Microsoft Purview insider risk, auditing, and eDiscovery
5 minutes
5 Questions
Microsoft Purview provides comprehensive solutions for managing insider risks, conducting audits, and performing eDiscovery within Microsoft 365 environments. These capabilities help organizations protect sensitive data and maintain regulatory compliance.
**Insider Risk Management** helps organiza…Microsoft Purview provides comprehensive solutions for managing insider risks, conducting audits, and performing eDiscovery within Microsoft 365 environments. These capabilities help organizations protect sensitive data and maintain regulatory compliance.
**Insider Risk Management** helps organizations identify, investigate, and take action on potentially harmful activities by users within the organization. This solution uses machine learning and intelligent templates to detect risky behavior patterns such as data theft, confidential information leaks, and security policy violations. It analyzes signals from various Microsoft 365 services to correlate activities and highlight potential risks. Organizations can create customized policies based on specific risk indicators and receive alerts when suspicious patterns emerge.
**Auditing** in Microsoft Purview enables organizations to search and investigate user and administrator activities across Microsoft 365 services. The audit log captures thousands of operations including file access, sharing activities, mailbox changes, and administrative actions. Organizations can retain audit logs for extended periods depending on their licensing level, with some plans offering up to ten years of retention. This capability supports compliance requirements and helps security teams investigate incidents by providing detailed activity trails.
**eDiscovery** (Electronic Discovery) assists organizations in identifying, collecting, preserving, and exporting electronic information for legal cases, investigations, or regulatory requests. Microsoft Purview offers multiple eDiscovery tiers: Content Search for basic searching across locations, eDiscovery Standard for case management and legal holds, and eDiscovery Premium for advanced analytics, custodian management, and review sets. These tools allow legal and compliance teams to place content on hold to prevent deletion, search across mailboxes, SharePoint sites, and Teams conversations, and export relevant data in appropriate formats.
Together, these three capabilities form a robust framework for organizations to manage internal threats, maintain accountability through comprehensive logging, and respond effectively to legal and compliance obligations within their Microsoft 365 environment.
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk, Auditing, and eDiscovery - Complete Guide
Why This Topic Is Important
Understanding Microsoft Purview's compliance capabilities is essential for the MS-900 exam because organizations must protect sensitive data, meet regulatory requirements, and investigate potential security incidents. These tools help businesses maintain trust, ensure privacy, and demonstrate compliance with legal obligations.
What Is Microsoft Purview?
Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance and compliance solution that helps organizations manage, protect, and govern their data across their entire digital estate. It combines former Microsoft 365 compliance features with Azure data governance capabilities.
Key Components Explained:
1. Insider Risk Management This solution helps organizations detect, investigate, and act on risky activities within the organization. It identifies potential threats from employees, contractors, or partners who have legitimate access to company resources.
Key Features: • Detects data theft by departing employees • Identifies security policy violations • Monitors for data leaks and confidentiality breaches • Uses machine learning to correlate signals across Microsoft 365 services • Provides investigation workflows with privacy by design
2. Auditing Microsoft Purview Audit provides logging and search capabilities for user and admin activities across Microsoft 365 services.
Two Tiers: • Audit (Standard) - Included with most Microsoft 365 subscriptions, retains logs for 90 days • Audit (Premium) - Extended retention up to 1 year, access to crucial investigation events, higher bandwidth for API access
Common Use Cases: • Investigating compromised accounts • Tracking who accessed specific documents • Monitoring mailbox activities • Supporting compliance investigations
3. eDiscovery eDiscovery (Electronic Discovery) helps organizations find, preserve, and export content for legal cases, investigations, and compliance requirements.
Three Tiers: • Content Search - Basic search across Microsoft 365 locations • eDiscovery (Standard) - Case management, holds, and exports • eDiscovery (Premium) - Advanced features including custodian management, review sets, and analytics
Key Capabilities: • Legal hold to preserve content • Search across Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams • Export content for external review • Near-duplicate detection and email threading • Predictive coding for large datasets
How These Tools Work Together
These three components complement each other in a complete compliance workflow: 1. Insider Risk Management detects suspicious behavior 2. Auditing provides detailed activity logs for investigation 3. eDiscovery collects and preserves evidence for legal proceedings
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Microsoft Purview
Key Points to Remember:
• When a question mentions departing employees or data theft, think Insider Risk Management
• Questions about tracking user activities or who did what typically point to Auditing
• Legal cases, litigation, or preserving content scenarios indicate eDiscovery
• Remember that Legal Hold is an eDiscovery feature that prevents content deletion
• Premium versions offer extended retention and advanced capabilities
• Insider Risk Management focuses on internal threats, not external attackers
• All these tools are accessed through the Microsoft Purview compliance portal
Common Exam Scenarios:
• Scenario asking how to investigate a terminated employee's activities → Insider Risk Management + Auditing • Scenario requiring content preservation for lawsuit → eDiscovery with Legal Hold • Scenario needing to track admin configuration changes → Auditing • Scenario identifying policy violations by current staff → Insider Risk Management
Remember: Microsoft Purview is the umbrella brand that encompasses all these compliance and governance tools. The exam may reference individual tools or the Purview brand name.