Purview & Data Loss Prevention
Microsoft Purview & Data Loss Prevention
Microsoft Purview is Microsoft's family of data security, governance, and compliance tools, helping organizations understand, protect, and govern their data wherever it lives. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is one of Purview's core capabilities, and is included here as the starting point most organizations use to prevent sensitive information from leaving the organization inappropriately. Baseline capabilities are included with Microsoft 365, with a premium tier available for organizations with deeper compliance and governance needs. Below is an overview of what each includes and the value it delivers.
Microsoft Purview (Baseline)
Designed for: Organizations that want to start identifying and protecting sensitive information across their Microsoft 365 environment.
What's Included
- Data Loss Prevention policies for Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive, helping prevent sensitive information from being shared inappropriately
- Sensitivity labels, allowing content to be manually or automatically classified and protected based on its sensitivity
- Basic data classification, identifying common types of sensitive information such as financial or personal data
- Core audit logging, capturing a record of activity across Microsoft 365
- Basic eDiscovery, for searching and collecting content in response to a legal or investigative request
Why It Matters for Your Business
Baseline Purview capabilities give an organization a real starting point for protecting sensitive data, without requiring a separate, additional purchase. Data Loss Prevention policies can automatically flag or block an email containing sensitive financial information before it's sent to the wrong recipient, while sensitivity labels help ensure confidential documents carry the right level of protection wherever they're shared. For most small and medium-sized organizations, these baseline capabilities meaningfully reduce the risk of accidental data exposure — often the source of a data incident, rather than a deliberate attack.
Microsoft Purview Suite (Premium)
Designed for: Organizations with more advanced compliance, regulatory, or insider risk requirements.
What's Included
- Everything in baseline Purview, plus:
- Advanced Data Loss Prevention policies, extending coverage to Microsoft Teams chat and additional scenarios beyond the baseline
- Insider Risk Management, identifying potentially risky activity from within the organization, such as a departing employee downloading unusual volumes of data
- Communication Compliance, monitoring communications for policy violations in regulated industries
- eDiscovery Premium, providing advanced search, review, and analytics capabilities for legal and investigative matters
- Advanced Audit, with longer log retention and access to a broader range of audit events
- Data Lifecycle Management with intelligent, automated retention and disposal of content
- Automatic labeling powered by machine learning, applying sensitivity labels at scale without relying on manual classification
Why It Matters for Your Business
The Purview Suite extends baseline protection into the deeper governance, monitoring, and investigative capabilities that regulated industries and larger organizations typically require. Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance address a risk category that's easy to overlook: threats that originate from within the organization, whether malicious or accidental, rather than an external attacker. Automatic, machine learning-based labeling also solves a common challenge with data protection programs — that manual labeling by employees is inconsistent at best — by applying appropriate protection automatically, based on the actual content of a file, at a scale no manual process could match.
Please Note
If your organization already holds a Microsoft 365 E5 license, the full Purview Suite is already included at no additional cost. The Purview Suite is intended for organizations on Microsoft 365 E3 that want premium compliance capabilities without moving their entire organization to E5. Our team can help confirm what your current licensing already includes before recommending anything additional.
Summary
- Microsoft Purview (Baseline) — data loss prevention, sensitivity labels, and core audit and eDiscovery capabilities, included with Microsoft 365.
- Microsoft Purview Suite (Premium) — advanced DLP, insider risk management, communication compliance, and automated data governance for organizations with deeper compliance needs.
Most organizations already have some level of Purview protection active today without realizing it. Understanding what's already included, and where the Purview Suite would add meaningful additional protection, is the best starting point for any conversation about strengthening data security.
Have Questions? We're Here to Help.
Our team can help you identify the plan that best matches your organization's needs and guide you through setup.