Microsoft 365 SOC 2 compliance explained: M365 has its own SOC 2, but your audit tests your tenant — Conditional Access/MFA, privileged roles, offboarding, audit logging. Checklist + how to automate evidence.
Search “Microsoft 365 SOC 2 compliance” and you hit an immediate confusion: Microsoft 365 already has its own SOC 2 report. So are you done? No — and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in a SOC 2 audit. Microsoft 365’s SOC 2 covers Microsoft’s own cloud infrastructure and service operations. It says nothing about how your organization has configured Microsoft 365. Under the shared responsibility model, how you configure Entra ID Conditional Access, privileged roles, offboarding, and audit logging is entirely on you, and that is exactly what your auditor samples.
So “Microsoft 365 SOC 2 compliance” really means two things: (1) configuring Microsoft 365 so its security controls satisfy the relevant Trust Services Criteria, and (2) continuously proving they stayed configured across your audit window. This guide covers both — the exact settings, and how to generate the evidence automatically instead of screenshotting it the week before fieldwork. For the platform landscape, see our SOC 2 compliance software guide; for the control list, the SOC 2 controls breakdown.
Microsoft publishes its own SOC 2 reports for Microsoft 365 and Azure (via the Service Trust Portal). Your auditor inherits that for the platform layer and tests your tenant: is Conditional Access enforcing MFA, are Global Admins minimized, are terminated users deactivated promptly, and is the unified audit log retained? M365 carries most of your identity (Entra ID) and a large share of unstructured data (Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams).
Below is what Strac Comply continuously checks across your M365 tenant. The difference from a checklist tool: Strac Comply doesn’t ask you to attest that a control exists — it runs the test against your live Microsoft 365 environment every day, and the pass/fail result is the audit evidence. The connection that proves the control is the connection that catches it drifting.
And because Strac Comply runs on Strac’s data security platform, the data-protection control (CC6.7) isn’t just attested — sensitive data in Microsoft 365 is discovered, classified, and protected, and that enforcement is the evidence. The same edge makes Generative AI DLP and MCP security evidence continuous. See the full platform in the SOC 2 compliance software guide.
Strac Comply verifies Conditional Access/MFA, privileged-role minimization, offboarding, and audit logging continuously — and its DLP protects data across Exchange, SharePoint, and Teams for CC6.7.
Related integration SOC 2 guides: AWS SOC 2, GitHub SOC 2, Google Workspace SOC 2.
Yes — Microsoft maintains its own SOC 2 reports for M365 (Service Trust Portal). But that covers Microsoft’s side. Your audit tests your tenant configuration: Conditional Access/MFA, privileged roles, offboarding, and audit logging.
Primarily access controls (CC6.1–CC6.3) through Entra ID Conditional Access and privileged-role management, and monitoring (CC7.2) through the unified audit log.
Yes, when configured to require MFA for all users and to block legacy authentication. CC6.1 wants enforced MFA; Conditional Access is the modern way to enforce it tenant-wide.
SOC 2 doesn’t set a fixed number, but you must meet your own documented offboarding SLA consistently. Auditors sample leavers across the window and check the account was disabled in time.
A Purview/DLP policy existing isn’t proof. Strac Comply with Microsoft 365 DLP shows actual redaction/blocking events as CC6.7 evidence.
.avif){kind=icon}
.gif)
.webp)
