December 13, 2017
Blog Post: Microsoft Partner Community
Author: Natee Pretikul, Sr. Partner Marketing Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Organizations today are being pressured by regulators around the world to ensure that they are compliant with regional and global regulatory requirements such as GDPR. Microsoft recognizes that it’s important for our partners to know how to support customers effectively.

Our security and GDPR assessments are just part of the toolsets we provide. Another key angle is innovation around our product functionality. Compliance Manager is a new service that gives you the ability to manage many of an organization’s compliance-related activities from one place.

With Compliance Manager, partners can look at the Microsoft cloud services a customer has and their data protection and compliance posture against the regulations or standards that matter to them. It enables customers to conduct risk assessments on Microsoft Cloud services, providing detailed information about control implementation and testing of Microsoft managed controls, along with the customer’s own self-assessment on the controls managed by them. Compliance Manager also provides recommended actions and step-by-step guidance to help customers improve their data protection capabilities.

As a cross-Microsoft cloud services solution, Compliance Manager is particularly helpful when it comes to meeting complex compliance regulations like the GDPR. This makes it an ideal tool for partners, who can use Compliance Manager to assess a customer’s environment from a technology perspective, and then offer project-based and on-going services. For example:

Be informed.
Use Compliance Manager in conjunction with the GDPR Detailed Assessment to assess a customer’s GDPR maturity level, with a clear view into available Microsoft controls that can be accessed. Use this information to drive a dialogue on what Microsoft solutions could be configured to help the customer’s GDPR compliance journey. Provide deeper assessments of a customer’s environment and provide a roadmap to greater compliance.

Take action.
Compliance Manager’s project management capabilities allows the user to automatically assign tasks to individuals and track compliance-related activities through to completion. Add details to provide a proof of record about activities taken in support of GDPR.

Partners can use Compliance Manager to become change agents to drive key activities within the customer’s organization. For example, many organizations are still not classifying their data properly, which provides an area of opportunity for partners to step in and help address gaps that are identified.

Meet changing requirements.
As customers’ needs change, they may add additional Microsoft services. Compliance Manager will be very helpful for partners when thinking about on-going services and specialized offerings that can be provided.

“Planet Technologies sees Compliance Manager as a great step forward for Microsoft’s customers who have compliance requirements based upon industry standards. We are especially excited to have a single pane of glass with real-time risk assessment on Microsoft cloud services, actionable insights and recommended actions to improve data protection capabilities, and simplified compliance via streamlined workflow and audit-ready reports. The controls of data protection regulations and standards, including GDPR, are especially important for our Federal customers, and are readily identified and easily assignable to staff for completion and review. We can’t wait to see how Compliance Manager will evolve in the future.”
-Jeff Fowler, Federal Sr. Cloud Strategist, Planet Technologies, Inc.

Compliance Manager is now available in preview. Visit Compliance Manager to give it a try.