefits) 

4. How to think about whether you should upgrade and how to do so

   
   

Why this matters for SMEs 

For many SMEs the challenge has been this: you buy Microsoft 365 Business Premium to get productivity apps, Teams, OneDrive/SharePoint, Intune and good email and endpoint protection. But as threats evolve (ransomware, phishing, identity-based attacks, shadow SaaS applications) and as regulatory/compliance demands increase (GDPR, supply-chain risk, insider risk), you start to feel the gap. The full E5 licence would cover that gap, but historically the cost and complexity of migrating to E5 were major blockers for SMEs. 

With the new Defender and Purview suites you now have the option to layer on nearly E5-level security and compliance capabilities without wholesale switching to E5. That means better protection, simpler management, less cost and less disruption. 

According to our sums the combined bundle delivers savings of up to approximately 68% compared to buying all the capabilities individually. 

What you get with Microsoft 365 Business Premium 

Before we look at the new features, it’s helpful to recap the baseline. Microsoft 365 Business Premium gives you: 

• The full productivity app suite (Office apps, Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive) and cloud services. 

• Advanced identity & access management (via Entra ID P1), device and application management through Intune, and unified endpoint/desktop management. 

• Endpoint protection via Microsoft Defender for Business (which delivers next-gen antivirus, vulnerability management, endpoint detection & response on SMB scale). 

• Email and file protection (Defender for Office 365 Plan 1), data discovery/classification and basic Purview info protection. 

All of that is a strong foundation. But from a security/control/compliance maturity perspective, there are several more advanced capabilities missing from the Business Premium base that organisations increasingly need: 

• Advanced identity protection (risk-based conditional access, privileged identity management). 

• Cloud app visibility/shadow IT control. 

• Proactive threat hunting. 

• Active Directory surveillance with best practice assessments.

• Enhanced data security capabilities, on-endpoint and in cloud.

• Insider risk management, advanced data governance (labels, records management, audit, eDiscovery). 

• Full SaaS application governance, advanced DLP, compliance dashboards, reporting. 

Historically to get that you had to move to Microsoft 365 E5 (or add multiple standalone licences) which meant more cost and more management overhead. 

What the new suites bring 

Microsoft Defender Suite for Business 

When you add the Defender Suite to your Business Premium base licence, you effectively enhance your security posture across identity, endpoint, email, and cloud apps. 

Key feature upgrades include: 

• Entra ID P2 (advanced identity/security governance) – rather than the P1 version in Business Premium. This gives you risk-based conditional access, identity protection, governance and lifecycle control. 

• Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 – includes full endpoint detection & response (EDR), threat-hunting, live-response, six-months data retention, IoT endpoints. 

• Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 – this adds advanced email/file threat protection, automated investigation & response, attack simulation training, threat explorer, etc. 

• Defender for Cloud Apps – visibility and control of SaaS / shadow-IT usage, governance of third-party app risks. 

• Defender for Identity – monitoring of identity threats (on-premises Active Directory as well as cloud). 

Benefits of Microsoft Defender Suite for Business over Business Premium: 

• Ability to hunt at scale through 30 days of logs for indicators of compromise. 

• Retention of 6 months of endpoint logs with easy, interactive access. 

• Automatic incident response for detected threats. 

• Access to the Threat Explorer to identify organisation wide attacks and trends. 

• Ability to hunt at scale through email security logs for indictors of compromise. 

• Priority account protection, offering further security protection to users handling sensitive data regularly. 

• Access to attack simulation training to deploy simulated phishing mails or security awareness training. 

Microsoft Purview Suite for Business 

This add-on covers the compliance and governance dimension, which is increasingly important for sectors like public-sector, regulated industries, as well as any business handling customer/employee data. 

Key capabilities: 

• Advanced Information Protection which includes sensitivity-labels, encryption, data lifecycle management, retention/records management. 

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) across email, files, endpoints, cloud apps. 

• Insider Risk Management & Communication Compliance so you can detect unusual patterns, risky user behaviour, and monitor communications. 

• eDiscovery (premium), Audit (premium) tools for forensic analysis, investigation, legal/regulatory readiness. 

• Compliance Manager dashboards which provide simplified regulatory mapping, and risk-assessment workflows tailored for smaller organisations. 

Benefits of Microsoft Purview Suite for Business over Business Premium: 

• Endpoint DLP, controlling data even if it doesn’t enter the tenant. 

• DLP in Teams. 

• Machine-learning auto-labeller to save time with labelling bulk content. 

• Teams Meetings can be labelled. 

• Default labels for SharePoint sites. 

• Conditional access policies able to use sensitivity labels as a context. 

• Labels and policies can inherit labelling from container. 

• Enhanced eDiscovery features including legal hold notification, increased audit retention and more audit features. 

• Enhanced log retention. 

Combined bundle: Defender + Purview 

If you need both advanced security and advanced compliance/governance, Microsoft offers the combined bundle of these two suites. 

This means just one licence overlay above Business Premium, covering all advanced security and compliance tools, which for many SMEs will provide a very attractive “one-stop” upgrade path. 

How to think about upgrading – decision checklist 

As an IT manager you’ll want to justify whether it makes sense for your organisation to add one or both suites. Here are practical steps and considerations: 

Assess your risk & compliance posture 

• What is your threat landscape? If you have remote or hybrid workers, unmanaged devices, lots of SaaS apps, or you’ve been targeted then the Defender Suite becomes strongly relevant. 

• What are your compliance or data governance demands? Do you handle regulated data, need audit/eDiscovery readiness, have obligations under frameworks, or need to show social value/assurance for procurement? Then the Purview Suite becomes important. 

• What is your current gap compared with what you need? Map what Business Premium gives you today vs what your policies, risk-appetite and regulation require. 

Compare cost vs moving to full E5 

• The new add-on pricing is very compelling. For example, you will pay £8.09 per user per month (or £97.08/year) for Defender Suite or Purview Suite. 

• The combined bundle is £12.08 per user per month (or £144.96/year) providing a saving of 25% over buying each separately. 

• Moving from Business Premium to a full Microsoft 365 E5 would entail significantly higher cost (around 54%) and may provide capabilities you don’t fully utilise. 

• Consider your ROI: fewer incidents, demonstrable compliance, reduced manual work, fewer third-party point solutions. 

Understand deployment/management implications 

• Upgrading licences is one thing, but making effective use of the features is another. Do you have the processes, skills and tooling to effectively utilize EDR, identity risk alerts DLP across SaaS? If your team is small you may need to combine this licence upgrade with a managed service to help enable and optimise.

• You’ll want to plan rollout, training, policy updates, change management — especially for features such as Defender for Identity (on-premise identity security), Insider Risk Management , etc.

Procurement, budgeting & partner alignment 

• Make sure your financing/budget cycle allows for the add-on cost per user per month or per annum. 

• Consider communicating the change internally: this licence upgrade is not just a tick-box, you’ll need to update policies (for DLP, insider risk, SaaS governance) and perhaps run awareness training. 

Summary – what this means for you 

For SMEs operating with a limited IT budget, or a small IT team, these new suites change the playing field. You no longer have to decide between “stay on Business Premium and accept modest security/compliance” or “move to full E5 and pay a premium you can’t easily justify”. Instead, you can stay on Business Premium and layer on the exact capabilities you need, while remaining within a budget-friendly model. 

In practical terms: 

• If your biggest concern is external threats (identity compromise, device attacks, phishing, shadow SaaS) then adding the Defender Suite is a strong step-up. 

• If your challenge is internal risk, data governance, compliance, audit readiness, then the Purview Suite makes sense. 

• If you want both, the combined bundle offers the best value. 

• And for many SMEs the cost saving compared to full E5 (or buying multiple standalone security/compliance tools) is substantial.