Helps an organisation measure itself against regulations and standards: ready-made assessments test its controls, suggested improvement actions show what to fix, and a compliance score records progress. Part of Microsoft Purview.
Also called Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Compliance Manager in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Measure
A figure like total revenue, worked out by aggregating fact table data wherever dimensions intersect within a semantic model.
- Compliance score
Shown as a percentage in Compliance Manager, it grows as improvement actions are finished, with each worth points according to risk; mandatory preventative actions count most. The Microsoft 365 data protection baseline gives the starting point.
- Microsoft Purview
Family of Microsoft products for data governance, security and compliance. Its Data Map stores only metadata, such as lineage, schema and classification, never the data itself.
Related terms
- CSF
Short for the NIST Cybersecurity Framework: optional standards, guidelines and practices that help organisations handle cyber risk. Alongside ISO, it supplies most controls in the baseline assessment Compliance Manager starts with.
- Data Protection Baseline
The ready-made assessment Compliance Manager gives every subscription, which sets your first compliance score. Most controls in it come from ISO and NIST CSF, with some taken from GDPR and FedRAMP.
- ISO/IEC 27001
A globally recognised standard setting out what an information security management system must include. Independent auditors certify Microsoft's cloud services to it, and Compliance Manager provides a ready-made template to assess yourself against it.
- Microsoft 365 data protection baseline
Compliance Manager's starting assessment, included for all organisations at no extra cost. Its controls come mostly from NIST CSF and ISO and cover data protection and governance, and your first compliance score is calculated from it.
- Microsoft managed controls
Compliance Manager's term for cloud service controls that Microsoft takes responsibility for. Customers handle their own controls, and some are shared between both parties.