Build trust
Trust Code: Microsoft Standards of Business Conduct
Achieving our mission
Microsoft’s Standards of Business Conduct (our “Trust Code”) will show you how to apply our culture and values to build and preserve trust with our customers, governments, investors, partners, representatives, and each other, so we can achieve our mission.
Download and read the Trust Code
Read our Trust Code
Click all Trust headings below to view the entire code.
Trust with our customers
Our ability to meet people and organizations where they are, with what they want and need, is our path to success. Our customers must be at the center of everything we do. Look for ways to engage our customers, advocate for them, and empower them to achieve more.
When making decisions, ask yourself: does this build or harm trust with our customers?
Honor privacy
We honor privacy by being transparent about how we handle customer data, including personal data. We want our customers to trust us to protect their privacy and use their data in the ways that they permit us.
Don’t make improper payments
We are committed to truthful and transparent interactions with customers, and we prohibit any attempt to influence their decisions through improper payments. Corruption can harm our customers in many ways, including sometimes causing them to pay more than they should. Winning and preserving customers’ trust every day is more important than any benefit we might get from doing business improperly. In some parts of the world, paying bribes to get business may be something that others do. We prohibit them. We would rather lose the business than secure it through a bribe, kickback, or other improper benefit.
Compete fairly
The way we compete is as important as the result we achieve. Healthy competition and fair business practices put our customers first by giving them access to a variety of products and services at fair prices. Competing fairly ensures that we meet our business objectives with our integrity intact.
Build Secure Products and Services
We are committed to designing, building, testing, and operating our technology to ensure we deliver solutions that meet the highest possible standard of security. We strive to ensure that all aspects of customer data remain confidential, that data integrity and security is maintained, and that our business functions operate effectively and resist attacks. We all bear the responsibility to directly contribute to the security of Microsoft and our customers.
How to build trust:
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- By following local privacy and data protection laws.
- By providing clear and accurate privacy notices when collecting or processing personal data, including employee personal data.
- By honoring privacy choices by using customer data to provide the services customers have agreed to.
- By protecting our customers’ data through building secure products and services.
Learn more
Privacy Policy (internal only)
Privacy principles -
- By refusing to offer or pay bribes or kickbacks to anyone.
- By prohibiting corrupt payments of all kinds, including payments to secure permits or approvals, and small payments to speed up a routine government process (often known as a “facilitating payment”).
- In any deal, we will avoid hidden terms or arrangements and reduce complexity wherever possible, because transparent transactions reduce the risk of a bribe or kickback.
- By using partners that have a reputation for integrity, and reporting signs that a representative is unethical or could be paying a bribe.
- By making sure that any gifts, hospitality, or travel we offer to government officials or customers are reasonable and appropriate, and pre-approved where necessary.
- By hiring candidates based on their merits, and not make hiring decisions to benefit a customer or government official.
- If we make charitable donations, we will do so to support a legitimate charitable cause, not as part of an exchange of favors.
Learn more
Anti-Corruption Policy
Giving Gifts, Hospitality & Travel to Government Officials (internal only)
Commitment to anti-corruption and anti-bribery -
- By avoiding any formal or informal agreements with competitors that limit competition.
- By respecting competitive bidding processes, and not rigging or fixing the outcomes or helping anyone else do so.
- By not dictating the prices that our independent channel partners charge their customers.
- By gathering competitive intelligence using only appropriate resources, being truthful, and not misrepresenting who we are.
Learn more
Competitive Intelligence Policy (internal only)
Microsoft Fair Competition Policy (internal only) -
- By prioritizing security as part of your goals.
- By completing and applying requirements and learnings from security trainings and the Trust Code (Standards of Business Conduct) course.
- By learning about the Microsoft Secure Future Initiative (SFI) framework and objectives.
- By prioritizing security in your own work, and anticipating and implementing secure approaches to products, processes, and tools in alignment with our Secure Future Initiative (SFI).
- By using MSProtect to learn more about how you can contribute to securing Microsoft.
- By reporting any suspicious or malicious cyber activity, concerns regarding the integrity of our systems and data, and any suspected digital or physical security violations and vulnerabilities via Report It Now.
Learn More:
Security Activation (internal only)
Microsoft Security Policy (internal only)
Report It Now (internal only)
MSProtect (internal only)
Trust with government and communities
Achieving our mission depends on governments and communities knowing that we will follow the laws and customs of the countries where we operate, and respect human rights across the globe.
When making decisions, ask yourself: does this foster trust with governments and communities?
Respect laws around the world
We operate around the globe and commit to respecting the laws wherever we do business. This helps us to build trust with governments, strengthen the communities where we live and work, and contribute to a fair society where we enjoy the protection of these same laws.
Design accessible products and services
We prioritize inclusive design in the development of our products and services. With over one billion people around the world with disabilities, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to design inclusively. Investing in accessibility helps Microsoft support our customers to meet inclusion goals. We believe there are no limits to what people can achieve when technology reflects the diversity of everyone who uses it.
Respect and promote human rights
We are committed to respecting and promoting human rights to empower people across the globe to use technology for the good of humanity.
Develop and deploy Responsible AI
We are committed to developing and deploying AI technologies in a way that is consistent with our AI principles, Responsible AI Standard, our company mission, values, and our commitment to human rights. We strive to create systems that people trust. This means keeping people and their goals at the center of system design decisions and respecting enduring values like fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.