What is Copilot Studio governance?
Definition. Copilot Studio governance is the model that controls how custom agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio are designed, approved, deployed and monitored. It covers who can build agents, what data and actions they can use, how they are reviewed before release and how their behaviour is evidenced in production.
Key points
- Copilot Studio agents can read data, take actions and call external systems. Governance sets the guardrails before they do.
- Three practical tiers: Minimum Viable Security, Recommended and Enterprise-Ready.
- Core controls: environment strategy, maker permissions, data connections, DLP, human approval gates and monitoring.
- It is distinct from Microsoft 365 Copilot governance because agents introduce build-time and run-time risk.
- Owners: security, platform, information governance and the business sponsor of each agent.
Why Copilot Studio needs its own governance
A Copilot Studio agent is a small application. It has knowledge sources, tools, actions and users. Left ungoverned, a citizen developer can build an agent that reads regulated data, connects to an external API and acts on behalf of hundreds of users. Governance decides what is allowed, who signs it off and how it is monitored.
What Copilot Studio governance covers
Governance is applied across the agent lifecycle: environments, makers, design review, data and actions, run-time monitoring and change control.
The three governance tiers
Tenzing's Agentic Governance Framework groups controls into Minimum Viable Security, Recommended and Enterprise-Ready. Most organisations start at Minimum Viable Security for early agents and move to Recommended for anything touching customer, financial or regulated data.
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