An Easy Way to be Compliant

BY: ALBERTO LUGO

How Customizing your SharePoint Experience Leads to Long-term Compliance

Compliance means to conform; in accordance.

Being compliant is in no way an easy task. It’s the kind of thing that’s important, but it’s usually put off until it’s unavoidable (caused mainly by an audit or impending fine.)

These last-minute fixes are often painful and expensive. The best way to avoid them is by complying with a long-term goal. Fortunately, the digital era has made this more accessible than ever. Software as a service has transformed productivity, and currently, some tools automatize most of the legwork that leads to compliance, especially if you’re looking to standardize processes to comply with ITSM (ITIL Framework), ISO 9000, 9001, 9004, and other Quality Management Standards (QMS).

Some challenges: human capital, implementation, and adoption

The adoption of new platforms or technologies can cause resistance among employees. Maybe they find it hard to use, not intuitive to navigate, or hate to add another tool to their work routine. However, compliance is mandatory, and everyone must take part in making it a reality. Compliance Officers or the internal IT team need to enforce policies, manage employees, and enforce the content life cycle, and they need easy-to-manage tools to do it.

It can be done: here’s what you can do and who we can help

This is when tools like SharePoint come in. Integrated with Microsoft 365, SharePoint can make long-term compliance with an achievable goal. So, what are the tools that SharePoint puts are your disposal to make compliance easy? Here are some:

  1. Create a Site Collection using Microsoft Purview:

This will allow you to find, hold, and export the content you need within each subsite. It also searches through Exchange and SharePoint to find content with the description you entered. Please put it on Hold or In-Place somewhere and export the data.

  1. Manage your levels of control:

Set rules, forbid actions like printing a document, forwarding via email, etc. The new options in Document Libraries for Right Management will help enforce DLP more.

  1. Centralize records:

Keep a centralized repository for records (those documents stored for archive purposes.) With In-Place records, you can leave a document at the source but lock it to prevent anything from happening. This serves a double meaning: help users find and view content while assuring the compliance officer that it was not modified.

  1. Enforce retention or deletion policies:

Configure them to delete all drafts, move documents to the record center, or even delete a file when specific criteria are met.

Customizing your SharePoint experience and achieving long-term compliance is easier than ever with the 2019 version. SharePoint 2019 introduced many critical updates that ensure maximum security across devices. However, one of the most important ones is conditional access. With conditional access, you can set in place rules to control the level of access your users have when using insecure devices and locations. By following our tips above and implementing SharePoint 2019, you will feel confident knowing that your information is safe and compliant across different platforms and users.

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