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underQualifried's avatar
underQualifried
Brass Contributor
Apr 10, 2025

Having Purview without wanting Purview

getting a little frustrated, so apologies for my tone. Microsoft documentation is probably the biggest source of frustration in my life.

Discovered a Data Retention policy today, created by a former employee that no one knew about. In fact, no one knew we could do this. No one knew we had Purview, or how to use it. Makes sense - we don't have a license, have never had a license. We have Server 2022, and Entra, they're Hybrid-joined. we have 365 Defender, and 365 Business premium. Looking at our Licenses, we have Azure AD P1 (unassigned). 

My only prior encounter with Purview was when addressing Secure Score recommendations - one of them was related to DLP policies - apparently, it was once part of the old compliance portal (which Secure Score still points to - a bit ironic for it's purpose), and despite not having Purview, our Azure license gave us Azure Info Protection, which granted some capabilities... But this was months ago, and I can't even find where I found this originally. At that time, my view in Purview was SIGNIFICANTLY less bloated, but even then - I just closed the tab and went with a 3rd party DLP solution.

I need to know what 'solutions' (gag) / parts of Microsoft Purview are are available to our tenant, and which of our licenses grant them. I need to know what other things might've been done by surprise. I do not have the time to look at 100 different pages with 30 different layouts of the same 20 React components, and Microsoft documentation, though it has a useful graph for the Enterprise licenses, doesn't seem to have one for everyone else.  The home page for Purview has a helpful-sounding tip box - "Some features and solutions from the classic portals either have a new home or were retired" -  but none of it is relevant. The 'Free Version' they describe doesn't even seem to match my 'Free version'.

Getting kinda overwhelmed by the amount of market-capture acquisitions Microsoft keeps layering and forcing me to look at

  • nikkichapple's avatar
    nikkichapple
    MVP
    Apr 10, 2025

    Microsoft Purview functionality is included with Microsoft 365 or Office 365 licensing. The list below details the features available with Microsoft Purview in Business Premium:

    Information Protection

    Sensitivity Labels

    • Sensitivity labels can be manually applied to files and emails. These labels can include encryption to protect sensitive information.
    • Container Sensitivity labels can be manually applied to Microsoft 365 Groups, Teams, and SharePoint sites to provide access controls such as internal and external sharing and guest access.

    Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

    • DLP policies can be applied to email, SharePoint, and OneDrive files to prevent the sharing of sensitive information.

    Data Lifecycle Management

    Retention Policies

    • Retention policies can retain (prevent deletion), retain and then delete, or delete content based on when the content was created (or created and last modified for files). These policies can be applied to all content in specific locations, such as SharePoint sites, mailboxes, OneDrive, Teams messages, etc.

    Retention Labels

    • Retention labels can be manually applied to files and emails. These labels can retain (prevent deletion), retain and then delete, or delete content based on when the content was created (or created and last modified for files). This allows for the selective application of labels to content.

    eDiscovery

    Admin Content Search

    • Admin Content Search allows you to search across the entire tenant rather than just the content you have access to as a user. This is useful for IT investigations.

    Litigation Hold

    • Litigation hold allows you to block the deletion of content in a mailbox. This is used when there is an ongoing investigation or legal case, and you need to preserve evidence.

    Auditing

    • All Microsoft 365 activities are audited and retained for 180 days. This is useful for IT investigations.

    Reach out to me if you want more details
    References

    Microsoft 365 license guide for small and medium businesses, which included Business Premium: modern-work-plan-comparison-smb5.pdf 

    Overview of all the Purview features: Microsoft Purview service description - Service Descriptions 

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