Office 365 Mailbox Export to PST - Third Party Tools: What’s Your Experience?
Exporting Office 365 mailboxes to PST is still a common requirement in many Microsoft 365 environments, especially for backup, compliance, and migration scenarios. While Microsoft offers native options like Purview eDiscovery and Outlook export, many administrators also consider third-party tools when dealing with large mailboxes or bulk export requirements. In real-world scenarios, factors like speed, ease of use, permission handling, and consistency of exported data often influence the choice of tool. Some teams prefer native methods for compliance control, while others explore third-party solutions to simplify large-scale or repeated export tasks. For those working with Microsoft 365, what has your experience been with third-party PST export tools? Have they helped in your environment, or do you still rely mainly on Microsoft’s native options?Registration Open: Community-Led Purview Lightning Talks
Get ready for an electrifying event! The Microsoft Security Community proudly presents Purview Lightning Talks; an action-packed series featuring your fellow Microsoft users, partners and passionate Microsoft Security community members of all sorts. Each 3-12 minute talk cuts straight to the chase, delivering expert insights, real-world use cases, and even a few game-changing tips and tricks. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, connect, and be inspired! Secure your spot now for the big day: April 30th at 8am Redmond Time. See agenda details below and follow this blog post (sign in and click the "follow" heart in the upper right) to receive notifications. ❗UPDATE❗This event is expected to last around 2 hours and 15 minutes, due to the incredible number of community sessions that were submitted! 💖 Please see the timing table below broken out into sections of four talks each, and plan to arrive 10 minutes before the section that interests you, OR stay for the whole time! Speakers will be available in the chat to answer your questions; please ask your questions during their session. Spillover Q&A forum links will also be shared. The full session recording will be indexed and posted to Microsoft Security Community YouTube within 24 hours after the event. Bookmark this page or follow this blog post for updates! Agenda Legend ↩️ Data Lifecycle Management 🔐 Information Protection 🚫 Data Loss Prevention (DLP) 🦾 Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI 🤖 Purview for AI 👁️ Insider Risk Management (IRM) 🔍 eDiscovery 📊 Governance 🗒️ Compliance Manager 🛡️ Data Security All times are listed in US Pacific/Redmond Time. Session lengths are rounded to the nearest minute. AGENDA Section 1 - approximately 8:00 am - 8:43 am ↩️ The Day Offboarding Exposed Infinite Retention — Nikki Chapple Length: 10 minutes | Topic: Data Lifecycle Management A routine Purview request led to an unexpected discovery: more than 9,000 orphaned OneDrives and thousands of inactive mailboxes still storing content long after employees had left. This talk explains how a retain-only policy created hidden retention debt and how Adaptive Scopes can help organisations separate active users from leavers to avoid similar pitfalls. 🔐 The Purview Label Engine: Automated Classification, Translation, and co-Documentation for Enterprise Tenants — Michael Kirst-Neshva Length: 12 minutes | Topic: Information Protection Global enterprises face the challenge of implementing uniform data protection standards across borders and languages. In this talk, I’ll present a framework that makes Microsoft Purview labels truly scalable. Discover how to roll out parent and child label logics automatically, manage priorities with a single click, and generate instant compliance documentation for every business unit. 🗒️ What's In My Compliance Manager Toolbox: A Cloud Security Architect's Perspective — Jerrad Dahlager Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Compliance Manager A practical walkthrough of how I use Compliance Manager across real client engagements to map controls, track improvement actions, and simplify multi-framework compliance. No theory, just what works in the field. 🛡️ Stop, Think, Protect: Data Security in Real Life with Purview — Oliver Sahlmann Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Data Security With simple labels and matching DLP policies, Purview offers a practical and accessible way to approach data security. This lightning talk uses a real-life traffic light concept to show how a low barrier to adoption can still drive meaningful protection and awareness. Section 2 - approximately 8:44 am - 9:15 am 🔐 Using Purview to prevent oversharing with AI services — Viktor Hedberg Length: 10 minutes | Topic: Information Protection In this day and age, AI is the big thing. However, Copilot has access to everything you can access, including potentially sensitive data. In this session we will look at how to prevent Copilot to access highly sensitive data, using Information Protection. 🦾 How I Helped My Customers Understand their AI Usage (and protect their sensitive data) — Bram de Jager Length: 5 minutes | Topic: Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI As AI tools explode across the web, many organizations still have no idea what’s actually happening in the browser—where employees type prompts, paste sensitive data, or visit public AI sites outside corporate governance. In this lightning talk, I’ll share how I helped customers shine a light on this issue. We’ll explore how Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) can reveal which AI tools employees use, what types of data they input, and where sensitive information may leak through prompts. I’ll walk through real customer scenario where we detected risky AI usage patterns—such as employees pasting confidential documents into public chatbots. 🔐 Four Labels Max for Daily Use: Which Ones & Why? — Romain Dalle Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Information Protection Sensitivity labels are one of the most critical parts of a Purview Risk and compliance deployment, if not the most critical, because it directly impacts how end-users and business units should allow or restrict themselves to share their business data, internally and externally, on a daily basis. Labels have not other options than being precise, meaningful, and balanced in terms of embedded data security. Setting the right taxonomy is core to success, and is everything but a one-time project. 🚫 Data-driven Endpoint DLP Solution with Advanced Hunting — Tatu Seppälä Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) This lightning talk shows you how to use KQL queries in advanced hunting to easily build initial sensitive service domain groups for authorized and unauthorized domains based on your organization's usage patterns. The same approach can be used for numerous other similar solution refinement and design purposes. Section 3 - approximately 9:16 am - 9:46 am 🔐 The Purview Hack No One Talks About: Container Sensitivity Labels That Fix Oversharing Fast — Nikki Chapple Length: 10 minutes | Topic: Information Protection Most organizations tackle oversharing with manual fixes, but the fastest solution is often overlooked. In this lightning talk, I show how container sensitivity labels automatically apply the right sharing and collaboration controls, ensuring every new Group, Team or SharePoint site starts secure by default. 🔍 Does M365 Support eDiscovery? — Julian Kusenberg Length: 11 minutes | Topic: eDiscovery A myth-busting session that separates perception from reality when it comes to Microsoft 365 eDiscovery capabilities. 📊 Improving Discovery, Trust, and Reuse of Analytics with Purview Data Products — Craig Wyndowe Length: 5 minutes | Topic: Governance This talk shows how bringing Power BI and Fabric assets into Microsoft Purview Governance Domains and Data Products creates a single, trusted view of enterprise analytics. By connecting reports, semantic models, and underlying data with shared metadata, ownership, and business context, organizations can make existing assets easy to discover and safe to reuse. 🔐 Why You Should Create Your Own Sensitive Information Types (SITs) — Niels Jakobsen Length: 5 minutes | Topic: Information Protection An in depth analysis of why Microsoft SITs are not one-size-fits-all, and how to create your own using what Microsoft has already built for you. Section 4 - approximately 9:47 am-10:30 am 👁️ From Zero to First Signal: Insider Risk Management Prerequisites That Actually Matter — Sathish Veerapandian Length: 8 minutes | Topic: Insider Risk Management (IRM) A focused live demo showing the real world prerequisites required for Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management to work effectively. This session highlights the critical Entra ID, Intune, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Purview DLP configurations that must be in place before creating IRM policies. 🤖 Securing data in the age of AI — Júlio César Gonçalves Vasconcelos Length: 11 minutes | Topic: Purview for AI AI will transform business as we know it; but without proper governance, it can introduce serious risks. We’ll show you how Microsoft Purview enables organizations to accelerate AI adoption while maintaining security, compliance, and transparency. 🔍 Beyond eDiscovery - Purview DSI for Security Investigation — Susantha Silva Length: 11 minutes | Topic: eDiscovery Most people hear “Microsoft Purview” and immediately think compliance, eDiscovery, or legal holds. But this session highlights Data Security Investigations, showing how DSI lets you take a DLP alert or insider risk signal and turn it into a structured investigation. 🚫 Elevating Purview DLP with a real world use case — Victor Wingsing Length: 14 minutes | Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Learn how I hardened Microsoft Purview DLP beyond out of the box defaults—closing real world data loss gaps, tuning policies to actual user behavior, and turning noisy alerts into protection that really blocks exfiltration. - Quick Closing/ Resource SharingThe Advantages of Premium Cases in Purview eDiscovery
Capacity & Scale Feature Description Advantage over E3 Enhanced Limits Supports significantly higher limits, including eDiscovery case count and export volume. For example, up to 50,000 cases and 5 TB per search in E5 (versus 10,000 cases and 2 TB in E3). Handles large investigations without splitting into multiple cases or searches. E3’s lower limits would force breaking up big jobs, adding overhead and risk of errors. E5’s higher capacity means fewer workarounds and seamless handling of large-scale litigation. Tenant-Wide eDiscovery Process and Holds Reports (Preview) Provides a central dashboard of all eDiscovery activities and eDiscovery holds across the tenant. Compliance and IT teams get at-a-glance status of ongoing jobs and active holds. Improves oversight and management efficiency for eDiscovery. E3 lacks centralized reporting, making it harder to track many cases. E5’s reporting gives better visibility into operations, which is crucial for heavy workloads and tight deadlines. Expanded Hold Capacity Each legal hold in E5 can encompass up to 2,000 mailboxes and 2,000 sites in one policy. E3 holds are limited to 1,000 mailboxes or 100 sites per policy. Enables placing very large custodian sets on hold with a single action. In E3, exceeding hold limits means juggling multiple policies for one case, increasing complexity. E5 simplifies hold management by consolidating more custodians per hold, reducing admin burden. Search & Collection Feature Description Advantage over E3 Advanced Search Filters Offers richer search criteria beyond keywords. You can filter by sensitive info types (credit cards, SSNs), specific message IDs, or sensitivity labels on documents. This helps pinpoint relevant sensitive content directly. Enables more precise and speedy discovery of critical data. In E3, finding the same info might require complex keyword strings or separate tools (with a higher chance of missing items). E5’s advanced filters mean faster, targeted searches for things like confidential data or GDPR content. Data Source Sync Allows you to refresh custodians’ data sources in a search or hold to catch updates to locations. For example, if a custodian adds a new OneDrive, E5 will detect and prompt you to include it. Ensures no content location is overlooked as the case evolves. E3 has no easy way to know if data moved or new sites were created, potentially leaving gaps. E5’s sync provides complete and defensible collection by keeping holds/searches up-to-date. Cloud Attachment Collection (Hyper-linked Documents) Automatically collects the content of files shared via cloud links (OneDrive/SharePoint) in emails or chats. E5 can retrieve the actual document (and its versions) that was linked, even pulling the specific version that was shared at the time if the version shared feature is enabled. Preserves evidence that E3 would miss. E3 eDiscovery does not fetch linked file content. It would only show a hyperlink, making it difficult to return the associated file. E5 ensures linked documents (with version history) are collected, so the full context of communications is retained. Conversation Threading (Chats & Email) Reconstructs conversations in a threaded view for Microsoft Teams chats and email chains. Reviewers can see messages in context (like a chat transcript or email thread) rather than as isolated items. Greatly improves contextual understanding. E3 exports chats as separate messages with no threading, making it hard to follow the story. E5’s threaded view lets reviewers grasp the full conversation at a glance, reducing confusion and ensuring nothing is interpreted out of context. Custodian & Hold Management Feature Description Advantage over E3 Case-Level Custodian Management Provides a dedicated tab to manage custodians (people) within each case. You add custodians once and can easily apply holds or searches to all their data without re-entering their information each time. Streamlines hold setup and ensures clarity on who is in the case. E3 has no concept of custodians. You must manually input email or site addresses for each search/hold. E5’s approach saves time, reduces errors, and gives a clear view of all people involved in the matter. Bulk Custodian Import Supports importing up to 1,000 custodians at once from a list into a case. Useful for large investigations (e.g., adding an entire department as custodians in one go). Dramatically faster setup for big cases. In E3, adding hundreds of people means typing or pasting each individually, which is time-consuming and error prone. E5’s bulk import means quick, one-time setup for large custodian lists, ensuring no one is missed. “Explore & Add” Custodian Sources Provides an intelligent way to discover related data sources for a given custodian. For example, it can list Teams, SharePoint sites, or groups the person is part of, and let you add those to the case. Helps capture all relevant locations for each person. In E3, you might overlook a Teams channel or group mailbox a custodian was involved in. E5’s explore feature surfaces those connections, improving completeness of your holds and searches by including collaboration spaces that might otherwise be missed. In-Place Review & Analytics Feature Description Advantage over E3 Advanced Indexing and OCR Automatically re-indexes content that was partially indexed or had errors and performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on images to extract text. This means files with images or previously unsearchable formats become searchable in E5. Ensures “no stone is left unturned.” E3 would flag such content as “unindexed” (meaning you know a file exists but not what’s inside it). With E5, far more data is searchable, even text inside images or scanned PDFs, reducing the amount of partially indexed content and the chance of missing critical evidence due to format issues. In-Place Review Sets Lets you create a review set of collected data in the cloud. Review sets offer contextual review of conversations, powerful query and filtering capabilities, and query reports for additional insights. Pre-review culling is possible in E5. E3 has no in-product review capability. You must export everything to an outside tool for examination. E5’s review sets allow the team to filter out irrelevant data and focus on what matters before exporting. This reduces the volume (and cost) of data sent for attorney review and keeps data in a secure, auditable environment during analysis. Tagging and Metadata Filters Enables applying tags (labels like “Responsive,” “Privileged,” “Personal Data”) to documents and emails in a review set, and filtering by these tags or other metadata fields. Improves organization and review workflow. E3 cannot tag items in-place, so keeping track of important documents is harder. In E5, tagging allows systematic categorization for quick retrieval (e.g., find all items tagged Highly Relevant instantly). These tags also carry over on export, so any work done during review isn’t lost when handing off to external counsel. Email Threading and Analytics Automatically identifies and stitches together email threads, showing only the last inclusive email that contains the entire conversation. Earlier duplicate emails in the chain are noted and can be skipped. Cuts down review volume and improves context. E3 reviewers would see every single email (even if content repeats across replies). This saves review time and ensures attorneys see the full discussion in one place rather than piecemeal. Conversation View Displays collected Teams (and other chat) messages in a conversation format in a review set, similar to how one would view a chat in the app, instead of individual out-of-context messages. Makes reviewing chat evidence much easier. In E3, chat messages are isolated, forcing reviewers to manually piece together who said what when. E5’s conversational view provides full context at a glance, so nothing is misunderstood or missed in chat-based communications. Near-Duplicate Detection Finds and groups nearly identical documents (e.g. multiple versions of a file or emails with only slight differences). Reviewers are informed which items are alike. Saves time and ensures consistency. E3 requires manually spotting similar files. E5 can let a reviewer examine one version and then quickly tag all its close duplicates the same way. This speeds up review and ensures similar content is handled uniformly (no conflicting judgments on essentially the same document). Themes (Topic Analytics) Uses analytics to cluster documents by themes/topics. For example, it might reveal a group of emails all discussing “Project X” or detect an unusual theme (like frequent mentions of “resignation”). Uncovers hidden patterns that simple keyword searches in E3 might miss. This insight helps investigators spot important threads of discussion or issues they weren’t explicitly searching for, leading to a more thorough understanding of the data set. It adds a layer of proactive insight absent in E3. Global Deduplication Automatically de-duplicates exact copies of emails or files across all custodians using review sets. Each unique item is retained once for review, with duplicates noted. Prevents redundant review work. In E3, the same email stored in five mailboxes would appear five times and could be reviewed and tagged inconsistently by different people. E5’s deduplication means reviewers spend time only on unique content improving efficiency and ensuring consistency in treatment of identical items. Export & Integration Feature Description Advantage over E3 Guest Reviewer Access Allows secure, read-only external access to a review set for outside experts (like outside counsel). Guest reviewers can be invited to review and tag documents in your E5 case via secure Azure AD access (with MFA), without data leaving the tenant. Enables collaboration with outside counsel without exporting data. E3 cannot extend access to external users. You’d have to export files and send them out, which is slower and riskier. E5 keeps the data in-place and governed, letting external reviewers work more efficiently while your organization retains control and visibility. Import External Data Supports ingestion of data from outside M365 into eDiscovery. You can load files like PST emails, PDFs, or documents from file shares into an E5 review set, maintaining custodians’ identity and metadata. Brings all relevant data under one roof. E3 cannot handle content beyond Exchange/SharePoint/Teams, so any non-M365 data would be reviewed separately. E5’s ingestion means even file server or third-party data can be included in the case, making your eDiscovery truly comprehensive and eliminating blind spots between different systems. Rich Export with Metadata Exports include a detailed load file with extensive metadata from the review (custodian info, email thread indices, attachment names, message IDs, tags applied, etc.). This is in addition to the actual content files. Simplifies downstream processing and preserves review decisions. E3’s export is basic (limited metadata), often requiring additional data processing in third-party tools. E5’s comprehensive load file means that all important context (including tags like “Privileged” that your team applied) travels with the exported data, so external reviewers immediately see those cues. This saves time and prevents rework. MIP Search and Decryption Integration Can automatically decrypt protected content (encrypted by Microsoft Information Protection, e.g. with sensitivity labels/Azure RMS) during eDiscovery. Encrypted emails and documents are made readable and searchable when added to a review set. Ensures encrypted files aren’t “invisible” in your investigation. E3 often cannot search or preview MIP-protected emails/docs until they’re manually decrypted after export (if at all). E5 seamlessly includes these encrypted items in search results and review, so you don’t miss evidence that was simply locked behind encryption. Insider Risk Management Escalation Integrates with Microsoft Insider Risk Management (IRM) alerts. With E5, if an insider risk policy flags a user (e.g., for a potential data theft), you can one-click escalate to create an eDiscovery case that automatically targets that user’s content around the incident. Enables a fast, seamless response to insider threats. E3 has no IRM at all, so there’s no such trigger. In E5, the moment a high-risk activity is detected, the legal team can immediately jump into collecting and reviewing the related data. This tight integration means quicker investigations and potentially mitigating issues before they escalate. Communication Compliance Escalation Ties into Communication Compliance (E5’s internal communications monitoring for policy violations). If a serious policy violation is found (e.g., harassment in Teams chats or inappropriate sharing of sensitive info), it can be escalated directly into an eDiscovery case for further investigation. Offers proactive discovery of misconduct. E3 lacks built-in communication monitoring, so issues may go unnoticed until too late. With E5, compliance officers can swiftly pivot from detecting a problem to launching a full eDiscovery inquiry, ensuring faster and more thorough handling of incidents like HR violations or data leaks. Graph API & Automation Fully supports the Microsoft Graph API for eDiscovery. This means eDiscovery tasks (case creation, adding custodians, running searches, exporting data) can be automated or integrated into other applications via scripting/programming without additional cost. While API support is supported for E3, the E3 export API is a metered solution. E5 allows organizations to streamline eDiscovery workflows – for example, auto-create a case and hold when HR flags an employee exit, or integrate with third-party legal management tools without additional cost. Teams and Copilot Interactions Purge Provides an incident response capability to search and purge Teams chats or Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions if sensitive information was shared. Authorized investigators can directly delete up to 100 Teams chat messages (across participant mailboxes) in one go via the eDiscovery interface (leveraging Graph API) when necessary to contain a data leak. Allows quick containment of spills that E3 cannot do. E3’s content search can purge emails but cannot delete Teams messages or Copilot content. With E5, if confidential data pops up in a Teams chat, compliance can not only find it but also bulk-delete those messages from user mailboxes to mitigate further exposure. This capability is crucial for responding to internal data mishandling in real time.Collecting Microsoft 365 Copilot Data with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery
Copilot Data Collection Reference Table Data Type Storage Location Item Class Collection Strategy Copilot Prompts (user questions sent to M365 Copilot) Exchange Online: Hidden folder in the user's mailbox. Compliance copies stored similar to Teams chats, but with unique item classes. IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.<AppName> (e.g., .Word, .Excel, .Outlook, .BizChat). Additional AI-related classes may also apply: IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.ConnectedAIApp*, IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.CloudAIApp*, IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.TeamCopilot*, IPM.SkypeTeams.TeamCopilot* 1. Add the user's Exchange mailbox as a data source to the search. 2. In the condition builder you can optionally filter the search to only return Copilot prompts by adding a condition of "Item class contains any of Copilot activity". This automatically applies all relevant M365 Copilot item classes as a condition of the search. 3. Add any further additional conditions such as date range or keywords to narrow results as required. You can also use the Item Class condition to exclude M365 Copilot interactions from your collections when targeting a user’s mailbox. Notes: · Additional item classes may be added. The item class condition will be updated accordingly. Copilot Responses (AI-generated answers) Exchange Online: The same hidden folder in the user's mailbox as prompts. The same IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.<AppName> pattern as prompts The same collection strategy used for prompts. Copilot Memories (personalized saved information Copilot "remembers") Exchange Online: Hidden CopilotMemory subfolder within the user's mailbox contacts. Stored as contact entries separate from prompts and responses. IPM.Contact Each memory item appears as a contact card within Exchange, which is distinct from the message-based item classes used for prompts/responses. 1. Add the user's Exchange mailbox as a data source to the search. 2. In the condition builder you can optionally filter the search to only return Contacts by adding a condition of "Item class contains any of Contacts". Notes: · Copilot memories will not be preserved under a legal hold or retention policy. · This will return both Copilot memories stored in contacts as well as traditional contacts from the user’s Exchange mailbox. Copilot Pages (AI-generated, user-editable documents) SharePoint Online: Stored in a user-owned SharePoint embedded container (shared with Loop workspace content and Copilot Notebooks). File format is .page. Not stored in the user's mailbox. N/A These are SharePoint files (not Exchange items), so no item class applies. Identify them in search results by the .page file extension. 1. Add the custodian’s SharePoint embedded site URL as a data source to the search. Alternatively, tenant-wide searches of all SPO sites will include all SharePoint Embedded containers 2. Optionally use the condition builder with conditions such as date range, keywords or file type to further filter results returned Facilitator agent interactions in a Team meeting chat Exchange Online: Hidden folder in all meeting attendees’ mailboxes. Compliance copies stored as Teams chats IPM.SkypeTeams.Message 1. Add the user's Exchange mailbox as a data source to the search. 2. In the condition builder you can optionally filter the search to only return Copilot prompts by adding a condition of "Item class contains any of Instant messages". 3. Add any further additional conditions such as date range or keywords to narrow results as required. Facilitator agent meeting notes (loop) SharePoint Online: Facilitator meeting notes are stored as a .loop file in a OneDrive folder titled Meetings of the user who initiated Facilitator in Teams N/A These are SharePoint files (not Exchange items), so no item class applies. Identify them in search results by the .loop file extension. 1. Add the user's OneDrive URL as a data source to the search. 2. In the condition builder you can optionally filter the search to only return loop files by adding a condition of "File type equals any of loop". 3. Add any further additional conditions such as date range or keywords to narrow results as required. Notes: · With eDiscovery premium enabled cases you can follow the standard workflow for collecting Team meeting messages and select to include cloud attachments in your collection. This will automatically pull into the export or review set any Facilitator agent meeting notes. Facilitator created word/loop documents SharePoint Online: When the facilitator agent is asked to create a word or loop document during a meeting they are stored in the requesters OneDrive in a folder called N/A These are SharePoint files (not Exchange items), so no item class applies. Identify them in search results by the .loop file extension. 1. Add the user's OneDrive URL as a data source to the search. 2. In the condition builder you can optionally filter the search to only return loop and doc files by adding a condition of "File type equals any of loop, docx". 3. Add any further additional conditions such as date range or keywords to narrow results as required. Notes: · With eDiscovery premium enabled cases you can follow the standard workflow for collecting Team meeting messages and select to include cloud attachments in your collection. This will automatically pull into the export or review set any Facilitator generated loop or word documents. Facilitator generated and assigned tasks Exchange Online: When the facilitator agent creates and assigns a task to an individual, it is created as a to-do item in the assigned individual's Exchange Mailbox IPM.Task 1. Add the user's Exchange mailbox as a data source to the search. 2. In the condition builder you can optionally filter the search to only return Tasks by adding a condition of "Item class contains any of Tasks". 3. Add any further additional conditions such as date range or keywords to narrow results as required. Application-Specific Item Classes for Prompts & Responses For more granular filtering by Copilot application, the following item class values can be used in KQL queries: Application Context Item Class Value Microsoft Copilot Chat (BizChat / Teams) IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.BizChat Copilot in Excel IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.Excel Copilot in Loop IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.Loop Copilot in Outlook IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.Outlook Copilot in PowerPoint IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.PowerPoint Copilot in Teams IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.Teams Copilot in Whiteboard IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.Whiteboard Copilot in Word IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.Word To target all Copilot applications at once, use the wildcard query ItemClass:IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.*. For a wider list of AI data sources, see the following link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/edisc-search-copilot-data#data-sources-for-ai-data Important Notes for eDiscovery Practitioners Excluding Copilot Data from Broader Searches Because Copilot prompts and responses reside in the same Exchange mailbox as emails and Teams chats, they will appear in broad mailbox searches unless explicitly filtered out. To exclude Copilot items, use the condition "Item Class Contains none of Copilot activity" in the condition builder, or add (-ItemClass:IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.*) in KQL. Some eDiscovery managers run separate searches, one for Copilot data and one for other communications, to keep collections distinct. Copilot Memories: Retention & Hold Limitations Purview retention policies and eDiscovery holds do not currently apply to Copilot memory items. Memory items remain until a user deletes them or an admin explicitly removes them via eDiscovery or Graph API. Additionally, deleting a Copilot prompt and response does not delete any memory derived from that conversation. Memories must be removed separately if required. Copilot Pages: Do Not Treat Like Prompts/Responses Copilot Pages are not stored in Exchange mailboxes. Searching only a custodian’s mailbox will not return Copilot Pages. Treat Copilot Pages the same way as you do for SharePoint content in your existing eDiscovery workflow. For collections, keyword searches will generate hits on text content within the .page file if either the SharePoint Embedded URL is included in the search or the search is a tenant-wide search of all SharePoint sites Be aware that full-text search within .page files in Purview eDiscovery review sets is not currently available. Instead you can use filters such as Subject/Title or Native File Type to locate Copilot Pages in your review set and review the content. When an eDiscovery hold is placed on a custodian’s mailbox, it does not automatically extend to the SharePoint Embedded site where the Copilot Pages are stored. Instead, ensure the hold policy includes the URL for the user-owned SharePoint Embedded site that contains the Copilot Page(s) that must be preserved. Audit Logs vs. eDiscovery for Copilot Content Audit logs record that a Copilot interaction occurred (time, user, workload context) but do not include the actual prompt or response text. To retrieve the substance of Copilot interactions, use Purview eDiscovery searches against the mailbox. Copilot Prompts and Responses: HTML Transcription Copilot prompts and responses are stored as individual messages within the user’s mailbox. When collecting Copilot interactions, enabling the “Organize conversations into HTML transcripts” premium option will convert these individual messages into HTML transcripts making for easier review and linkage between the user’s original prompt and the Copilot responses. Copilot Prompts and Responses: Contextual prompts and responses When using the Keywords condition as part of your collection in eDiscovery, it will only return items that match the keywords included in the query. This means that you may only return a part of the Copilot interaction. If using keywords in your collection query you can enable the “Include full conversation for Copilot, Teams and Viva Engage messages” premium option. This will include in the export or review set any prompts or responses from the Copilot interaction within a 12-hour window before and after each responsive item. This means that you are able to see the full context of the prompt or response that was responsive to search. Collecting Referenced Documents (Cloud Attachments) Copilot responses may reference or summarize SharePoint/OneDrive files. When collecting Copilot interactions, enabling the "Access links (cloud attachments) in messages" premium option will additionally collect the files referenced in the prompt or response and include them in the export package. This provides full evidentiary context but can significantly increase export size and processing time so consider if collecting these artifacts are relevant to the investigation. If so, look to use additional conditions such as date to effectively manage volumes or reduce the number of custodians in the collection. Facilitator agent in Microsoft Teams Meetings The Facilitator agent in Microsoft Teams is an AI-powered assistant (included with Microsoft 365 Copilot) that enhances meeting productivity by generating real-time notes, summarizing key decisions, and managing action items. It acts as an active participant, allowing for collaborative editing of notes and answering chat questions during calls. As the Facilitator works within the context of Microsoft Teams meetings (scheduled private meetings only) your existing workflows for collecting Microsoft Teams meetings chat should be used. In addition, enabling the "Access links (cloud attachments) in messages" premium setting will automatically collect any meeting note (loop) or loop or word documents created by the Facilitator agent. Copilot Retention Reference Table Data Type Microsoft Purview Retention Policy Location/Scope Copilot prompts and responses Microsoft Copilot experiences Copilot Memories (personalized saved information Copilot "remembers") Not supported Copilot Pages (AI-generated, user-editable documents) SharePoint classic and communications sites (Static Scopes only) Facilitator interactions in a Team meeting Teams chats Facilitator meeting notes (loop) OneDrive Accounts Facilitator created word/loop documents OneDrive Accounts Facilitator generated and assigned tasks Exchange mailboxes (Tasks with end dates only)Search and Purge using Microsoft Graph eDiscovery API
Welcome back to the series of blogs covering search and purge in Microsoft Purview eDiscovery! If you are new to this series, please first visit the blog post in our series that you can find here: Search and Purge workflow in the new modern eDiscovery experience Also, please ensure you have fully read the Microsoft Learn documentation on this topic as I will not be covering some of the steps in full (permissions, releasing holds, all limitations): Find and delete Microsoft Teams chat messages in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn So as a reminder, for E5/G5 customers and cases with premium features enabled- you must use the Graph API to execute the purge operation. With the eDiscovery Graph API, you have the option to create the case, create a search, generate statistics, create an item report and issue the purge command all from the Graph API. It is also possible to use the Purview Portal to create the case, create the search, generate statistics/samples and generate the item report. However, the final validation of the items that would be purged by rerunning the statistics operation and issuing the purge command must be run via the Graph API. In this post, we will take a look at two examples, one involving an email message and one involving a Teams message. I will also look to show how to call the graph APIs. Purging email messages via the Graph API In this example, I want to purge the following email incorrectly sent to Debra Berger. I also want to remove it from the sender's mailbox as well. Let’s assume in this example I do not know exactly who sent and received the email, but I do know the subject and date it was sent on. In this example, I am going to use the Modern eDiscovery Purview experience to create a new case where I will undertake some initial searches to locate the item. Once the case is created, I will Create a search and give it a name. In this example, I do not know all the mailboxes where the email is present, so my initial search is going to be a tenant wide search of all Exchange mailboxes, using the subject and date range as conditions to see which locations have hits. Note: For scenarios where you know the location of the items there is no requirement to do a tenant wide search. You can target the search to the know locations instead. I will then select Run Query and trigger a Statistics job to see which locations in the tenant have hits. For our purposes, we do not need to select Include categories, Include query keywords report or Include partially indexed items. This will trigger a Generate statistics job and take you to the Statistics tab of the search. Once the job completes it will display information on the total matches and number of locations with hits. To find out exactly which locations have hits, I can use the improved process reports to review more granular detail on the locations with hits. The report for the Generate statistics job can be found by selecting Process manager and then selecting the job. Once displayed I can download the reports associated with this process by selecting Download report. Once we have downloaded the report for the process, we get a ZIP file containing four different reports, to understand where I had hits I can review the Locations report within the zip file. If I open the locations report and filter on the count column I can see in this instance I have two locations with hits, Admin and DebraB. I will use this to make my original search more targeted. It also gives me an opportunity to check that I am not going to exceed the limits on the number of items I can target for the purge per execution. Returning to our original search I will remove All people and groups from my Data Sources and replace it with the two locations I had hits from. I will re-run my Generate Statistics job to ensure I am still getting the expected results. As the numbers align and remain consistent, I will do a further check and generate samples from the search. This will allow me to review the items to confirm that they are the items I wish to purge. From the search query I select Run query and select Sample. This will trigger a Generate sample job and take you to the Sample tab of the search. Once complete, I can review samples of the items returned by the search to confirm if these items are the items I want to purge. Now that I have confirmed, based on the sampling, that I have the items I want to purge I want to generate a detailed item report of all items that are a match for my search. To do this I need to generate an export report for the search. Note: Sampling alone may not return all the results impacted by the search, it only returns a sample of the items that match the query. To determine the full set of items that will be targeted we need to generate the export report. From the Search I can select Export to perform a direct export without having to add the data to a review set (available when premium features are enabled). Ensure to configure the following options on the export: Indexed items that match your search query Unselect all the options under Messages and related items from mailboxes and Exchange Online Export Item report only If you want to manually review the items that would be impacted by the purge operation you can optionally export the items alongside the items report for further review. You can also add the search to a review set to review the items that you are targeting. The benefit of adding to the review set is that it enables to you review the items whilst still keeping the data within the M365 service boundary. Note: If you add to a review set, a copy of the items will remain in the review set until the case is deleted. I can review the progress of the export job and download the report via the Process Manager. Once I have downloaded the report, I can review the Items.csv file to check the items targeted by the search. It is at this stage I must switch to using the Graph APIs to validate the actions that will be taken by the purge command and to issue the purge command itself. Not undertaking these additional validation steps can result in un-intended purge of data. There are two approaches you can use to interact with the Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs: Via Graph Explorer Via the MS.Graph PS module For this example, I will show how to use the Graph Explorer to make the relevant Graph API calls. For the Teams example, I will use the MS.Graph PS Module. We are going to use the APIs to complete the following steps: Trigger a statistics job via the API and review the results Trigger the purge command The Graph Explorer can be accessed via the following link: Graph Explorer | Try Microsoft Graph APIs - Microsoft Graph To start using the Graph Explorer to work with Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs you first need to sign in with your admin account. You need to ensure that you consent to the required Microsoft Graph eDiscovery API permissions by selecting Consent to permissions. From the Permissions flyout search for eDiscovery and select Consent for eDiscovery.ReadWrite.All. When prompted to consent to the permissions for the Graph Explorer select Accept. Optionally you can consent on behalf of your organisation to suppress this step for others. Once complete we can start making calls to the APIs via Graph Explorer. To undertake the next steps we need to capture some additional information, specifically the Case ID and the Search ID. We can get the case ID from the Case Settings in the Purview Portal, recording the Id value shown on the Case details pane. If we return to the Graph Explorer we can use this CaseID to see all the searches within an eDiscovery case. The structure of the HTTPS call is as follows: GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/<caseID>/searches List searches - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn If we replace <caseID> with the Id we captured from the case settings we can issue the API call to see all the searches within the case to find the required search ID. When you issue the GET request in Graph Explorer you can review the Response preview to find the search ID we are looking for. Now that we have the case ID and the Search ID we can trigger an estimate by using the following Graph API call. POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/{ediscoveryCaseId}/searches/{ediscoverySearchId}/estimateStatistics ediscoverySearch: estimateStatistics - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Once you issue the POST command you will be returned with an Accepted – 202 message. Now I need to use the following REST API call to review the status of the Estimate Statistics job in Graph Explorer. GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/{ediscoveryCaseId}/searches/{ediscoverySearchId}/lastEstimateStatisticsOperation List lastEstimateStatisticsOperation - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn If the estimates job is not complete when you run the GET command the Response preview contents will show the status as running. If the estimates job is complete when you run the GET command the Response preview contents will show you the results of the estimates job. CRITICAL: Ensure that the indexedItemCount matches the items returned in the item report generated via the Portal. If this does not match do not proceed to issuing the purge command. Now that I have validated everything, I am ready to issue the purge command via the Graph API. I will use the following Graph API call. POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/{ediscoveryCaseId}/searches/{ediscoverySearchId}/purgeData ediscoverySearch: purgeData - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn With this POST command we also need to provide a Request Body to tell the API which areas we want to target (mailboxes or teamsMessages) and the purge type (recoverable, permantlyDelete). As we are targeting email items I will use mailboxes as the PurgeAreas option. As I only want to remove the item from the user’s mailbox view I am going to use recoverable as the PurgeType. { "purgeType": "recoverable", "purgeAreas": "mailboxes" } Once you issue the POST command you will be returned with an Accepted – 202 message. Once the command has been issued it will proceed to purge the items that match the search criteria from the locations targeted. If I go back to my original example, we can now see the item has been removed from the users mailbox. As it has been soft deleted I can review the recoverable items folder from Outlook on the Web where I will see that for the user, it has now been deleted pending clean-up from their mailbox. Purging Teams messages via the Graph API In this example, I want to purge the following Teams conversation between Debra, Adele and the admin (CDX) from all participants Teams client. I am going to reuse the “HK016 – Search and Purge” case to create a new search called “Teams conversation removal”. I add three participants of the chat as Data sources to the search, I am then going to use the KeyQL condition to target the items I want to remove. In this example I am using the following KeyQL. (Participants=AdeleV@M365x00001337.OnMicrosoft.com AND Participants=DebraB@M365x00001337.OnMicrosoft.com AND Participants=admin@M365x00001337.onmicrosoft.com) AND (Kind=im OR Kind=microsoftteams) AND (Date=2025-06-04) This is looking for all Teams messages that contain all three participants sent on the 4 th of June 2025. It is critical when targeting Teams messages that I ensure my query targets exactly the items that I want to purge. With Teams messages (opposed to email items) there are less options available that enable us to granularly target the team items for purging. Note: The use of the new Identifier condition is not supported for purge options. Use of this can lead to unintended data to be removed and should not be used as a condition in the search at this time. If I was to be looking for a very specific phrase, I could further refine the query by using the Keyword condition to look for that specific Teams message. Once I have created my search I am ready to generate both Statistics and Samples to enable me to validate I am targeting the right items for my search. My statistics job has returned 21 items, 7 from each location targeted. This aligns with the number of items within the Teams conversation. However, I am going to also validate that the samples I have generated match the content I want to purge, ensuring that I haven’t inadvertently returned additional items I was not expecting. Now that I have confirmed, based on the sampling, that the sample of items returned look to be correct I want to generate a detailed item report of all items that are a match for my search. To do this I need to generate an export report for the search. From the Search I can select Export to perform a direct export without having to add the data to a review set (available when premium features are enabled). Ensure to configure the following options on the export: Indexed items that match your search query Unselect all the options under Messages and related items from mailboxes and Exchange Online Export Item report only Once I select Export it will create a new export job, I can review the progress of the job and download the report via the Process Manager. Once I have downloaded the report, I can review the Items.csv file to check the items targeted by the search and that would be purged when I issue the purge call. Now that I have confirmed that the search is targeting the items I want to purge it is at this stage I must switch to using the Graph APIs. As discussed, there are two approaches you can use to interact with the Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs: Using Graph Explorer Using the MS.Graph PS module For this example, I will show how to use the MS.Graph PS Module to make the relevant Graph API calls. To understand how to use the Graph Explorer to issue the purge command please refer to the previous example for purging email messages. We are going to use the APIs to complete the following steps: Trigger a statistics job via the API and review the results Trigger the purge command To install the MS.Graph PowerShell module please refer to the following article. Install the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK | Microsoft Learn To understand more about the MS.Graph PS module and how to get started you can review the following article. Get started with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK | Microsoft Learn Once the PowerShell module is installed you can connect to the eDiscovery Graph APIs by running the following command. connect-mgGraph -Scopes "ediscovery.ReadWrite.All" You will be prompted to authenticate, once complete you will be presented with the following banner. To undertake the next steps we need to capture some additional information, specifically the Case ID and the Search ID. As before we can get the case ID from the Case Settings in the Purview Portal, recording the Id value shown on the Case details pane. Alternatively we can use the following PowerShell command to find a list of cases and their ID. get-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCase | ft displayname,id List ediscoveryCases - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Once we have the ID of the case we want to execute the purge command from, we can run the following command to find the IDs of all the search jobs in the case. Get-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearch -EdiscoveryCaseId <ediscoveryCaseId> | ft displayname,id,ContentQuery List searches - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Now that we have both the Case ID and the Search ID we can trigger the generate statistics job using the following command. Invoke-MgEstimateSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearchStatistics -EdiscoveryCaseId <ediscoveryCaseId> -EdiscoverySearchId <ediscoverySearchId> ediscoverySearch: estimateStatistics - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Now I need to use the following command to review the status of the Estimate Statistics job. Get-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearchLastEstimateStatisticsOperation -EdiscoveryCaseID <ediscoveryCaseId> -EdiscoverySearchId <ediscoverySearchId> List lastEstimateStatisticsOperation - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn If the estimates job is not complete when you run the command the status will show as running. If the estimates job is complete when you run the command status will show as succeeded and will also show the number of hits in the IndexItemCount. CRITICAL: Ensure that the indexedItemCount matches the items returned in the item report generated via the Portal. If this does not match do not proceed to issuing the purge command. Now that I have validated everything I am ready to issue the purge command via the Graph API. With this command we need to provide a Request Body to tell the API which areas we want to target (mailboxes or teamsMessages) and the purge type (recoverable, permantlyDelete). As we are targeting teams items I will use teamsMessages as the PurgeAreas option. Note: If you specify mailboxes then only the compliance copy stored in the user mailbox will be purged and not the item from the teams services itself. This will mean the item will remain visible to the user in Teams and can no longer be purged. When purgeType is set to either recoverable or permanentlyDelete and purgeAreas is set to teamsMessages, the Teams messages are permanently deleted. In other words either option will result in the permanent deletion of the items from Teams and they cannot be recovered. $params = @{ purgeType = "recoverable" purgeAreas = "teamsMessages" } Once I have prepared my request body I will issue the following command. Clear-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearchData -EdiscoveryCaseId $ediscoveryCaseId -EdiscoverySearchId $ediscoverySearchId -BodyParameter $params ediscoverySearch: purgeData - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Once the command has been issued it will proceed to purge the items that match the search criteria from the locations targeted. If I go back to my original example, we can now see the items has been removed from Teams. Congratulations, you have made it to the end of the blog post. Hopefully you found it useful and it assists you to build your own operational processes for using the Graph API to issue search and purge actions.Security as the core primitive - Securing AI agents and apps
This week at Microsoft Ignite, we shared our vision for Microsoft security -- In the agentic era, security must be ambient and autonomous, like the AI it protects. It must be woven into and around everything we build—from silicon to OS, to agents, apps, data, platforms, and clouds—and throughout everything we do. In this blog, we are going to dive deeper into many of the new innovations we are introducing this week to secure AI agents and apps. As I spend time with our customers and partners, there are four consistent themes that have emerged as core security challenges to secure AI workloads. These are: preventing agent sprawl and access to resources, protecting against data oversharing and data leaks, defending against new AI threats and vulnerabilities, and adhering to evolving regulations. Addressing these challenges holistically requires a coordinated effort across IT, developers, and security leaders, not just within security teams and to enable this, we are introducing several new innovations: Microsoft Agent 365 for IT, Foundry Control Plane in Microsoft Foundry for developers, and the Security Dashboard for AI for security leaders. In addition, we are releasing several new purpose-built capabilities to protect and govern AI apps and agents across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. Observability at every layer of the stack To facilitate the organization-wide effort that it takes to secure and govern AI agents and apps – IT, developers, and security leaders need observability (security, management, and monitoring) at every level. IT teams need to enable the development and deployment of any agent in their environment. To ensure the responsible and secure deployment of agents into an organization, IT needs a unified agent registry, the ability to assign an identity to every agent, manage the agent’s access to data and resources, and manage the agent’s entire lifecycle. In addition, IT needs to be able to assign access to common productivity and collaboration tools, such as email and file storage, and be able to observe their entire agent estate for risks such as over-permissioned agents. Development teams need to build and test agents, apply security and compliance controls by default, and ensure AI models are evaluated for safety guardrails and security vulnerabilities. Post deployment, development teams must observe agents to ensure they are staying on task, accessing applications and data sources appropriately, and operating within their cost and performance expectations. Security & compliance teams must ensure overall security of their AI estate, including their AI infrastructure, platforms, data, apps, and agents. They need comprehensive visibility into all their security risks- including agent sprawl and resource access, data oversharing and leaks, AI threats and vulnerabilities, and complying with global regulations. They want to address these risks by extending their existing security investments that they are already invested in and familiar with, rather than using siloed or bolt-on tools. These teams can be most effective in delivering trustworthy AI to their organizations if security is natively integrated into the tools and platforms that they use every day, and if those tools and platforms share consistent security primitives such as agent identities from Entra; data security and compliance controls from Purview; and security posture, detections, and protections from Defender. With the new capabilities being released today, we are delivering observability at every layer of the AI stack, meeting IT, developers, and security teams where they are in the tools they already use to innovate with confidence. For IT Teams - Introducing Microsoft Agent 365, the control plane for agents, now in preview The best infrastructure for managing your agents is the one you already use to manage your users. With Agent 365, organizations can extend familiar tools and policies to confidently deploy and secure agents, without reinventing the wheel. By using the same trusted Microsoft 365 infrastructure, productivity apps, and protections, organizations can now apply consistent and familiar governance and security controls that are purpose-built to protect against agent-specific threats and risks. gement and governance of agents across organizations Microsoft Agent 365 delivers a unified agent Registry, Access Control, Visualization, Interoperability, and Security capabilities for your organization. These capabilities work together to help organizations manage agents and drive business value. The Registry powered by the Entra provides a complete and unified inventory of all the agents deployed and used in your organization including both Microsoft and third-party agents. Access Control allows you to limit the access privileges of your agents to only the resources that they need and protect their access to resources in real time. Visualization gives organizations the ability to see what matters most and gain insights through a unified dashboard, advanced analytics, and role-based reporting. Interop allows agents to access organizational data through Work IQ for added context, and to integrate with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, Word, and Excel so they can create and collaborate alongside users. Security enables the proactive detection of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, protects against common attacks such as prompt injections, prevents agents from processing or leaking sensitive data, and gives organizations the ability to audit agent interactions, assess compliance readiness and policy violations, and recommend controls for evolving regulatory requirements. Microsoft Agent 365 also includes the Agent 365 SDK, part of Microsoft Agent Framework, which empowers developers and ISVs to build agents on their own AI stack. The SDK enables agents to automatically inherit Microsoft's security and governance protections, such as identity controls, data security policies, and compliance capabilities, without the need for custom integration. For more details on Agent 365, read the blog here. For Developers - Introducing Microsoft Foundry Control Plane to observe, secure and manage agents, now in preview Developers are moving fast to bring agents into production, but operating them at scale introduces new challenges and responsibilities. Agents can access tools, take actions, and make decisions in real time, which means development teams must ensure that every agent behaves safely, securely, and consistently. Today, developers need to work across multiple disparate tools to get a holistic picture of the cybersecurity and safety risks that their agents may have. Once they understand the risk, they then need a unified and simplified way to monitor and manage their entire agent fleet and apply controls and guardrails as needed. Microsoft Foundry provides a unified platform for developers to build, evaluate and deploy AI apps and agents in a responsible way. Today we are excited to announce that Foundry Control Plane is available in preview. This enables developers to observe, secure, and manage their agent fleets with built-in security, and centralized governance controls. With this unified approach, developers can now identify risks and correlate disparate signals across their models, agents, and tools; enforce consistent policies and quality gates; and continuously monitor task adherence and runtime risks. Foundry Control Plane is deeply integrated with Microsoft’s security portfolio to provide a ‘secure by design’ foundation for developers. With Microsoft Entra, developers can ensure an agent identity (Agent ID) and access controls are built into every agent, mitigating the risk of unmanaged agents and over permissioned resources. With Microsoft Defender built in, developers gain contextualized alerts and posture recommendations for agents directly within the Foundry Control Plane. This integration proactively prevents configuration and access risks, while also defending agents from runtime threats in real time. Microsoft Purview’s native integration into Foundry Control Plane makes it easy to enable data security and compliance for every Foundry-built application or agent. This allows Purview to discover data security and compliance risks and apply policies to prevent user prompts and AI responses from safety and policy violations. In addition, agent interactions can be logged and searched for compliance and legal audits. This integration of the shared security capabilities, including identity and access, data security and compliance, and threat protection and posture ensures that security is not an afterthought; it’s embedded at every stage of the agent lifecycle, enabling you to start secure and stay secure. For more details, read the blog. For Security Teams - Introducing Security Dashboard for AI - unified risk visibility for CISOs and AI risk leaders, coming soon AI proliferation in the enterprise, combined with the emergence of AI governance committees and evolving AI regulations, leaves CISOs and AI risk leaders needing a clear view of their AI risks, such as data leaks, model vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and unethical agent actions across their entire AI estate, spanning AI platforms, apps, and agents. 90% of security professionals, including CISOs, report that their responsibilities have expanded to include data governance and AI oversight within the past year. 1 At the same time, 86% of risk managers say disconnected data and systems lead to duplicated efforts and gaps in risk coverage. 2 To address these needs, we are excited to introduce the Security Dashboard for AI. This serves as a unified dashboard that aggregates posture and real-time risk signals from Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. This unified dashboard allows CISOs and AI risk leaders to discover agents and AI apps, track AI posture and drift, and correlate risk signals to investigate and act across their entire AI ecosystem. For example, you can see your full AI inventory and get visibility into a quarantined agent, flagged for high data risk due to oversharing sensitive information in Purview. The dashboard then correlates that signal with identity insights from Entra and threat protection alerts from Defender to provide a complete picture of exposure. From there, you can delegate tasks to the appropriate teams to enforce policies and remediate issues quickly. With the Security Dashboard for AI, CISOs and risk leaders gain a clear, consolidated view of AI risks across agents, apps, and platforms—eliminating fragmented visibility, disconnected posture insights, and governance gaps as AI adoption scales. Best of all, there’s nothing new to buy. If you’re already using Microsoft security products to secure AI, you’re already a Security Dashboard for AI customer. Figure 5: Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a unified view of their AI risk by bringing together their AI inventory, AI risk, and security recommendations to strengthen overall posture Together, these innovations deliver observability and security across IT, development, and security teams, powered by Microsoft’s shared security capabilities. With Microsoft Agent 365, IT teams can manage and secure agents alongside users. Foundry Control Plane gives developers unified governance and lifecycle controls for agent fleets. Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a consolidated view of AI risks across platforms, apps, and agents. Added innovation to secure and govern your AI workloads In addition to the IT, developer, and security leader-focused innovations outlined above, we continue to accelerate our pace of innovation in Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender to address the most pressing needs for securing and governing your AI workloads. These needs are: Manage agent sprawl and resource access e.g. managing agent identity, access to resources, and permissions lifecycle at scale Prevent data oversharing and leaks e.g. protecting sensitive information shared in prompts, responses, and agent interactions Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities e.g. managing unsanctioned applications, preventing prompt injection attacks, and detecting AI supply chain vulnerabilities Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance e.g. ensuring AI development, operations, and usage comply with evolving global regulations and frameworks Manage agent sprawl and resource access 76% of business leaders expect employees to manage agents within the next 2–3 years. 3 Widespread adoption of agents is driving the need for visibility and control, which includes the need for a unified registry, agent identities, lifecycle governance, and secure access to resources. Today, Microsoft Entra provides robust identity protection and secure access for applications and users. However, organizations lack a unified way to manage, govern, and protect agents in the same way they manage their users. Organizations need a purpose-built identity and access framework for agents. Introducing Microsoft Entra Agent ID, now in preview Microsoft Entra Agent ID offers enterprise-grade capabilities that enable organizations to prevent agent sprawl and protect agent identities and their access to resources. These new purpose-built capabilities enable organizations to: Register and manage agents: Get a complete inventory of the agent fleet and ensure all new agents are created with an identity built-in and are automatically protected by organization policies to accelerate adoption. Govern agent identities and lifecycle: Keep the agent fleet under control with lifecycle management and IT-defined guardrails for both agents and people who create and manage them. Protect agent access to resources: Reduce risk of breaches, block risky agents, and prevent agent access to malicious resources with conditional access and traffic inspection. Agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, and Security Copilot get an Entra Agent ID built-in at creation. Developers can also adopt Entra Agent ID for agents they build through Microsoft Agent Framework, Microsoft Agent 365 SDK, or Microsoft Entra Agent ID SDK. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. Prevent data oversharing and leaks Data security is more complex than ever. Information Security Media Group (ISMG) reports that 80% of leaders cite leakage of sensitive data as their top concern. 4 In addition to data security and compliance risks of generative AI (GenAI) apps, agents introduces new data risks such as unsupervised data access, highlighting the need to protect all types of corporate data, whether it is accessed by employees or agents. To mitigate these risks, we are introducing new Microsoft Purview data security and compliance capabilities for Microsoft 365 Copilot and for agents and AI apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, providing unified protection, visibility, and control for users, AI Apps, and Agents. New Microsoft Purview controls safeguard Microsoft 365 Copilot with real-time protection and bulk remediation of oversharing risks Microsoft Purview and Microsoft 365 Copilot deliver a fully integrated solution for protecting sensitive data in AI workflows. Based on ongoing customer feedback, we’re introducing new capabilities to deliver real-time protection for sensitive data in M365 Copilot and accelerated remediation of oversharing risks: Data risk assessments: Previously, admins could monitor oversharing risks such as SharePoint sites with unprotected sensitive data. Now, they can perform item-level investigations and bulk remediation for overshared files in SharePoint and OneDrive to quickly reduce oversharing exposure. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for M365 Copilot: DLP previously excluded files with sensitivity labels from Copilot processing. Now in preview, DLP also prevents prompts that include sensitive data from being processed in M365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, and Copilot agents, and prevents Copilot from using sensitive data in prompts for web grounding. Priority cleanup for M365 Copilot assets: Many organizations have org-wide policies to retain or delete data. Priority cleanup, now generally available, lets admins delete assets that are frequently processed by Copilot, such as meeting transcripts and recordings, on an independent schedule from the org-wide policies while maintaining regulatory compliance. On-demand classification for meeting transcripts: Purview can now detect sensitive information in meeting transcripts on-demand. This enables data security admins to apply DLP policies and enforce Priority cleanup based on the sensitive information detected. & bulk remediation Read the full Data Security blog to learn more. Introducing new Microsoft Purview data security capabilities for agents and apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends the same data security and compliance for users and Copilots to agents and apps. These new capabilities are: Enhanced Data Security Posture Management: A centralized DSPM dashboard that provides observability, risk assessment, and guided remediation across users, AI apps, and agents. Insider Risk Management (IRM) for Agents: Uniquely designed for agents, using dedicated behavioral analytics, Purview dynamically assigns risk levels to agents based on their risky handing of sensitive data and enables admins to apply conditional policies based on that risk level. Sensitive data protection with Azure AI Search: Azure AI Search enables fast, AI-driven retrieval across large document collections, essential for building AI Apps. When apps or agents use Azure AI Search to index or retrieve data, Purview sensitivity labels are preserved in the search index, ensuring that any sensitive information remains protected under the organization’s data security & compliance policies. For more information on preventing data oversharing and data leaks - Learn how Purview protects and governs agents in the Data Security and Compliance for Agents blog. Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities AI workloads are subject to new AI-specific threats like prompt injections attacks, model poisoning, and data exfiltration of AI generated content. Although security admins and SOC analysts have similar tasks when securing agents, the attack methods and surfaces differ significantly. To help customers defend against these novel attacks, we are introducing new capabilities in Microsoft Defender that deliver end-to-end protection, from security posture management to runtime defense. Introducing Security Posture Management for agents, now in preview As organizations adopt AI agents to automate critical workflows, they become high-value targets and potential points of compromise, creating a critical need to ensure agents are hardened, compliant, and resilient by preventing misconfigurations and safeguarding against adversarial manipulation. Security Posture Management for agents in Microsoft Defender now provides an agent inventory for security teams across Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio agents. Here, analysts can assess the overall security posture of an agent, easily implement security recommendations, and identify vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations and excessive permissions, all aligned to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Additionally, the new agent attack path analysis visualizes how an agent’s weak security posture can create broader organizational risk, so you can quickly limit exposure and prevent lateral movement. Introducing Threat Protection for agents, now in preview Attack techniques and attack surfaces for agents are fundamentally different from other assets in your environment. That’s why Defender is delivering purpose-built protections and detections to help defend against them. Defender is introducing runtime protection for Copilot Studio agents that automatically block prompt injection attacks in real time. In addition, we are announcing agent-specific threat detections for Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry agents coming soon. Defender automatically correlates these alerts with Microsoft’s industry-leading threat intelligence and cross-domain security signals to deliver richer, contextualized alerts and security incident views for the SOC analyst. Defender’s risk and threat signals are natively integrated into the new Microsoft Foundry Control Plane, giving development teams full observability and the ability to act directly from within their familiar environment. Finally, security analysts will be able to hunt across all agent telemetry in the Advanced Hunting experience in Defender, and the new Agent 365 SDK extends Defender’s visibility and hunting capabilities to third-party agents, starting with Genspark and Kasisto, giving security teams even more coverage across their AI landscape. To learn more about how you can harden the security posture of your agents and defend against threats, read the Microsoft Defender blog. Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance Global AI regulations like the EU AI Act and NIST AI RMF are evolving rapidly; yet, according to ISMG, 55% of leaders report lacking clarity on current and future AI regulatory requirements. 5 As enterprises adopt AI, they must ensure that their AI innovation aligns with global regulations and standards to avoid costly compliance gaps. Introducing new Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager capabilities to stay ahead of evolving AI regulations, now in preview Today, Purview Compliance Manager provides over 300 pre-built assessments for common industry, regional, and global standards and regulations. However, the pace of change for new AI regulations requires controls to be continuously re-evaluated and updated so that organizations can adapt to ongoing changes in regulations and stay compliant. To address this need, Compliance Manager now includes AI-powered regulatory templates. AI-powered regulatory templates enable real-time ingestion and analysis of global regulatory documents, allowing compliance teams to quickly adapt to changes as they happen. As regulations evolve, the updated regulatory documents can be uploaded to Compliance Manager, and the new requirements are automatically mapped to applicable recommended actions to implement controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Foundry. Automated actions by Compliance Manager further streamline governance, reduce manual workload, and strengthen regulatory accountability. Introducing expanded Microsoft Purview compliance capabilities for agents and AI apps now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends its compliance capabilities across agent-generated interactions, ensuring responsible use and regulatory alignment as AI becomes deeply embedded across business processes. New capabilities include expanded coverage for: Audit: Surface agent interactions, lifecycle events, and data usage with Purview Audit. Unified audit logs across user and agent activities, paired with traceability for every agent using an Entra Agent ID, support investigation, anomaly detection, and regulatory reporting. Communication Compliance: Detect prompts sent to agents and agent-generated responses containing inappropriate, unethical, or risky language, including attempts to manipulate agents into bypassing policies, generating risky content, or producing noncompliant outputs. When issues arise, data security admins get full context, including the prompt, the agent’s output, and relevant metadata, so they can investigate and take corrective action Data Lifecycle Management: Apply retention and deletion policies to agent-generated content and communication flows to automate lifecycle controls and reduce regulatory risk. Read about Microsoft Purview data security for agents to learn more. Finally, we are extending our data security, threat protection, and identity access capabilities to third-party apps and agents via the network. Advancing Microsoft Entra Internet Access Secure Web + AI Gateway - extend runtime protections to the network, now in preview Microsoft Entra Internet Access, part of the Microsoft Entra Suite, has new capabilities to secure access to and usage of GenAI at the network level, marking a transition from Secure Web Gateway to Secure Web and AI Gateway. Enterprises can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, empowering employees to experiment with new AI tools safely. The new capabilities include: Prompt injection protection which blocks malicious prompts in real time by extending Azure AI Prompt Shields to the network layer. Network file filtering which extends Microsoft Purview to inspect files in transit and prevents regulated or confidential data from being uploaded to unsanctioned AI services. Shadow AI Detection that provides visibility into unsanctioned AI applications through Cloud Application Analytics and Defender for Cloud Apps risk scoring, empowering security teams to monitor usage trends, apply Conditional Access, or block high-risk apps instantly. Unsanctioned MCP server blocking prevents access to MCP servers from unauthorized agents. With these controls, you can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, so employees can experiment with new AI tools safely. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. As AI transforms the enterprise, security must evolve to meet new challenges—spanning agent sprawl, data protection, emerging threats, and regulatory compliance. Our approach is to empower IT, developers, and security leaders with purpose-built innovations like Agent 365, Foundry Control Plane, and the Security Dashboard for AI. These solutions bring observability, governance, and protection to every layer of the AI stack, leveraging familiar tools and integrated controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. The future of security is ambient, autonomous, and deeply woven into the fabric of how we build, deploy, and govern AI systems. Explore additional resources Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Learn more about Microsoft Agent 365 Learn more about Microsoft Entra Agent ID Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Get started with Microsoft Copilot Studio Get started with Microsoft Foundry Get started with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Get started with Microsoft Entra Get started with Microsoft Purview Get started with Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager Sign up for a free Microsoft 365 E5 Security Trial and Microsoft Purview Trial 1 Bedrock Security, 2025 Data Security Confidence Index, published Mar 17, 2025. 2 AuditBoard & Ascend2, Connected Risk Report 2024; as cited by MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2025. 3 KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse Survey | Q3 2025. September 2025. n= 130 U.S.-based C-suite and business leaders representing organizations with annual revenue of $1 billion or more 4 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, , Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400 5 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400
Building Secure, Enterprise Ready AI Agents with Purview SDK and Agent Framework
At Microsoft Ignite, we announced the public preview of Purview integration with the Agent Framework SDK—making it easier to build AI agents that are secure, compliant, and enterprise‑ready from day one. AI agents are quickly moving from demos to production. They reason over enterprise data, collaborate with other agents, and take real actions. As that happens, one thing becomes non‑negotiable: Governance has to be built in. That’s where Purview SDK comes in. Agentic AI Changes the Security Model Traditional apps expose risks at the UI or API layer. AI agents are different. Agents can: Process sensitive enterprise data in prompts and responses Collaborate with other agents across workflows Act autonomously on behalf of users Without built‑in controls, even a well‑designed agent can create compliance gaps. Purview SDK brings Microsoft’s enterprise data security and compliance directly into the agent runtime, so governance travels with the agent—not after it. What You Get with Purview SDK + Agent Framework This integration delivers a few key things developers and enterprises care about most: Inline Data Protection Evaluate prompts and responses against Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies in real time. Content can be allowed or blocked automatically. Built‑In Governance Send AI interactions to Purview for audit, eDiscovery, communication compliance, and lifecycle management—without custom plumbing. Enterprise‑Ready by Design Ship agents that meet enterprise security expectations from the start, not as a follow‑up project. All of this is done natively through Agent Framework middleware, so governance feels like part of the platform—not an add‑on. How Enforcement Works (Quickly) When an agent runs: Prompts and responses flow through the Agent Framework pipeline Purview SDK evaluates content against configured policies A decision is returned: allow, redact, or block Governance signals are logged for audit and compliance This same model works for: User‑to‑agent interactions Agent‑to‑agent communication Multi‑agent workflows Try It: Add Purview SDK in Minutes Here’s a minimal Python example using Agent Framework: That’s it! From that point on: Prompts and responses are evaluated against Purview policies setup within the enterprise tenant Sensitive data can be automatically blocked Interactions are logged for governance and audit Designed for Real Agent Systems Most production AI apps aren’t single‑agent systems. Purview SDK supports: Agent‑level enforcement for fine‑grained control Workflow‑level enforcement across orchestration steps Agent‑to‑agent governance to protect data as agents collaborate This makes it a natural fit for enterprise‑scale, multi‑agent architectures. Get Started Today You can start experimenting right away: Try the Purview SDK with Agent Framework Follow the Microsoft Learn docs to configure Purview SDK with Agent Framework. Explore the GitHub samples See examples of policy‑enforced agents in Python and .NET. Secure AI, Without Slowing It Down AI agents are quickly becoming production systems—not experiments. By integrating Purview SDK directly into the Agent Framework, Microsoft is making governance a default capability, not a deployment blocker. Build intelligent agents. Protect sensitive data. Scale with confidence.
