Standards Setup

This guide will walk you through the process of setting up standards in CIPP. Follow these instructions to configure and run standards for your organization.

For more information on Standards, what they are, and where to find the available ones, check out the Standards & Drift section of the user documentation

Walkthrough Steps for Setting Up Standards

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Purpose

This guide walks you through setting up Standards in CIPP for the first time. It focuses on applying and managing standards to maintain security and compliance across your organization.

Accessing Standards

1. Navigate to Tenant Administration > Standards & Drift.

2. Here you'll be presented with a table of Standards templates and an action in the upper right to create new templates.

Reporting Options

Each standard offers three options:

• Report: Logs the current configuration in a Best Practices Report.

• Alert: Sends you a notification via the configured method in CIPP -> Application Settings -> Notifications.

• Remediate: Automatically applies the desired configuration.

Turning off Remediate prevents future fixes but doesn’t undo changes already applied

Understanding Impact

• Each standard includes:

  • A description of what it does.

  • An impact label (Low, Medium, High) to indicate user impact.

• Review these details to ensure changes align with your needs.

Customizing Standards

Input Fields

• Some standards require settings, like custom text fields or dropdown selections.

• Enter the required values to customize the standard.

Categories

• Standards are grouped by categories, like security, compliance, or usability.

• There are over 150 standards (Available Standards), with more added regularly.

Deploying Templates

• Use templates for consistent configurations across clients.

• Examples include templates for Intune, Exchange, and Conditional Access

Excluding Tenants

• Exclude specific tenants from All Tenants standards to:

  • Prevent global standards from applying.

  • Allow custom standards for that tenant only.

Template Reapplication

• Templates reapply every 3 hours, maintaining the desired state.

• If changes are made by admins, they are automatically reverted to match the template.

• Update a template once, and all linked tenants will receive the changes.

Run Standards Manually

• Use the Run Template Now options from the Actions menus.

• Apply standards immediately to:

  • A specific tenant by selecting (Currently Selected Tenant only) to match the tenant in the menu Tenant Selector.

  • All tenants in one go for all tenants in the template.

Key Takeaways

• Standards automatically reapply settings every 3 hours for consistency.

• Categories and templates simplify management across multiple tenants.

• Customization and manual runs give you flexibility to meet tenant-specific needs.

By following these steps, you’ll ensure your M365 tenants remain secure, consistent, and compliant with minimal manual effort.