Security and compliance are two critical concerns for businesses, especially in financial services, and Microsoft realizes that. For businesses to make sure they’re safe when it comes to security and compliance, Microsoft had an excellent solution known as the Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance center. It has since been replaced by two separate software solutions known as Microsoft 365 Security Center and Microsoft 365 Compliance Center respectively. There’s even a different Office 365 Security and Compliance Center that has been around since 2015. This article focuses more on the recent apps- Microsoft 365 Security Center and Microsoft 365 Compliance Center that’s replacing the Microsoft 365 Security and Compliance Center.

Microsoft 365 Security Center

The new Microsoft 365 Security Center gives you all the security features you need for your apps, devices, infrastructure, and more. It’s a dedicated dashboard to fulfil all your security requirements. It analyzes your system and gives you a Security Score. It shows how secure your network and data are. It gives you options and areas where you can improve security on, and it’s quite useful for IT admins. The dashboard will provide you with recommendations and let you take action on critical and even less critical issues as you see fit.

The main dashboard for the Center shows you all the security options at a glance, and you can click individual tabs for a more detailed to deep-dive into the areas you are interested in learning more about how to make more secure. You’re an E3 or E5 customer; you can get alerts from various complementary Microsoft services such as Microsoft Cloud App Security, Office 365 ATP, Azure AD, and Microsoft Defender ATP. You can get even more proactive by doing real-time security checks as and when you need. You can schedule automatic checks of your entire organizational system. It’s a potent tool that ensures you’re always a step ahead of malicious hackers who may want to send attacks to your network. You can protect different files and documents and other data in different ways by classifying them for specific kinds of protection.

Just like user privileges on Windows, you can assign them the same in the Security Center. You can decide which user can have access to what areas on the software. You can be admin and have other personnel to be the same too. Similarly, other users can have limited roles as per your preference. The user interface is quite user-friendly, and novices will find the learning curve barely steep. The dashboard will even give you access to detailed reports on the security status of your organization. All kinds of reports and also customized ones can be accessed at a click of a button.

Microsoft 365 Compliance Center

The Compliance Center makes sure your business is complying with regulations. It takes a look at your organization and offers solutions to boost your compliance. It helps you meet complicated compliance obligations thanks to tailored recommendations.

All the necessary compliance features such as sensitivity, retention labels, policies, data loss prevention (DLP), eDiscovery, case management, Cloud App Security, data subject requests (DSRs), eDiscovery and data governance are all accessible via the dashboard. It will point out all the missing links and help you fix issues via actionable insights.

Just like the Security Center, it has different tabs for its different areas that can be accessed directly from the dashboard. Once you start it, you’re greeted by a helpful and friendly welcome banner that helps you get your organization adequately set up. Just like the Security Score in the Security Center, you get a scorecard as well from the Assess screen. It shows how your organization fares in terms of data security and compliance. Your scorecard is known as the Microsoft Compliance Score Card, and from there, you can visit the Compliance Manager. The Compliance Manager allows you to assess your configurations and tweak them to your preferences and possibly move your compliance score up too. 

In the same area, you’ll have access to two cards. One card will detail the organization’s cloud app compliance, and the other will be about all the users sharing files in the organization. More data options can be explored via other links and even one on Cloud App Security.

This brings us to the next tab, known as Protect. So here, you have access to several cards that, on a higher level, give you access to everything you need to know about your organization’s labels, DLP, shadow apps, third-party apps, shared files between the user and other things. Whenever you select a card, it will provide you links to reports on all the above areas so you can take the right actions.

Finally, the Respond section is equally important. The two cards here refer to action alerts and pending items, respectively. Once you go to each section, it will give you the complete information on status, severity, and what category they belong to, among other things. This way, you can respond to each issue presented to you one at a time. The left navigation panel gives you access to even more areas such as policies, alerts, reports, classification and solutions about compliance.

The best part about both the security and compliance center apps are that navigation is exceptionally user-friendly. All the information is entirely detailed, so you’re always kept updated on changes in your security and compliance status.

With Microsoft 365 Security Center and Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, you get two compelling software solutions for your organization’s security and compliance requirements. The tech giant has put a lot of options for you under the hood of each app to make sure your organization is prepared for the latest security threats and always adhering to compliance regulations. Microsoft will continue to bring more features to these two already excellent enterprise apps. Your enterprise is in safe and competent hands with Microsoft 365 Security Center and Microsoft 365 Compliance Center.

Infowise

Here at Infowise Business Solutions, our client list includes some of the world’s best-known financial institutions.  Our products that are used by the financial sector are a cross-section of what we offer; Workflow automation, process automation, advanced dynamic forms and document filing. We have helped thousands of businesses across the globe in leveraging the power of their Office 365 platform, including SharePoint, to its fullest potential to quickly build a wide variety of modern business solutions, tailor-made to meet their business requirements. Through our implementation partners, we have been part of the digitization process for many businesses in the financial sector. Whether your preference is Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS, our partners will assist and guide you on how best to get your financial institution on the cloud like so many others have taken advantage of. If you are unsure, then they can guide you on what works best for the institution’s needs and customized solutions can be provided to fit the requirements. Cloud computing is the future, and the future is now.