Microsoft 365 offers a variety of compliance solutions to help organizations meet their legal, regulatory, and organizational obligations. These solutions span across data governance, user rights, security, and risk management. Understanding these solutions is a crucial part of preparing for the MS-900 Microsoft 365 Fundamentals exam.
Data Governance
Microsoft 365 provides a comprehensive suite of data governance tools. These tools help organizations to classify, protect, and monitor their content in line with regulatory or operational requirements.
Compliance Manager
Compliance Manager helps you manage your organization’s compliance requirements with an operational dashboard that provides a real-time view of your data protection and compliance environment. With Compliance Manager, you can assign, track, and record compliance activities, thus simplifying audits and regulatory compliance.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
DLP is a tool that identifies, monitors, and automatically protects sensitive information across Microsoft 365. It detects sensitive content like personally identifiable information (PII) or proprietary business data. For example, if someone attempts to share a document containing credit card numbers outside the organization, DLP can identify this and take the appropriate protective action, such as blocking access to the document.
Retention Policies and Labels
Microsoft 365 uses retention policies and labels to help organizations manage and control their data. For instance, a retention policy could be set to delete emails after a certain period of time, or a retention label could be applied to important documents to preserve them indefinitely.
Information Protection
Microsoft 365 Information Protection allows organizations to classify and protect their documents and emails by applying labels. For example, a label marked “confidential” could be applied to sensitive business documents, which encrypts them, and restricts access to only certain users.
User Rights
Understanding and managing user rights is essential to maintaining compliance in Microsoft 365.
Privacy
Microsoft has built-in safeguards for privacy rights, including data subject rights, the right to be forgotten, and data minimization. For example, data subject rights give individuals the right to access, correct, delete, or move their personal data.
Consent and Access
Microsoft 365 includes a robust set of controls for granting and withdrawing consent, and managing access. For example, Robust access controls can reduce the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive information, while getting explicit consent ensures the lawful processing of personal data.
Security
Microsoft 365 offers a suite of security solutions that contribute to overall compliance.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
ATP provides real-time protection against malware, viruses, and phishing attempts. It helps detect and investigate security incidents, and respond swiftly to fix them.
Microsoft Secure Score
This is a measurement of an organization’s security posture. It provides recommendations on how to enhance the organization’s security posture and reduce vulnerabilities.
Risk Management
Microsoft 365 also offers solutions for risk management including:
- Audit and Compliance Reports
- Risk Assessments
Audit and Compliance Reports are available from the security and compliance center, providing information about user activity, document editing, email activity, and more. Microsoft Compliance Score helps organizations track their compliance to various regulations and standards, calculate their risk, and take remediation actions.
To sum up, Microsoft 365 provides a comprehensive set of compliance solutions that help organizations protect their data, manage user rights, enhance security, and manage risk. This is why understanding these solutions is a key part of preparing for the MS-900 Microsoft 365 Fundamentals exam.
Practice Test
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the primary solution for email and collaboration tool security in Microsoft
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 provides an array of security features for protecting Microsoft 365 users, data, and applications from cyber threats.
What is the main function of Microsoft 365 Compliance Manager?
- Evaluating risk assessments
- Streamlining communication
- Managing financial resources
- Maintaining server uptime
Answer: Evaluating risk assessments
Explanation: Microsoft 365 Compliance Manager is designed to help organizations meet complex compliance obligations by making it easier to conduct real-time risk assessments.
The Advanced eDiscovery tool in Microsoft 365 enables organizations to conduct a thorough search of data across the Microsoft 365 environment.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: The Advanced eDiscovery tool provides organizations with advanced search capabilities and machine learning technology to find relevant data promptly and accurately.
Is it true that Microsoft 365 Information Protection and Compliance solution is primarily organized around data classification, data loss prevention, and protection of sensitive data?
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Microsoft 365 Information Protection and Compliance leverages labeling and classification, as well as data loss prevention policies, to identify, classify, and protect sensitive data.
Microsoft 365 compliance center is generally available for all levels of Microsoft 365 license holders.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: The Microsoft 365 compliance center is only available to Office 365 Enterprise-version customers.
Does Microsoft 365 Compliance Center allow you to import third-party data?
- Yes
- No
Answer: Yes
Explanation: Microsoft 365 Compliance center indeed allows users to import non-Office 365 data which is called third-party data.
Microsoft Intune can be used to protect data on Microsoft devices only.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Microsoft Intune can be used to protect data on various devices including Android, iOS and Windows devices.
Does the Microsoft 365 Compliance score only consider Microsoft regulatory templates?
- Yes
- No
Answer: No
Explanation: Compliance score also includes your organization-specific assessments besides Microsoft regulatory templates.
The Multi-Geo Capability in Microsoft 365 helps organizations to meet data residency requirements.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Multi-Geo can be used to store Office 365 data at rest on a per-user basis in your desired Microsoft 365 data center geographies.
The Insider Risk Management in Microsoft 365 provides insights into users’ product usage, but doesn’t assist in identifying risky insider behavior.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: The Insider Risk Management tool highlights potential risky behavior such as data leaks or conflicts of interest, it does not just provide insights into product usage.
Interview Questions
What is Compliance Manager in Microsoft 365?
Compliance Manager is a feature within Microsoft 365 that assists organizations to manage their compliance requirements and improve their data protection capabilities. It provides features such as risk assessments, actionable insights, and simplified compliance solutions.
In Compliance Manager, what are Microsoft-managed controls?
Microsoft-managed controls are the internal controls implemented and managed by Microsoft. These controls help in ensuring data security and compliance in Microsoft 365 applications and services.
What is the purpose of Microsoft 365 compliance center?
Microsoft 365 compliance center is designed for compliance professionals and administrators. It provides easy access to the data and tools needed to manage compliance with regulations and standards.
What is the Advanced eDiscovery feature in Microsoft 365?
Advanced eDiscovery is a feature of Microsoft 365 that allows organizations to manage and resolve data investigations more efficiently. It uses machine learning, predictive coding, and text analytics to reduce the volume of data for review.
What is the Availability SLA for Microsoft 365 Compliance features?
The Availability SLA (Service Level Agreement) for Microsoft 365 compliance features is 99.9%, calculated monthly.
How does Microsoft 365 Compliance help in Preparing for GDPR?
Microsoft 365 has built-in GDPR tools that assist organizations in achieving their compliance obligations. These tools include data subject request capabilities, data detection and classification, and built-in privacy controls.
Can you explain data loss prevention (DLP) in Microsoft 365 Compliance?
Data loss prevention (DLP) in Microsoft 365 helps identify, monitor, and protect sensitive information across Office 365. It uses policies to control actions users can take on sensitive information, such as sharing it with others.
What is Information Protection in Microsoft 365 Compliance?
Information Protection in Microsoft 365 helps organizations safeguard important information from being lost, accessed, or stolen. It uses encryption, identity, and device protection to secure data wherever it’s stored or traveled.
How does Microsoft 365 help organizations remain compliant with international standards?
Microsoft 365 offers a robust set of built-in compliance tools that are continuously updated to meet evolving global standards. Services such as Compliance Manager, Advanced eDiscovery, Information Protection, and more enable organizations to manage and take action on their compliance risks.
What is Insider Risk Management in Microsoft 365 Compliance?
Insider Risk Management is a solution in Microsoft 365 that helps organizations detect, investigate, and take action on potential insider risks within their organization. It uses AI and machine learning to identify unusual user activity and provide alerts.
How does Microsoft 365 Compliance help in data governance?
Microsoft 365 provides data governance tools to retain, delete, investigate, and respond to requests for business-critical data. Its features enable organizations to create retention policies, classify data, and perform content searches and e-discovery.
What is the role of sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 Compliance?
Sensitivity labels in Microsoft 365 allow organizations to classify and protect their sensitive content. Once a label is applied, various protective actions like encryption or visual marking can be implemented automatically based on the defined policy.
How does Microsoft 365 Compliance facilitate audits?
Microsoft 365 Audit log search enables tracking of user and administrator activities, changes done in the organization, and allows exporting results for deeper analysis or archiving.
What is Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a cloud-based email-filtering service that helps protect organizations against spam, malware, and phishing attempts. It also includes features like Safe Attachments and Safe Links for further protection against malicious content.
What is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in Microsoft 365?
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a security feature in Microsoft 365 that adds an extra layer of protection by requiring users to verify their identity using at least two different forms of authentication before accessing their account.