General Governance and Compliance Overview

Illustration shows an overall governance and compliance overview for an organization using Microsoft 365 products and services. Governance of Microsoft 365 services requires establishing organizational policies to ensure the deployment and use of Microsoft 365 products and services maximizes benefits to the organization, while minimizing risks of violating any relevant laws, regulations, or business or industry standards. The corporate goals and missions (upper left) and laws, regulations, and standards (upper right) help define the governance requirements and goals. Then the organization can define, implement, monitor, and adjust its policies as needed.

Ensuring compliance when using Microsoft 365 services may be facilitated by some Microsoft 365 products and services that help implement policies (lower right), while others may assist with monitoring (lower left). Constant monitoring of the organization’s governance policies to ensure such policies are properly implemented and enforced is necessary to ensure compliance.