Cybersecurity remains a critical management issue in the era of digital transforming. In April, Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer of Microsoft, published a blog post to discuss a Cybersecurity Tech Accord, and to reinforce the importance of supporting an open, free, and secure Internet. As Brad mentions in his post, one of the core principles of the proposed Tech Accord is to empower users, customers, and developers to strengthen cybersecurity protection.
As part of our work on this principle, we are continuing to build and enhance the Assessments available in Compliance Manager to help organizations implement and verify security controls for their Microsoft cloud tenant.
With the July release of Compliance Manager, we are announcing the availability of new and updated Assessments for Office 365 and Azure:
- National Institute of Standards and Technology's Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) for Office 365: NIST CSF is a set of standards, best practices, and recommendations that can help organizations enhance their cybersecurity at the organizational level. Organizations can follow the customer actions provided in the NIST CSF Assessment to configure and assess their Office 365 environment.
- Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix (CSA CCM) for Office 365: CSA has defined the Cloud Control Matrix, which provides best practices to help ensure a more secure cloud computing environment. Potential cloud customers can use this Assessment to make informed decisions when transitioning their IT operations to the cloud. Office 365 customers can leverage the recommended customer actions to strengthen their cloud security controls.
- UK National Health Service (NHS) for Azure: NHS in England provided a single standard that governs the collection, storage, and processing of patient data. Organizations can evaluate Microsoft’s internal controls and see how they adhere to the requirements and review their responsibilities for controls.
- Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)/ Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act for Office 365: We also added HITECH controls into the HIPAA Assessment.
You can create these new Assessments in Compliance Manager today. To learn about how to add new Assessments, please see the support documentation.
Since we released Compliance Manager in February, many companies have begun using it as part of their overall compliance process. We’d like to share one such story with you. Watch this video and see how the biggest stadium in France uses Compliance Manager to protect confidential data with Microsoft 365:
If you are not familiar with Compliance Manager, you can download this white paper to learn more. We will continue to add Assessments for Microsoft Cloud services, so keep watching the Security, Privacy, and Compliance blog.