Govern AI Securely. Purview Empowers Compliance Across Copilot, ChatGPT, and Beyond!
Introduction
AI is transforming the way enterprises operate, however with great innovation comes great responsibility. I’ve spent the last few years helping organizations secure their data with tools like Azure Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention, and now Microsoft Purview.
As generative AI tools like Microsoft Copilot become embedded in everyday workflows, the need for clear governance and robust data protection is more urgent than ever. Through this blog post, let's explore how Microsoft Purview can help organizations stay ahead of securing AI interactions without slowing down innovation.
What’s the Issue?
AI agents are increasingly used to process sensitive data, often through natural language prompts. Without proper oversight, this can lead to data oversharing, compliance violations, and security risks.
Why It’s Urgent?
According to the recent trends of 2025, over half of corporate users bring their own AI tools to work, often consumer-grade apps like ChatGPT or DeepSeek. These tools bypass enterprise protections, making it difficult to monitor and control data exposure.
Use Cases
- Enterprise AI Governance: Apply consistent policies across Microsoft and third-party AI tools.
- Compliance Auditing: Generate audit logs for AI interactions to meet regulatory requirements.
- Risk Mitigation: Block risky uploads and enforce adaptive protection based on user behavior.
How Microsoft Purview Solves It
Purview’s DSPM for AI provides a centralized dashboard to monitor AI activity, assess data risks, and enforce compliance policies across Copilots, agents, and third-party AI apps. It correlates data classification, user behavior, and policy coverage to surface real-time risks, such as oversharing via AI agents, and generates actionable recommendations to remediate gaps. DSPM integrates with tools like Microsoft Security Copilot for AI-assisted investigations and supports automated scanning, trend analytics, and posture reporting. It also extends protection to third-party AI tools like ChatGPT through endpoint DLP and browser extensions, ensuring consistent governance across both managed and unmanaged environments
2. Unified Protection Across AI Agents
Whether you're using Microsoft 365 Copilot, Security Copilot, or Azure AI services, Purview applies consistent security and compliance controls. Agents inherit protection from their parent apps, including sensitivity labels, data loss prevention (DLP), and Insider Risk Management.
Purview enables real-time monitoring of prompts and responses, helping security teams detect oversharing and policy violations instantly.
From Microsoft Learn – Insider Risk
4. One-Click Policy Activation
Administrators can leverage Microsoft Purview’s Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI to rapidly deploy comprehensive security and compliance controls via one-click policy activation. This streamlined mechanism enables organizations to enforce prebuilt policy templates across AI ecosystems, ensuring prompt implementation of data loss prevention (DLP), sensitivity labeling, and Insider Risk Management on both Microsoft and third-party AI services. Through DSPM’s unified policy orchestration layer, security teams gain granular telemetry into prompt and response flows, real-time policy enforcement, and detailed incident reporting. Automated analytics continuously assess risk posture, enabling adaptive policy adjustments and scalable governance as new AI tools and user workflows are introduced into the enterprise environment. Please note: After implementing policy changes, it can take up to 24 hours for changes to become visible and take full effect across your environment.
From Microsoft Learn – Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) portal
5. Support for Third-Party AI Apps
Purview extends robust data security and compliance to browser-based AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini by employing endpoint Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and browser extensions that monitor and control data flows in real time. Through Microsoft Purview’s Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, organizations can implement granular controls for sensitive data accessed during both Microsoft-native and third-party AI interactions.
DSPM offers continuous discovery and classification of data assets, linking AI prompts and responses to their original data sources to automatically enforce data protection policies, including sensitivity labeling, adaptive access controls, and comprehensive content inspection, contextually for each AI transaction.
For unsanctioned AI services reached via browsers, the Purview browser extension inspects both input and output, enabling endpoint DLP to block, alert, or redact sensitive material instantly, thus preventing unauthorized uploads, downloads, or copy/paste activities. Security teams benefit from rich telemetry on AI usage patterns, which integrate with user risk profiles and anomaly detection to identify and flag suspicious attempts to extract confidential information.
Close integration with Microsoft Security Copilot and automated analytics further enhances visibility across all AI data flows, supporting incident response, audit, and compliance reporting needs.
Purview’s adaptive policy orchestration ensures that evolving AI services and workflows are continuously assessed for risk, and that controls are dynamically aligned with business, regulatory, and security requirements, enabling scalable, policy-driven governance for the expanding enterprise AI ecosystem.
Pros and Cons
The following table outlines the key advantages and potential limitations of implementing AI and agent data security controls within Microsoft Purview.
|
Pros |
Cons |
License Needed |
|
Centralized AI governance |
Requires proper licensing and setup |
Microsoft 365 E5 or equivalent Purview add-on license |
|
Real-time risk detection |
May need browser extensions for full coverage |
Microsoft 365 E5 or Purview add-on |
|
Supports both Microsoft and third-party AI apps |
Some features limited to enterprise versions |
Microsoft 365 E5, E5 Compliance, or equivalent Purview add-on |
Conclusion
Microsoft Purview offers a comprehensive solution for securing AI agents and their data interactions. By leveraging DSPM for AI, organizations can confidently adopt AI technologies while maintaining control over sensitive information.
Explore Microsoft Purview’s DSPM for AI here. Start by assessing your current AI usage and activate one-click policies to secure your environment today!
FAQ
1. What is the purpose of Microsoft Purview’s AI and agent data security controls?
The purpose is to ensure that sensitive data accessed or processed by AI systems and agents is governed, protected, and monitored using Microsoft Purview’s compliance and security capabilities.
Microsoft Purview data security and compliance protection
2. How does Microsoft Purview help secure AI-generated content?
Microsoft Purview applies data loss prevention (DLP), sensitivity labels, and information protection policies to AI-generated content, ensuring it adheres to organizational compliance standards.
Microsoft Purview Information Protection
3. Can Microsoft Purview track and audit AI interactions with sensitive data?
Yes. Microsoft Purview provides audit logs and activity explorer capabilities that allow organizations to monitor how AI systems and agents interact with sensitive data.
4. What role do sensitivity labels play in AI data governance?
Sensitivity labels classify and protect data based on its sensitivity level. When applied, they enforce encryption, access restrictions, and usage rights, even when data is processed by AI.
Learn about sensitivity labels
5. How does Microsoft Purview integrate with Copilot and other AI tools?
Microsoft Purview extends its data protection and compliance capabilities to Microsoft 365 Copilot and other AI tools by ensuring that data accessed by these tools is governed under existing policies.
Microsoft 365 admin center Microsoft 365 Copilot usage
6. Are there specific controls for third-party AI agents?
Yes. Microsoft Purview supports conditional access, DLP, and access reviews to manage and monitor third-party AI agents that interact with organizational data.
What is Conditional Access in Microsoft Entra ID?
7. How can organizations ensure AI usage complies with regulatory requirements?
By using Microsoft Purview’s compliance manager, organizations can assess and manage regulatory compliance risks associated with AI usage.
Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager
About the Author: Hi! Jacques “Jack” here, I’m a Microsoft Technical Trainer at Microsoft. I wanted to share a topic that is often top of mind, AI governance. I’ve been working with Microsoft Purview since its launch in 2022, building on prior experience with Azure Information Protection and Data Loss Prevention. I also have great expertise with Generative AI technologies since their public release in November 2022, including Microsoft Copilot and other enterprise-grade AI solutions.
Microsoft