Protect and govern your data with Microsoft Purview.

Microsoft Purview is the data protection and compliance part of Microsoft 365. It lets you label documents and emails by sensitivity, prevent sensitive data from being shared by mistake, keep or delete content on a schedule and search across mailboxes and files when needed.

For professional firms, healthcare providers and any business handling client information, these controls help meet privacy obligations and client expectations. They are also increasingly asked about in cyber insurance and client security questionnaires.

Purview is powerful and easy to misconfigure. A rushed policy can block legitimate work. We start with what you actually need to protect and roll out in stages.

Purview starts from a simple observation: most data loss is not a dramatic hack. It is an employee emailing the wrong spreadsheet, sharing a folder with “anyone with the link”, or keeping records for the wrong length of time. Purview puts guardrails around those everyday risks.

It covers three broad jobs. Information protection finds and labels sensitive data. Data loss prevention stops it leaving through the wrong door. Data governance and compliance keeps records for as long as required and lets you search them when needed.

Purview reduces the chance that confidential client or patient information is sent to the wrong person or shared publicly. For firms where trust is the product, such as law, accounting, healthcare and financial services, that is a direct business protection.

It also removes uncertainty about records. Retention policies prevent important documents being deleted too early and prevent data being kept far longer than necessary, which helps with privacy obligations.

When something does go wrong, audit and eDiscovery let you answer the questions that matter quickly: what was accessed, by whom, and what do we need to disclose.

An accounting firm holds client tax files. A DLP policy detects a spreadsheet containing Social Insurance Numbers about to be emailed outside the firm. The sender sees a warning explaining the policy, and the manager is notified. The mistake is prevented, and the event is recorded for review.

This is an illustrative example of how the feature is used, not a description of a specific client.