Microsoft Compliance Manager is a cloud based feature of Microsoft Compliance Center which helps organizations meet requirements for standards, regulations and policies. The solution is general available as of November 21. 2020 and these are the licensing requirements.
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Compliance Manager
Almost every organization around the globe has to meet certain controls, such as regulations and standards. Think about the GDPR or ISO standards. Larger organizations often have internal policies they have to meet too. Keeping track and making sure you are compliance is difficult. Microsoft Compliance Manager is a cloud based tool which makes your life just a bit more comfortable. Within the tool you can choose from standards assessments or make your own and see what you have to improve to meet the standard. Please watch the video for detailed information.
Office – Microsoft 365 E5
The use of Microsoft compliance manager requires a Office 365 E5 (or for education A5) or a Microsoft E5 or A5 subscription license. Or when we put it the other way around, you will only get your hands on this handy tool when you have (at least) one of those subscriptions.
Benefit from the service
But, who does need a license? When we look at Microsoft Terms of Use, everybody who benefits from the service must have a subscription license. That means that not everybody in your organization must be licensed for E5/A5, but each and every person who uses Microsoft Compliance Manager (manage, set) or benefits from (read) Compliance Manager must have an Office 365 E5/A5 or Microsoft 365 E5/A5 subscription assigned to them. So please be aware of user permissions and roles within your tenant, because licensing is tied to that.
Premium Assessments
Users with a correct subscription license assigned will be able to access Data Protection Baseline, GDPR, NIST 800-53 and ISO27001 ‘out-of-the-box’ assessments and customer assessment features. Premium Assessments (yet undefined what those are) will come as an extra ‘add-on’ license to Office 365 E5/A5 and Microsoft 365 E5/A5 in the first half of 2021. Subscription licenses will be available through Volume License (such as the Enterprise Agreement), the Cloud Solution Provider Program (CSP) and direct at Microsoft.
Guidance
Might you want to know more about Microsoft Compliance Manager or it’s licensing? Please do contact one of our Microsoft experts to help you.