Trend Tracker: Secure Score and Backlog Trends
Overview
Trend Tracker in Spotto shows your secure score history over time (from Microsoft Defender for Cloud) alongside recommendation activity, so you can see whether your security posture trend is getting better, worse, or just noisier. It’s designed for the recurring question: “Did we actually improve this month, or did we just talk about it?”
Feature overview
Trend Tracker is a time-series view of:
- Secure Score (0–100%) over time.
- Resources (your footprint) over time.
- Recommendations over time, including Unique recommendations and Spotto (custom) recommendations.
- Recommendation categories over time (Cost, Security, Reliability, etc.) so you can see where things are rising or falling.
Quick definitions (so charts make sense)
- Recommendations: Total recommendation volume over time (your backlog trend).
- Unique Recommendations: Recommendations de-duplicated by ID (a single recommendation affecting many resources is counted once).
- Spotto Recommendations: Recommendations created by Spotto (custom guidance), shown alongside provider-native guidance.
Why use this? (Jobs, pains, gains)
Jobs to be done
- When we ship security work, I want to see secure score trend lines, so I can validate that posture is improving (not just “we closed tickets”).
- When recommendation volume changes, I want to see what’s increasing or decreasing, so I can focus attention on the right category (often Security and Cost).
- When we manage multiple subscriptions, I want to compare trends across subscriptions, so I can spot outliers and prioritise the worst offenders.
Common pains
- Secure score snapshots are easy to find; secure score history with context is harder.
- Recommendation backlogs can grow quietly until you’ve got a “why is this so bad?” meeting on your calendar.
- Multi-subscription environments make it hard to tell whether improvements are real or just averaged out elsewhere.
What you gain
- A fast “are we improving?” view that combines posture + workload + guidance in one place.
- Better prioritisation by seeing which categories (Security, Cost, Reliability, etc.) are trending up or down.
- Evidence for planning: you can see whether recommendations are being addressed, piling up, or holding steady over time.
Key capabilities
Where to find it
In the Spotto Portal, open your company and navigate to Trend Tracker in the left-hand navigation.
Select one or many subscriptions
Use the subscription picker at the top of the page to select one or more ready subscriptions. Trend Tracker will plot a separate line per subscription so you can compare them directly.
Switch metrics without changing context
The timeline chart lets you switch between:
- Secure Score
- Resources
- Recommendations
- Unique Recommendations
- Spotto Recommendations
This makes it easy to correlate changes. Example: a sudden recommendation increase might coincide with a resource spike or a posture dip.
See where recommendations are rising or falling
The category chart shows recommendation totals by category over time (stacked), which is useful for spotting:
- Categories where backlogs are growing (attention needed).
- Categories where work is paying off (totals trending down).
You can toggle the category chart between All recommendations and Spotto recommendations.
Technical reference (what it uses)
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Inputs | Microsoft Defender for Cloud secure score signals, recommendation summaries, and Spotto custom recommendations derived from your subscription syncs. |
| Outputs | Timeline chart (per subscription) and a category trend chart (stacked) that highlights where recommendation volume is shifting. |
| Defaults | Loads up to 12 months of daily history (when available). When multiple subscriptions are selected, secure score is treated as an average, while count metrics (resources/recommendations) are treated as totals. |
How it differs from Azure-native views
Azure-native tooling can show secure score and recommendations, but Trend Tracker is optimized for the “trend + action” loop:
- It puts secure score history, recommendation trends, and category trends together.
- It supports comparing multiple subscriptions in one workflow.
- It surfaces Spotto recommendations alongside provider-native guidance so you can see what additional lift Spotto is providing.
How it works (high level)
- Spotto stores daily subscription snapshots during ingestion (up to 12 months).
- Trend Tracker fetches that history and renders:
- A per-subscription timeline for the selected metric.
- A category timeline based on recommendation summaries.
- The Spotto mode in the category chart is an estimate based on how many Spotto recommendations exist at each point in time (because the per-category breakdown may not be available for Spotto-only recommendations).
Limitations (honest, boring, useful)
- Trend Tracker isn’t real-time. It depends on successful subscription syncs and the history they produce.
- If a subscription is new (or history files haven’t been created yet), you’ll see empty states until enough daily points exist.
- The Spotto category view is an estimate, because Spotto-only recommendations may not have a full category breakdown available in history.
Troubleshooting
“No ready subscriptions available”
What you’re seeing: The Trend Tracker page shows an empty state. Likely causes:
- No subscription has completed syncing yet.
- Subscriptions are present but not marked ready.
How to fix:
- Confirm the subscription sync has completed successfully.
- Wait for ingestion to populate history, then refresh Trend Tracker.
Timeline shows “No timeline data is available yet”
What you’re seeing: The chart renders a “no data” state for the selected metric. Likely causes:
- Not enough history has been collected (common for newly added subscriptions).
- History exists, but not for the metric you selected.
How to fix:
- Switch the metric selector to Secure Score or Recommendations and check again.
- Revisit after the next successful sync(s) so more daily points are available.
“Select a subscription to view trends”
What you’re seeing: The page asks you to select a subscription before it shows charts. Likely causes:
- No subscription is selected in the picker (common after clearing cookies or opening a bookmarked URL).
How to fix:
- Use the subscription picker to select one or more subscriptions.
- If every subscription is unavailable, confirm at least one subscription is fully synced and marked ready.
“Spotto” category view looks empty or unexpectedly low
What you’re seeing: Category totals in Spotto mode are much lower than All mode, or some categories show zero. Likely causes:
- Spotto recommendations are a smaller subset of total recommendations.
- Spotto category totals are estimated from overall Spotto vs total recommendation ratios.
How to fix:
- Compare the timeline Spotto Recommendations metric against total recommendations to sanity-check the ratio.
- Use All mode to understand the full backlog; use Spotto mode to understand the additional lift Spotto is adding.
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