Security & Compliance Center

11/30/2020
7 minutes to read

The Security & Compliance Center is designed to help you manage compliance features across Office 365 for your organization. Links to existing SharePoint and Exchange compliance features bring together compliance capabilities across Office 365.

Note

Currently, many of the compliance features are still accessible through service-specific management interfaces, such as the Exchange admin center (EAC). However, this will change in the future as more service-independent compliance features are added to the Security & Compliance Center.

To see the options for licensing your users to benefit from Microsoft 365 compliance features as of April 1, 2020, download the Detailed Microsoft 365 Compliance Licensing Comparison. (PDF) | (Excel)

Security & Compliance Center availability for business and enterprise plans

Feature	Microsoft 365 Business Basic	Microsoft 365 Business Standard	Microsoft 365 Business Premium	Office 365 E1, Office 365 US Government G1	Office 365 E3, Office 365 US Government G3	Office 365 E5	Office 365 F3, Office 365 US Government F3
Access to the Security & Compliance Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Office 365 Cloud App Security	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Threat management such as mail filtering and anti-malware	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced threat management, such as threat explorer for phishing campaigns⁶	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Customer Lockbox	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Mobile device management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Data loss prevention for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business^{7, 9}	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Communication data loss prevention for Microsoft Teams	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Manual sensitivity labels¹⁰	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Automatic sensitivity labels	No	No	No	No	No	Yes¹³	No
Information barriers	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Information governance¹	Yes¹¹	Yes¹¹	Yes¹¹	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes¹¹
Advanced information governance²	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Content search	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
eDiscovery cases	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
eDiscovery holds (including query-based eDiscovery holds)	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
eDiscovery export	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Advanced eDiscovery⁵	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Archiving	Yes³	Yes³	Yes³	Yes³	Yes⁴	Yes⁴	No
Alert policies	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Basic Audit⁸	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced Audit¹²	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Communication Compliance (Supervision policies)	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) Basic	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No
Office 365 Advanced Message Encryption	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Privileged Access Management	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Customer Key	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No

¹ Information governance lets users create, publish, and manually apply labels to documents; import data using drive shipping or over the network. These features are available in E3 and E5, with only limited availability in E1. For a full list of the features available in E1, E3, and E5, see the detailed Microsoft 365 Compliance Licensing Comparison. (PDF) | (Excel)

² Advanced information governance allows you to retain important information and delete unimportant information by classifying information based on a retention or deletion policy or both. It includes intelligent/automated actions such as recommending policies, automatically applying labels to data, applying labels based on sensitive data types or queries, disposition review, and use of smart import filters. It also includes the Supervision feature for reviewing employee communications for security and compliance purposes.

³ 50 GB limit.

⁴ Unlimited.

⁵ Advanced eDiscovery is supported in the United States and in the Western Europe (Netherlands) region. (Customer data from Canada and Asia Pacific is exported to the United States. Customer data from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is exported to Western Europe [Netherlands].)

⁶ Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is available in Office 365 E5 and as a standalone service for Office 365 E1 and Office 365 E3.

⁷ Includes files stored in Microsoft Teams repositories.

⁸ Audit logs for all plans that include Basic Audit (except for E5) are retained for 90 days. Because E5 includes Advanced Audit, audit logs are retained for up to one year. Also, you can use the Office 365 Management Activity API to retrieve events from the unified audit log.

⁹ Requires Office 365 data loss prevention add-on.

¹⁰ Sensitivity labels are also included in Azure Information Protection P1 and P2.

¹¹ An Exchange Online Plan 2 or Exchange Online Archiving license is required to retain content in a user mailbox by using a retention policy.

¹² Advanced Audit provides one-year retention of audit logs for activities in Azure Active Directory, Exchange, and SharePoint, and provides the ability to create custom audit log retention policies to manage audit log retention for other Office 365 services. It also provides access to crucial events for investigations and high-bandwidth access to the Office 365 Management Activity API.

¹³ Does not include Machine Learning-based labeling (trainable classifiers).

Security & Compliance Center availability for standalone plans

Feature	Exchange Online Plan 1	Exchange Online Plan 2	Exchange Online Kiosk	SharePoint Online Plan 1	SharePoint Online Plan 2	OneDrive for Business Plan 1	OneDrive for Business Plan 2	Skype for Business Online Plan 1	Skype for Business Online Plan 2
Access to the Security & Compliance Center	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Office 365 Cloud App Security	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
Threat management, such as mail filtering and anti-malware	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced threat management, such as threat explorer for phishing campaigns	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Customer Lockbox	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Mobile device management	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Data loss prevention for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business⁹	No	Yes	No	No	Yes ⁷	No	Yes¹⁰	No	Yes
Communication data loss prevention for Microsoft Teams	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Information barriers	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Information governance¹	Yes²	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes¹⁰	Yes¹⁰	Yes	Yes
Advanced information governance³	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Content search	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes¹⁰	Yes¹⁰	Yes	Yes
eDiscovery cases	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes¹⁰	Yes¹⁰	No	No
eDiscovery export	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	Yes¹⁰	No⁴	No⁴
eDiscovery holds (including query-based eDiscovery holds)	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	Yes¹⁰	No⁴	No⁴
Advanced eDiscovery⁵	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Archiving⁶	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes¹⁰	Yes¹⁰	No	No
Basic Audit⁸	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes¹⁰	Yes¹⁰	No	No
Advanced Audit	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Communication Compliance (supervision policies)	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Office 365 Message Encryption (OME)	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Office 365 Advanced Message Encryption	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Privileged Access Management	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No

² Requires purchase of Exchange Online Archiving add-on.

³ Advanced information governance allows you to retain important information and delete unimportant information by classifying information based on a retention or deletion policy or both. It includes intelligent/automated actions such as recommending policies, automatically applying labels to data, applying labels based on sensitive data types or queries, disposition review, and use of smart import filters. It also includes the Supervision feature for reviewing employee communications for security and compliance purposes.

⁴ Skype conversations are stored as part of the mailbox.

⁵ Advanced eDiscovery requires Office 365 E5 or an add-on license.

⁶ Skype archiving is within the user's mailbox.

⁷ Includes files stored in Microsoft Teams repositories.

⁸ Audit logs for all plans that include Basic Audit are retained for 90 days. Also, you can use the Office 365 Management Activity API to retrieve events from the unified audit log.

⁹ Requires Office 365 data loss prevention add-on.

¹⁰ Limited to files stored in OneDrive for Business.

¹¹ An Exchange Online Plan 2 or Exchange Online Archiving license is required to place a user mailbox on hold using a retention policy.

Security & Compliance Center availability in Office 365 operated by 21Vianet

The Security & Compliance Center is not available in any plans for Office 365 operated by 21Vianet.

Security & Compliance Center availability in Office 365 Germany

The Security & Compliance Center is available for Office 365 Germany. For information about Office 365 Germany, see Office 365 Germany.