Struggling to comply with GDPR? Microsoft 365 rolls out new privacy dashboards

Microsoft is rolling out new dashboards in its Microsoft 365 enterprise bundle to help security and compliance officers deal with new privacy laws. 

Microsoft 365, which includes Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security, is gaining a new workspace for managing compliance with Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other regions' laws. 

The Compliance Manager risk-assessment dashboard helps security and compliance professionals manage regulatory compliance tasks. Under GDPR, any EU resident can request data that's been collected about them. The updated compliance manager helps Microsoft 365 users handle these data-subject requests. 

California's new privacy laws offer similar protections, including giving consumers the right to request that personal information is deleted and to easily transfer data to other services. 

Microsoft VP and chief legal officer Brad Smith believes US lawmakers in 2019 will begin pushing ahead with federal privacy legislation to avoid a patchwork of state-based variants of California's law. 

The tool also uses analytics to help display actions that compliance managers should take with respect to various regulations, including GDPR, the US HIPAA healthcare regulations, and ISO-27001 security standards.      

The new specialized workspaces give security and compliance teams a centralized view across Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), as well as Azure capabilities, according to Microsoft.  

Microsoft will roll out of the two dashboards this month and expects the worldwide rollout to be complete by the end of March. 

The new dashboards will be accessible from security.microsoft.com and compliance.microsoft.com, as well as the Microsoft 365 admin center. 

SEE: 20 pro tips to make Windows 10 work the way you want (free PDF)

According to a a new support document, the features will be available to Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 or E5 customers, as well as customers with a Volume Licensing equivalent, including Office 365 Enterprise E3 or E5, Enterprise Mobility + Security E3 or E5, and Windows 10 Enterprise E3 or E5.  

The Microsoft 365 security center offers a central place to view information about identity and access management, threat protection, information protection, and security management. 

This includes a dashboard that provides the status of an organization's security score, identity protection vulnerabilities, device compliance and malware statistics, and details about which cloud-based OAuth apps have high privileges. 

The security center also gives SecOps teams tools to manage incident response, including a centralized view of alerts and "hunting capabilities" for investigations. 

A new Microsoft 365 Label Analytics preview is on offer to help compliance officers analyze and validate how sensitivity and retention labels are being used beyond Office 365 workloads. 

Meanwhile, the Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS) insights feature aims to identify risks across applications, identify shadow IT, and monitor non-compliant employee behavior. 

Microsoft's popular enterprise messaging platform, Microsoft Teams, is also gaining new compliance tools aimed at customers in regulated industries. 

A new 'intelligent policies' feature includes intelligent filters, flags for sensitive information types, and advanced message filters. 

Intelligent filters feature is in private preview and includes an offensive language detector powered by machine learning and artificial-intelligence models that can identify communication patterns over time.

The sensitive information types feature allows admins to monitor data regulated by financial, medical, health or general privacy laws. 

The advanced message filter allows admins to include or exclude emails based on domains and do the same based on retention labels.  

Previous and related coverage

Windows 10: Now it's tap or look to sign in to Outlook, Office 365, OneDrive, Skype

Microsoft takes another big step in its mission for password-less sign-in for Windows 10.

Microsoft is readying a consumer Microsoft 365 subscription bundle

Microsoft is working to bring a consumer version of its Microsoft 365 bundle to market, which could include Windows 10, Office 365, Skype, Cortana, Outlook Mobile and/or other services.

Microsoft Teams is killing it in the business chat market

Microsoft Teams is on course to become the top business chat app by 2020.

Microsoft's big win: Pentagon signs massive $1.76bn contract

Microsoft wins a five-year services deal with Department of Defense, Coast Guard, and intelligence community.

Office 365 vs G Suite: Which productivity suite is best for your business?

Microsoft and Google are engaged in a pitched battle to win over your business with suites of cloud-based productivity software and services. Here's a look at the many different editions of Office 365 and G Suite, along with what you can expect to pay for each one.

Microsoft's Office 365 apps are available in the Apple Mac App Store

Mac users can now download the suite of Microsoft's Office 365 apps from the Mac App Store for free, but a subscription is required for full use.

Using Microsoft Flow to connect Office 365 to Google's GSuite TechRepublic

Microsoft's low-code serverless tools can simplify application integration, and bring Windows and Android closer together.

This Microsoft Office 365 Home deal is actually pretty decent: $55 CNET

Today only, you can save $45 on the six-user edition of this popular suite. Plus: Lenovo's 10-inch Smart Display is on sale for a great price.