Google Message Security for Google Apps Administration Guide - Manual (Page 105)

Administrators 105
Compliance Officers and Security Administrators
A compliance officer manages the operations and procedures of a company’s
compliance program, which prevent illegal and unethical conduct. A security
administrator manages the protection and security of the company’s assets from
illegal and improper activities.
Compliance officers, security administrators, and archive search administrators
are the only administrators who can search and audit an account’s archive.
Even though a compliance officer and a security administrator can be different
people with different jobs, their authorization record settings are very similar, and
their job requirements place their administrative duties high in an organization
hierarchy. Usually, this type of administrator audits a hierarchy but does not
change the actual policy settings, which is why several of the recommended
authorization record settings are read-only. A compliance officer or security
administrator identifies system modifications and arranges for these to be done by
an account administrator or by a technical administrator with modify privileges.
Positioning Compliance Officer and Security Authorization Records
Because of the sensitive nature of a compliance officer’s and security
administrator’s jobs, these authorization records are usually assigned to the
account organization. As illustrated in the following example, these administrators
have access to the whole hierarchy.