Augmentt Urges MSPs to Sell Microsoft 365 Security, Compliance Evidence and Copilot Readiness

That is a sales message, not a technical bulletin, and it should be read as one. Underneath it, though, is a real problem for anyone who manages Microsoft 365 for more than one client. Customers are turning on Copilot, auditors want proof, and the settings that control data exposure are split across several admin portals.

What Augmentt told CRN​

Belair told CRN that Augmentt is still spending its 2025 Series A round, split between sales and marketing and faster product development. The goals he gave:

• Grow in the MSP channel and abroad. He said about 35 percent of revenue already comes from outside North America, even though the company has little presence there, so it is putting more into international growth and events.
• Cover more of Microsoft's stack. He called Microsoft security and management "such a broad technology integration gap" and said Augmentt wants to take MSPs beyond core Microsoft 365 into Intune, SharePoint and Teams.
• Build out compliance next year. CRN reports that Augmentt plans deeper Microsoft product coverage, extensive policy baselines, automated remediation and support for compliance frameworks. The story is dated September 29, 2026, so "next year" means 2027. No release dates were given for any of these items.

The funding figures need care. Augmentt's own November 10, 2025 announcement describes a CAD $18 million Series A led by New York growth equity firm Camber Partners. CRN's 2025 startup coverage put that at roughly US$13 million. The announcement said the money would go to the product roadmap, go-to-market operations and partnerships. The exact split between sales and development comes only from Belair's interview.

In short: the new interview doesn't announce much. It describes a strategy: grow the sales operation, go international, and extend the product across more of Microsoft's admin surface.

The part that already shipped​

Some of the "beyond 365" push is already available. On September 1, 2026, Augmentt announced SharePoint, Microsoft Purview and Teams coverage in its Secure Autopilot module and said it was generally available to existing customers and new MSP partners. According to the company, MSPs can now:

• check whether Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies are enabled in every client tenant, including DLP for Microsoft 365 Copilot
• find tenants with no published sensitivity label policies and deploy a baseline configuration
• audit SharePoint and OneDrive sharing settings against a chosen benchmark and fix loose settings
• set Teams meetings, messaging, app permission and external access policy for all tenants from one screen

Augmentt says the release builds on its existing Conditional Access management, Intune Autopilot, Defender policy management, and compliance auditing mapped to HIPAA, CMMC, NIST CSF and Essential Eight. The company also argues that Purview and Teams policy sit in per-client admin portals that Microsoft 365 Lighthouse doesn't reach. That is Augmentt's description of the gap, not an independent test.

Augmentt also includes an important caveat. The baseline data-protection configuration is only a starting point, and the company recommends that MSPs tune DLP and sensitivity label policies to each client's data. Pushing the same template to 40 tenants makes them consistent. It does not make them correct for each client.

Why Copilot turns data hygiene into a service​

Belair calls AI readiness one of the biggest MSP opportunities of the next year. The hard part, he says, is working out whether a customer's environment is ready for tools like Microsoft Copilot. In an earlier CRN piece from The Channel Company's XChange event, he was more specific: before customers roll out Copilot, MSPs need to know whether sensitive information is protected and who can reach it, which means reviewing SharePoint permissions, identity controls and data exposure.

Microsoft's own documentation shows why that review takes real work.

• What the Copilot DLP location does. Microsoft Purview DLP has a dedicated policy location that restricts the processing of prompts that contain sensitive information types, or processing files and emails that have specific sensitivity labels applied.
• It needs labels to work. When DLP blocks labeled content, identified items still appear in the citations of the response, but the content of the item isn't used in the response. If a tenant has no label taxonomy, the label-based controls have nothing to act on. This is why Augmentt's sensitivity-label check matters.
• The default policy only logs. Microsoft ships a starter policy called Default DLP policy - Protect sensitive M365 Copilot interactions. It is initially configured to Run the policy in simulation mode > Show policy tips while in simulation mode. This means that the event will only be logged. To block anything, you must change the state of the policy to enforce mode.
• It has setup quirks. The Copilot location is only available in the Custom policy template. When you select the Microsoft 365 Copilot policy location, all other locations for that policy are disabled. In a Microsoft Q&A answer, Microsoft also notes that admin units are not supported for this location. An admin working in an admin-unit-scoped view may therefore find the location greyed out.

That simulation-mode default is a clear example of the service opportunity Belair describes. A tenant can appear to have "DLP for Copilot" switched on while nothing is being blocked. An MSP that checks the enforcement state in every tenant, not just whether a policy exists, is providing work a customer can see and pay for.

In short: Copilot readiness is mostly about the basics — permissions, labels and DLP. Microsoft's native controls exist, but they need decisions about labels, enforcement and scope for each customer.

A readiness checklist MSPs can run today​

This checklist is based on Microsoft's Purview documentation and general practice. It is not an Augmentt-specific procedure.

1. Take stock of sensitivity labels. Confirm that each tenant has published label policies. Where labels are missing, set a taxonomy before relying on label-based Copilot rules.
2. Review SharePoint and OneDrive sharing. Oversharing is a data exposure risk whether or not Copilot is involved. Copilot just makes it easier to find.
3. Check whether Copilot DLP policies are enforced. In the Purview portal, go to Data Loss Prevention > Policies and check whether the default Copilot policy is still in simulation mode.
4. Build custom rules where needed. Microsoft's steps: select + Create policy. Select the Custom template, then Custom policy. On the Locations page, set the Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat location to on.
5. Assign the right roles. Microsoft lists roles such as Entra AI Admin and Purview Data Security AI Admin for editing Copilot DLP policies. The Purview role, it notes, doesn't have access to read prompts and responses of AI interactions.
6. Check licensing. Microsoft's Purview service description says that for shared locations such as SharePoint sites and Teams channel messages, users with the owner or member role must have the required license assigned when a Purview policy or feature is used.

From "trust me" to "prove it"​

Belair says customer demand is moving from general security help to specific framework questions. His examples were clients asking for CMMC Level 1, or PCI and HIPAA shops asking how to justify and prove their controls. At XChange he made the same point: customers want controls mapped to a standard and evidence that the work is actually being done.

It's worth noting what the available material does and doesn't say. Augmentt's September announcement names HIPAA, CMMC, NIST CSF and Essential Eight mappings. PCI appears in Belair's interview as an example of what customers ask about, not in that list of mappings. Mapping controls to a framework also doesn't certify compliance. The MSP still has to scope requirements, collect evidence and understand what the customer's own legal obligations are.

The MSP view: Azure and Teams are untapped​

Corey Kirkendoll, president and CEO of Plano, Texas-based 5K Technical Services, told CRN that the shift toward compliance gives MSPs room to build more Microsoft-based offerings, especially when vendors help package those capabilities into repeatable services. He said many MSPs never touch Azure or Teams, either because they lack the expertise or because they don't have a partner to support them.

That view comes from one practitioner. CRN's story includes no survey data, margin figures or adoption rates. It still matches a familiar pattern in the channel: MSPs buy the licenses, but the more advanced features in the tenant often go unused.

Augmentt uses the same automation internally​

Belair says Augmentt, at roughly 40 employees, runs a centralized AI system that gives staff information on partners, product usage and support. The company is also starting to assign AI agents to individual roles. His example is a support agent handling Level 1 and Level 2 tickets automatically so that senior staff can focus on bigger problems and customer conversations. He described it as giving everyone "an agent version of themselves."

The company hasn't said which AI vendor it uses, how accurate the agents are, or what safeguards are in place. For now this is a self-reported practice, not a case study.

The bottom line​

The strength of Belair's argument is that the work is real. The Copilot DLP controls mentioned above ship in a logging-only state by default, a single configuration doesn't fit every client, and auditors increasingly want evidence rather than assurances. MSPs that do this work across dozens of tenants without charging for it are leaving money on the table.

The caution is that multi-tenant tools, from Augmentt or anyone else, make the repetitive steps consistent. They don't replace judgment about each client. Treat the 2027 roadmap items as plans, not products. Treat vendor baselines as starting points. And before telling a client they're "Copilot-ready," check that their DLP policies are actually set to enforce.