1: Assess
Managing compliance is c.o.m.p.l.i.c.a.t.e.d. You have to operate under multiple varying standards, shift your regulatory landscape and take note of variations by both industry and country.

Get this – 47 percent of executives were unsure of what data standards their organizations had to comply with. That shows just how detailed this process is.

But you can simplify this journey with ongoing risk assessments, actionable insights, and streamlined compliance workflow.

Microsoft offers a Compliance Manager that can help with all of those things. You’ll want a Compliance Score, something that reflects your overall compliance across different platforms. For example, the responsibility you have when your IT is on the premises vs. the responsibility you have over data in the Cloud. The Compliance Manager will also give you a step-by-step guide to help you improve your business’ data protection capabilities.

2: Protect
You can’t protect something without knowing where it is. So before you can guard your sensitive data, you need to know where it resides, where it travels, and which portions of your data are going where. Classify, label, locate > PROTECT.

Easier said than done. In the modern workplace, corporate data has few travel limits. Something exacerbated by something that also helps us: the increase of mobility and cloud services.

So with data out there in so many places, you’re going to want a single, simple interface to help you keep track of it all. Microsoft 365.

3: Respond
It sounds reactive, but it’s proactive. And we don’t mean responding to a breach. We mean responding to all of the other requests that happen before you get to that point.

What we mean by this, is responding to the routine AI maintenance requests. This helps you pinpoint your most relevant data – so you can reduce the amount of data you need to review.

Microsoft 365 has a rich, built-in, platform-wide tool to help you search and discover your most important data. The biggest thing this helps with: since it’s interface-wide, you don’t have to continuously copy your data to other spots, which can pose another threat and violate your compliance demands. This helps you reduce risk, reduce cost, and review and annotate before you officially export/send your data off.

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