Microsoft 365 for Metro Detroit businesses and defense suppliers

Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and cloud

Most Metro Detroit companies we talk with run Microsoft 365, often with settings left at their defaults. We tighten them: conditional access, mailbox auditing, external sharing controls, data retention, and device management through Intune where it fits. We also clean up licensing, which tends to sprawl after years of adding seats for contractors and engineers who have since moved on.

For defense contractors handling CUI, we explain the difference between commercial Microsoft 365 and Microsoft's government cloud offerings and help you weigh what your contracts require. We also run migrations, from on-premises Exchange and file servers to tenant-to-tenant moves after a merger or acquisition.

Commercial, GCC or GCC High

This is the Microsoft 365 question Detroit-area defense suppliers ask most. Commercial Microsoft 365 suits most businesses. Microsoft's GCC and GCC High environments exist for organizations with government data requirements, and GCC High is generally the choice for companies handling export-controlled data under ITAR or needing to meet DFARS 7012 cloud requirements in full. It also costs more and takes longer to stand up.

The right answer depends on what's in your contracts, what data you actually receive, and whether CUI can be kept in a smaller, separate enclave. Sometimes moving only the engineering group that handles CUI into GCC High, while the rest of the company stays commercial, is the practical route. We walk through the options with your contracts in hand, and we don't push the most expensive one by default.

Securing a tenant built over years

Many tenants around here started as an Exchange migration a decade ago and grew from there. We review them against Microsoft's own security baselines: legacy authentication blocked, MFA enforced through conditional access, admin roles separated from daily accounts, mailbox auditing on, external forwarding restricted, and guest access reviewed. Secure Score gives a rough before-and-after measurement.

Intune brings laptops and phones under the same policy umbrella. Devices must be encrypted, patched and protected before they reach company data, and lost devices can be wiped. Data loss prevention rules can warn or block when someone tries to email a drawing marked proprietary, or a spreadsheet full of Social Security numbers, outside the company. Each policy is documented, which helps when a customer audit comes around.

Acquisitions, divestitures and contractor sprawl

Supplier consolidation is a fact of life in the auto industry. When one company buys another, two tenants need to become one; when a division is sold, its users and data need to be carved out cleanly. We run tenant-to-tenant migrations in phases, sync mail and files ahead of cutover, preserve shared calendars and Teams where possible, and time the domain switch for minimal disruption.

Contractors are the other source of mess. Engineering firms and suppliers bring on contract designers for a program, give them accounts and licenses, then forget them when the program ends. We set up a process for contractor accounts with expiry dates and named sponsors, review guests and licenses quarterly, and remove access that's no longer justified. It trims license spend and closes a common security gap.