System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) gives you a means by which you can automate the monitoring and enforcement of configuration compliance. Compliance settings can fall in line with one of the following general scenarios:
Most everyone understands and is aware of government regulations with regards to Information Technology such as laws that include the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002, the Gramm-Leasch-Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Heath Insurance Portablity and Accountablity Act (HIPAA). Whatever technical requirements have to be set in place to meet these regulatory agencies can be controlled by compliance settings within SCCM - perhaps with a little help from PowerShell scripting.
Even if the goal is not to satisfy government requirements, a corporation may have internal needs that have to be regulated the same way as government regulations.
With the use of collections, changes to systems via software updates or through the use of scripts can be made on a group of systems. With compliance settings, you can monitor the status of these systems to be sure that the changes are being made correctly and to only these systems.
Human error is inevitable and sometimes hard to catch. If your compliance settings can be configured in such a way as to catch the ripple affect of human error, the human error can be resolved in a more timely manner.