Microsoft Compliance Manager (MSCM) Ninja Training: Q1 2022

by Contributed | Feb 18, 2022 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Does achieving your organization’s regulatory and compliance requirements keep you up at night?  Do you wonder how you will ever be able to adhere to all the controls and ensure your companies compliance with required regulations?  Do you want to ensure that you are on top of your compliance game and that the appropriate policies and guidance are followed and enforced?  Look no further, Microsoft Compliance Manager (MSCM) is the tool to help you achieve these goals and more.  This training is designed to help guide you from fundamental concepts on your MSCM journey to Advanced concepts.  Once completed you will have a firm understanding of the tool, its capabilities, and use.

Microsoft Compliance Manager has a ton of data, tutorials, videos etc. that can sometimes be overwhelming.  Leaving you asking questions such as “where do I start”, “how do I achieve compliance”, “how do I recognize when my organization falls out of compliance”.  We’ve sifted through the vast resources Microsoft has to offer for MSCM and developed this training to guide you – all in one location, in a simple easy to follow format!  If there is anything we can do to improve this training, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below and we will be sure to review it.

The overall structure of this training is split into 3 main knowledge levels.  They are:

After each level, we will offer you a knowledge check based on the training material you have just finished! Since there’s a lot of content, the goal of the knowledge checks is to help ensure understanding of the key concepts that were covered. Lastly, there’ll be a fun certificate issued at the end of the training! Disclaimer: This is not an official Microsoft certification and only acts as a way of recognizing your participation in this training content.

We plan to update this training on a quarterly basis to ensure that you all have the latest and the greatest training materials.  Please do check back often for new training content.  The newly added training content will be tagged with “[New!]” at the end of the training title.  For those of you who have already gone through the training before, you can view those [New!] training contents directly. 

Docs on Microsoft	Blogs on Microsoft
Product videos	Webcast recordings
Tech Community	Interactive guides
⤴ External Sites	GitHub

Module 1. MSCM – Fundamentals [Beginner Level]

Training Title	Description	Resources
MSCM Overview:  Introduction to Microsoft Compliance Manager	In this track we will show where MSCM fits in the overall M365 ecosystems and discuss its high-level components.	MSCM Introduction Video   MSCM
Getting started with MSCM	In this track we will go over best practices and pre-deployment planning considerations to include key MSCM service features and capabilities.	Introduction to MSCM   Compliance Manager Quick Start   Deployment Acceleration Guide
Assessment Types and working with assessments (workflow and tracking)	In this track we will discuss the different assessment types in MSCM, how you can use them to help your organization succeed and use MSCM for continuous monitoring / assessment.	Build and Manage Assessments in MSCM
Automated Compliance Scoring	In this track we will discuss your overall scope, setup / run automated testing, evaluate your automated score (understanding it), and gain a firm understanding of improvement actions, user history and automated testing.	Compliance Score Calculation
Assigning Improvement Actions  & action types (RBAC)	In this track we will discuss how you assign remediation and score improvement tasks to different personnel within your organization.	Assign and complete improvement actions in MSCM  MSCM Interactive guide, review from 2 minutes 12 seconds to 38 seconds
MSCM Recommendation Wizard	In this track we will give you a good starting place to understand your organization’s regulatory and compliance requirements.  By asking a few brief questions we can show you the templates that may apply to your organization!	MSCM Recommendation Wizard Tutorial
Automation with MSCM	In this track we will explore how you can automate your MSCM capability and ensure you have up to date knowledge of your current regulatory compliance status.	Material for this track is currently in development – stay tuned!

Knowledge Check – Microsoft Compliance Manager Fundamentals

Module 2. MSCM – Intermediate [Associate Level]

Training Title	Description	Resources
Introduction to Templates:  Template library, premium templates, and universal templates	In this track we will show you the various types of assessment templates are available to you whether included in your licensing or requiring an additional purchase including templates that can cover non-Microsoft services giving your broader tracking capabilities in your compliance journey.	Learn about assessment templates in Compliance Manager     Simply Compliance and reduce risk with our 150+ assessment templates or bring your own assessment   MSCM Interactive Guide, review from 16 minutes 58 seconds
Creating an Assessment from a template	In this track we will upon the knowledge gained in the previous track to show you how to create an assessment for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft products.	Create an assessment template in Microsoft Compliance Manager     MSCM Interactive Guide, review from 15 minutes 40 seconds to 5 minutes 42 seconds  Creating an Assessment in MSCM
Importing Templates	Don’t see a regulation assessment you need to help your organization? Create your own assessment template that can be used over and over again based on your needs.	Create an assessment template in Microsoft Compliance Manager   MSCM Interactive guide, review from 10 minutes 10 second to 3 minutes 58 seconds
Regulatory and Compliance updates	With MSCM we are constantly monitoring and evaluating regulatory and compliance requirements.  When updates occur, we update our assessment templates to account for such changes, and put you in control of when to update your in progress assessment to match.	MSCM Updates to templates tutorial
Improving Compliance Score	In this track we will look at improving your compliance score by looking at your current configurations in your tenant and validating them against Microsoft 365 best practices.	MS Compliance Configuration Analyzer for MSCM   MSCM Interactive Guide go to 19 minutes, 37 seconds

Knowledge Check – Microsoft Compliance Manager Intermediate

Module 3.  Microsoft Compliance Manager – Advanced [Expert Level]

Training Title	Description	Resources
Extending Templates	In this track we will take the knowledge on templates previously covered and expand.  We will show you how you can take templates and expand them to meet your regulatory and compliance needs.	Extend assessment templates in Microsoft Compliance Manager   Extend Templates in MSCM  MSCM Interactive Guide review from 3 minutes 58 seconds to 2 minutes 55 seconds
Integration of Excel into MSCM and how to use it to modify templates	In this track we will discuss how you can use MS Excel to update and modify your templates.	Format assessment template data in Excel for Microsoft Compliance Manager   Using MS Excel to Manipulate and or Create templates in MSCM
MSCM Scenario	In this track we will create a brief scenario to show how to meet a specific regulatory compliance requirement.	⤴ MSCM Scenario
Microsoft Compliance Manager Considerations & Wrap Up	In this final track we will cover common questions asked, provide some useful tips and wrap up this training!	Material for this track is currently in development – stay tuned!

Knowledge Check – Microsoft Compliance Manager Advanced

Once you’ve finished the training and the knowledge checks, please go to our attestation portal to generate your certificate –  you’ll see it in your inbox within 3 to 5 business days.  Attestation Portal Link

We have a great lineup of updates for the next rendition (next quarter).  If you’d like anything covered, please comment below.  In addition, please reach out to us if you have any content that you would like to include as well. 

We hope you all enjoy this training! 

Feedback

Let us know if you have any feedback or relevant use cases/requirements for this portion of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps by emailing mipcompcxe@microsoft.com  and mention the core area of concern.

Learn More

For further information on how your organization can benefit from Microsoft Compliance Manager: