Subscription Governance: The Relationships and Dependencies Involved with Managing Subscriptions
In this article Introduction Relationships and dependencies between Entra ID, Billing Accounts and Subscriptions Identity and Roles Billing Account and Subscription Creation Summary Introduction In cloud governance, the relationships between Entra ID, Billing Accounts, Subscriptions, and User Permissions are frequently misunderstood even by experienced practitioners. Many organizations assume these components form a simple hierarchy or that permissions and associations are inherited in certain ways. In reality, these elements are loosely associated, and their dependencies are far more nuanced. Misunderstanding these relationships and dependencies poses a challenge to governance and can allow subscription sprawl. For example, assuming that billing accounts and subscriptions are always tied to the same Entra ID tenant, or that user roles in Entra ID automatically confer billing permissions, can result in misconfigured access controls and the creation of subscriptions outside of your corporate procurement and deployment processes. There can also be confusion about where to go to manage permissions. Is it Entra ID, is it in the resource RBAC, is it in the billing account? Effective governance requires clarity on: How Entra ID tenants, billing accounts, and subscriptions are associated and how these associations can be changed. Which roles have the authority to create or manage subscriptions and billing accounts, and where those roles are found. How the type of billing account (EA, MCA, MOSP, Partner) determines who can create subscriptions and what controls are available. By understanding these foundational relationships and the specific permissions required, organizations can avoid common pitfalls and build a governance model that is both secure and flexible. Relationships and dependencies between Entra ID, Billing Accounts and Subscriptions In order to manage subscriptions, it is key to understand the components and dependencies related to subscriptions. Let’s first understand the relationship between subscriptions, billing accounts and Entra ID tenants. Do not think of the tenant as a container for billing accounts which are containers for subscriptions. Think of the relationship between these components as “associations” rather than a hierarchy. A billing account is typically associated with a single Entra ID tenant. However, with MCA billing accounts you can configure Associated Billing Tenants which allow users from multiple tenants to have billing permissions on a single billing account. Entra ID can have many different billing accounts of different types. A billing account can be associated with many subscriptions, but a subscription can only be associated with a single billing account. An Entra ID tenant can be associated with many subscriptions, but a subscription can only be associated with a single tenant. A subscription is first associated with the tenant in which the user is logged in, which isn’t always the same tenant for which the associated billing account belongs to. These relationships or associations can also be changed later. For example, Subscription Owners can change the association of the subscription’s Entra ID tenant to ANY other Entra ID tenant in which they have access. They don’t need elevated permissions in the target tenant. One of the most important things to know is that the billing account that is associated with a subscription does not need to be associated with the same Entra ID tenant for which the subscription is associated with. See the following example associations: Identity and Roles Entra ID is a directory of user identities and other objects. A user identity can be associated with many Entra ID tenants. While the primary account belongs to a single tenant, users can be invited as guest users to any number of Entra ID tenants using B2B collaboration. There are three places that house roles/permissions that are mapped to those user identities: Entra ID roles, Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Role Based Access Control (RBAC), and Billing Accounts. Entra ID Roles Entra ID roles manage directory level objects such as user identities. The Global Administrator is the most well-known role within Entra ID. Entra ID roles are typically limited to managing the directory, however there is the ability to elevate access so that the Global Administrator can access and assign RBAC and Billing roles to themselves or others (two exceptions are that the Global Admin cannot elevate billing permissions for EA or MOSP billing accounts). Entra ID roles assigned to a user in one tenant do not follow them when they gain access to another tenant. ARM RBAC RBAC is a function of the ARM and is scoped to either management groups, subscriptions, resource groups or resources. RBAC is inherited from parent scopes. The RBAC assigned for a user in one tenant, is not shared with any another tenant as the mappings are maintained by ARM for each resource in the tenant. As each tenant has unique resources, the RBAC mapping the user has for resources in one tenant logically cannot exist in another tenant. While user identity is handled by Entra ID, the RBAC is handled at the resource level. Billing Roles Billing roles are a part of the billing/commerce engine and depend on the billing account type. For example, with an MCA billing account you manage them in Cost Management + Billing instead and not in Entra ID. These billing roles are different depending on the billing account type. While billing roles manage access to billing details, they also control the creation of subscriptions. If you have the correct billing role, you can create subscriptions under that billing account. Subscription creation is not managed by Entra ID roles nor RBAC. Billing Accounts There are 4 main billing account types: Enterprise Agreements (EA): Legacy contractual model for large enterprises. Provides volume licensing discounts, centralized invoicing, and long-term pricing commitments but is gradually being replaced by MCA. Billing roles to create subscriptions: Enterprise Administrator, Account Owner Microsoft Customer Agreements (MCA) The modern default billing model for enterprise customers. Free trial and pay-go subscriptions are supported. Invoice-based or credit card billing, supports multiple billing profiles and invoice sections. Billing roles to create subscriptions: Billing Account Owner/Contributor, Billing Profile Owner/Contributor, Billing Invoice Owner/Contributor, Subscription Creator Microsoft Online Services Program (MOSP) Agreements Tied to a single user, lacks enterprise governance features, and is the most common source of subscription sprawl. Typically used by individuals or small businesses and supports free trial, pay-go and Visual Studio subscriptions. Billing role to create subscriptions: Account Administrator Microsoft Partner Agreements (MPA) A billing account owned and managed by a Microsoft partner. Subscriptions billed under CSP appear in your tenant but financially roll up under the partner’s agreement. Control over invoicing and some subscription-level actions is delegated to the CSP, not directly to corporate IT. Billing role to create subscriptions: Admin agent role in the CSP partner organization Billing Account and Subscription Creation As the roles within the billing account provide the permissions to create subscriptions it is important to understand who can create these billing accounts. Because whoever can create a billing account, is also able to create a subscription. And remember, subscriptions do not need to be associated with the same Entra ID tenant as the billing account. Billing accounts are created in the following ways: Enterprise Agreements (EA) An individual at your company works with Microsoft to set up an EA contract. An EA billing account is created for them, and they become the Enterprise Administrator for that billing account. Microsoft Customer Agreements (MCA) An individual at your company works with Microsoft to set up an MCA contract. An MCA billing account is created for them, and they become the Billing Account Owner for that billing account. Microsoft Online Services Program (MOSP) Agreements Any individual can perform a self-signup for a pay-go or free-trial subscription. When they do this, a billing account is created for them, and they become the Account Administrator for that billing account. This can be done in any Entra ID tenant for which they have an identity (including guest accounts). Microsoft Partner Agreements A Microsoft Partner registers and manages the CSP billing account on behalf of a customer. They become the Admin agent. Summary Understanding the associations between Entra ID tenants, identity, permissions, billing accounts, and subscriptions is foundational for effective governance. With these building blocks in place, you can design for and establish governance that will ensure your environment aligns with your corporate strategy and reduce opportunity for subscription sprawl.Step-by-Step Guide: Integrating Microsoft Purview with Azure Databricks and Microsoft Fabric
Co-Authored By: aryananmol, laurenkirkwood and mmanley This article provides practical guidance on setup, cost considerations, and integration steps for Azure Databricks and Microsoft Fabric to help organizations plan for building a strong data governance framework. It outlines how Microsoft Purview can unify governance efforts across cloud platforms, enabling consistent policy enforcement, metadata management, and lineage tracking. The content is tailored for architects and data leaders seeking to execute governance in scalable, hybrid environments. Note: this article focuses mainly on Data Governance features for Microsoft Purview. Why Microsoft Purview Microsoft Purview enables organizations to discover, catalog, and manage data across environments with clarity and control. Automated scanning and classification build a unified view of your data estate enriched with metadata, lineage, and sensitivity labels, and the Unified Catalog gives business-friendly search and governance constructs like domains, data products, glossary terms, and data quality. Note: Microsoft Purview Unified Catalog is being rolled out globally, with availability across multiple Microsoft Entra tenant regions; this page lists supported regions, availability dates, and deployment plans for the Unified Catalog service: Unified Catalog Supported Regions. Understanding Data Governance Features Cost in Purview Under the classic model: Data Map (Classic), users pay for an “always-on” Data Map capacity and scanning compute. In the new model, those infrastructure costs are subsumed into the consumption meters – meaning there are no direct charges for metadata storage or scanning jobs when using the Unified Catalog (Enterprise tier). Essentially, Microsoft stopped billing separately for the underlying data map and scan vCore-hours once you opt into the new model or start fresh with it. You only incur charges when you govern assets or run data processing tasks. This makes costs more predictable and tied to governance value: you can scan as much as needed to populate the catalog without worrying about scan fees and then pay only for the assets you actively manage (“govern”) and any data quality processes you execute. In summary, Purview Enterprise’s pricing is usage-based and divided into two primary areas: (1) Governed Assets and (2) Data Processing (DGPUs). Plan for Governance Microsoft Purview’s data governance framework is built on two core components: Data Map and Unified Catalog. The Data Map acts as the technical foundation, storing metadata about assets discovered through scans across your data estate. It inventories sources and organizes them into collections and domains for technical administration. The Unified Catalog sits on top as the business-facing layer, leveraging the Data Map’s metadata to create a curated marketplace of data products, glossary terms, and governance domains for data consumers and stewards. Before onboarding sources, align Unified Catalog (business-facing) and Data Map (technical inventory) and define roles, domains, and collections so ownership and access boundaries are clear. Here is a documentation that covers roles and permissions in Purview: Permissions in the Microsoft Purview portal | Microsoft Learn. The imageabove helps understand therelationship between the primary data governance solutions, Unified Catalog and Data Map, and the permissions granted by the roles for each solution. Considerations and Steps for Setting up Purview Steps for Setting up Purview: Step 1: Create a Purview Account. In the Azure Portal, use the search bar at the top to navigate to Microsoft Purview Accounts. Once there, click “Create”. This will take you to the following screen: Step 2: Click Next: Configuration and follow the Wizard, completing the necessary fields, including information on Networking, Configurations, and Tags. Then click Review + Create to create your Purview account. Consideration: Private networking: Use Private Endpoints to secure Unified Catalog/Data Map access and scan traffic; follow the new platform private endpoints guidance in the Microsoft Purview portal or migrate classic endpoints. Once your Purview Account is created, you’ll want to set up and manage your organization’s governance strategy to ensure that your data is classified and managed according to the specific lifecycle guidelines you set. Note: Follow the steps in this guide to set up Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management: Data retention policy, labeling, and records management. Data Map Best Practices Design your collections hierarchy to align with organizational strategy—such as by geography, business function, or data domain. Register each data source only once per Purview account to avoid conflicting access controls. If multiple teams consume the same source, register it at a parent collection and create scans under subcollections for visibility. The imageaboveillustrates a recommended approach for structuring your Purview DataMap. Why Collection Structure Matters A well-structured Data Map strategy, including a clearly defined hierarchy of collections and domains, is critical because the Data Map serves as the metadata backbone for Microsoft Purview. It underpins the Unified Catalog, enabling consistent governance, role-based access control, and discoverability across the enterprise. Designing this hierarchy thoughtfully ensures scalability, simplifies permissions management, and provides a solid foundation for implementing enterprise-wide data governance. Purview Integration with Azure Databricks Databricks Workspace Structure In Azure Databricks, each region supports a single Unity Catalog metastore, which is shared across all workspaces within that region. This centralized architecture enables consistent data governance, simplifies access control, and facilitates seamless data sharing across teams. As an administrator, you can scan one workspace in the region using Microsoft Purview to discover and classify data managed by Unity Catalog, since the metastore governs all associated workspaces in a region. If your organization operates across multiple regions and utilizes cross-region data sharing, please review the consideration and workaround outlined below to ensure proper configuration and governance. Follow pre-requisite requirements here, before you register your workspace: Prerequisites to Connect and manage Azure Databricks Unity Catalog in Microsoft Purview. Steps to Register Databricks Workspace Step 1: In the Microsoft Purview portal, navigate to the Data Map section from the left-hand menu. Select Data Sources. Click on Register to begin the process of adding your Databricks workspace. Step 2: Note: There are two Databricks data sources, please review documentation here to review differences in capability: Connect to and manage Azure Databricks Unity Catalog in Microsoft Purview | Microsoft Learn. You can choose either source based on your organization’s needs. Recommended is “Azure Databricks Unity Catalog”: Step 3: Register your workspace. Here are the steps to register your data source: Steps to Register an Azure Databricks workspace in Microsoft Purview. Step 4: Initiate scan for your workspace, follow steps here: Steps to scan Azure Databricks to automatically identify assets. Once you have entered the required information test your connection and click continue to set up scheduled scan trigger. Step 5: For Scan trigger, choose whether to set up a schedule or run the scan once according to your business needs. Step 6: From the left pane, select Data Map and select your data source for your workspace. You can view a list of existing scans on that data source under Recent scans, or you can view all scans on the Scans tab. Review further options here: Manage and Review your Scans. You can review your scanned data sources, history and details here: Navigate to scan run history for a given scan. Limitation: The “Azure Databricks Unity Catalog” data source in Microsoft Purview does not currently support connection via Managed Vnet. As a workaround, the product team recommends using the “Azure Databricks Unity Catalog” source in combination with a Self-hosted Integration Runtime (SHIR) to enable scanning and metadata ingestion. You can find setup guidance here: Create and manage SHIR in Microsoft Purview Choose the right integration runtime configuration Scoped scan support for Unity Catalog is expected to enter private preview soon. You can sign up here: https://aka.ms/dbxpreview. Considerations: If you have delta-shared Databricks-to-Databricks workspaces, you may have duplication in your data assets if you are scanning both Workspaces. The workaround for this scenario is as you add tables/data assets to a Data Product for Governance in Microsoft Purview, you can identify the duplicated tables/data assets using their Fully Qualified Name (FQN). To make identification easier: Look for the keyword “sharing” in the FQN, which indicates a Delta-Shared table. You can also apply tags to these tables for quicker filtering and selection. The screenshot highlights how the FQN appears in the interface, helping you confidently identify and manage your data assets. Purview Integration with Microsoft Fabric Understanding Fabric Integration: Connect Cross-Tenant: This refers to integrating Microsoft Fabric resources across different Microsoft Entra tenants. It enables organizations to share data, reports, and workloads securely between separate tenants, often used in multi-organization collaborations or partner ecosystems. Key considerations include authentication, data governance, and compliance with cross-tenant policies. Connect In-Same-Tenant: This involves connecting Fabric resources within the same Microsoft Entra tenant. It simplifies integration by leveraging shared identity and governance models, allowing seamless access to data, reports, and pipelines across different workspaces or departments under the same organizational umbrella. Requirements: An Azure account with an active subscription. Create an account for free. An active Microsoft Purview account. Authentication is supported via: Managed Identity. Delegated Authentication and Service Principal. Steps to Register Fabric Tenant Step 1: In the Microsoft Purview portal, navigate to the Data Map section from the left-hand menu. Select Data Sources. Click on Register to begin the process of adding your Fabric Tenant (which also includes PowerBI). Step 2: Add in Data Source Name, keep Tenant ID as default (auto-populated). Microsoft Fabric and Microsoft Purview should be in the same tenant. Step 3: Enter in Scan name, enable/disable scanning for personal workspaces. You will notice under Credentials automatically created identity for authenticating Purview account. Note: If your Purview is behind Private Network, follow the guidelines here: Connect to your Microsoft Fabric tenant in same tenant as Microsoft Purview. Step 4: From your Microsoft Fabric, open Settings, Click on Tenant Settings and enable “Service Principals can access read-only admin APIs”, “Enhanced admin API responses within detailed metadata” and “Enhance Admin API responses with DAX and Mashup Expressions” within Admin API Settings section. Step 5: You will need to create a group, add the Purviews' managed identity to the group and add the group under “Service Principals can access read-only admin APIs” section of your tenant settings inside Microsoft Fabric Step 6: Test your connection and setup scope for your scan. Select the required workspaces, click continue and automate a scan trigger. Step 7: From the left pane, select Data Map and select your data source for your workspace. You can view a list of existing scans on that data source under Recent scans, or you can view all scans on the Scans tab. Review further options here: Manage and Review your Scans. You can review your scanned data sources, history and details here: Navigate to scan run history for a given scan. Why Customers Love Purview Kern County unified its approach to securing and governing data with Microsoft Purview, ensuring consistent compliance and streamlined data management across departments. EY accelerated secure AI development by leveraging the Microsoft Purview SDK, enabling robust data governance and privacy controls for advanced analytics and AI initiatives. Prince William County Public Schools created a more cyber-safe classroom environment with Microsoft Purview, protecting sensitive student information while supporting digital learning. FSA (Food Standards Agency) helps keep the UK food supply safe using Microsoft Purview Records Management, ensuring regulatory compliance and safeguarding critical data assets. Conclusion Purview’s Unified Catalog centralizes governance across Discovery, Catalog Management, and Health Management. The Governance features in Purview allow organizations to confidently answer critical questions: What data do we have? Where did it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is it secure and compliant? Can we trust its quality? Microsoft Purview, when integrated with Azure Databricks and Microsoft Fabric, provides a unified approach to cataloging, classifying, and governing data across diverse environments. By leveraging Purview’s Unified Catalog, Data Map, and advanced governance features, organizations can achieve end-to-end visibility, enforce consistent policies, and improve data quality. You might ask, why does data quality matter? Well, in today’s world, data is the new gold. References Microsoft Purview | Microsoft Learn Pricing - Microsoft Purview | Microsoft Azure Use Microsoft Purview to Govern Microsoft Fabric Connect to and manage Azure Databricks Unity Catalog in Microsoft PurviewIntroducing Microsoft Security Store
Security is being reengineered for the AI era—moving beyond static, rulebound controls and after-the-fact response toward platform-led, machine-speed defense. We recognize that defending against modern threats requires the full strength of an ecosystem, combining our unique expertise and shared threat intelligence. But with so many options out there, it’s tough for security professionals to cut through the noise, and even tougher to navigate long procurement cycles and stitch together tools and data before seeing meaningful improvements. That’s why we built Microsoft Security Store - a storefront designed for security professionals to discover, buy, and deploy security SaaS solutions and AI agents from our ecosystem partners such as Darktrace, Illumio, and BlueVoyant. Security SaaS solutions and AI agents on Security Store integrate with Microsoft Security products, including Sentinel platform, to enhance end-to-end protection. These integrated solutions and agents collaborate intelligently, sharing insights and leveraging AI to enhance critical security tasks like triage, threat hunting, and access management. In Security Store, you can: Buy with confidence – Explore solutions and agents that are validated to integrate with Microsoft Security products, so you know they’ll work in your environment. Listings are organized to make it easy for security professionals to find what’s relevant to their needs. For example, you can filter solutions based on how they integrate with your existing Microsoft Security products. You can also browse listings based on their NIST Cybersecurity Framework functions, covering everything from network security to compliance automation — helping you quickly identify which solutions strengthen the areas that matter most to your security posture. Simplify purchasing – Buy solutions and agents with your existing Microsoft billing account without any additional payment setup. For Azure benefit-eligible offers, eligible purchases contribute to your cloud consumption commitments. You can also purchase negotiated deals through private offers. Accelerate time to value – Deploy agents and their dependencies in just a few steps and start getting value from AI in minutes. Partners offer ready-to-use AI agents that can triage alerts at scale, analyze and retrieve investigation insights in real time, and surface posture and detection gaps with actionable recommendations. A rich ecosystem of solutions and AI agents to elevate security posture In Security Store, you’ll find solutions covering every corner of cybersecurity—threat protection, data security and governance, identity and device management, and more. To give you a flavor of what is available, here are some of the exciting solutions on the store: Darktrace’s ActiveAI Security SaaS solution integrates with Microsoft Security to extend self-learning AI across a customer's entire digital estate, helping detect anomalies and stop novel attacks before they spread. The Darktrace Email Analysis Agent helps SOC teams triage and threat hunt suspicious emails by automating detection of risky attachments, links, and user behaviors using Darktrace Self-Learning AI, integrated with Microsoft Defender and Security Copilot. This unified approach highlights anomalous properties and indicators of compromise, enabling proactive threat hunting and faster, more accurate response. Illumio for Microsoft Sentinel combines Illumio Insights with Microsoft Sentinel data lake and Security Copilot to enhance detection and response to cyber threats. It fuses data from Illumio and all the other sources feeding into Sentinel to deliver a unified view of threats across millions of workloads. AI-driven breach containment from Illumio gives SOC analysts, incident responders, and threat hunters unified visibility into lateral traffic threats and attack paths across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, to reduce alert fatigue, prioritize threat investigation, and instantly isolate workloads. Netskope’s Security Service Edge (SSE) platform integrates with Microsoft M365, Defender, Sentinel, Entra and Purview for identity-driven, label-aware protection across cloud, web, and private apps. Netskope's inline controls (SWG, CASB, ZTNA) and advanced DLP, with Entra signals and Conditional Access, provide real-time, context-rich policies based on user, device, and risk. Telemetry and incidents flow into Defender and Sentinel for automated enrichment and response, ensuring unified visibility, faster investigations, and consistent Zero Trust protection for cloud, data, and AI everywhere. PERFORMANTA Email Analysis Agent automates deep investigations into email threats, analyzing metadata (headers, indicators, attachments) against threat intelligence to expose phishing attempts. Complementing this, the IAM Supervisor Agent triages identity risks by scrutinizing user activity for signs of credential theft, privilege misuse, or unusual behavior. These agents deliver unified, evidence-backed reports directly to you, providing instant clarity and slashing incident response time. Tanium Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) pairs realtime endpoint visibility with AI-driven automation to keep IT environments healthy and secure at scale. Tanium is integrated with the Microsoft Security suite—including Microsoft Sentinel, Defender for Endpoint, Entra ID, Intune, and Security Copilot. Tanium streams current state telemetry into Microsoft’s security and AI platforms and lets analysts pivot from investigation to remediation without tool switching. Tanium even executes remediation actions from the Sentinel console. The Tanium Security Triage Agent accelerates alert triage, enabling security teams to make swift, informed decisions using Tanium Threat Response alerts and real-time endpoint data. Walkthrough of Microsoft Security Store Now that you’ve seen the types of solutions available in Security Store, let’s walk through how to find the right one for your organization. You can get started by going to the Microsoft Security Store portal. From there, you can search and browse solutions that integrate with Microsoft Security products, including a dedicated section for AI agents—all in one place. If you are using Microsoft Security Copilot, you can also open the store from within Security Copilot to find AI agents - read more here. Solutions are grouped by how they align with industry frameworks like NIST CSF 2.0, making it easier to see which areas of security each one supports. You can also filter by integration type—e.g., Defender, Sentinel, Entra, or Purview—and by compliance certifications to narrow results to what fits your environment. To explore a solution, click into its detail page to view descriptions, screenshots, integration details, and pricing. For AI agents, you’ll also see the tasks they perform, the inputs they require, and the outputs they produce —so you know what to expect before you deploy. Every listing goes through a review process that includes partner verification, security scans on code packages stored in a secure registry to protect against malware, and validation that integrations with Microsoft Security products work as intended. Customers with the right permissions can purchase agents and SaaS solutions directly through Security Store. The process is simple: choose a partner solution or AI agent and complete the purchase in just a few clicks using your existing Microsoft billing account—no new payment setup required. Qualifying SaaS purchases also count toward your Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), helping accelerate budget approvals while adding the security capabilities your organization needs. Security and IT admins can deploy solutions directly from Security Store in just a few steps through a guided experience. The deployment process automatically provisions the resources each solution needs—such as Security Copilot agents and Microsoft Sentinel data lake notebook jobs—so you don’t have to do so manually. Agents are deployed into Security Copilot, which is built with security in mind, providing controls like granular agent permissions and audit trails, giving admins visibility and governance. Once deployment is complete, your agent is ready to configure and use so you can start applying AI to expand detection coverage, respond faster, and improve operational efficiency. Security and IT admins can view and manage all purchased solutions from the “My Solutions” page and easily navigate to Microsoft Cost Management tools to track spending and manage subscriptions. Partners: grow your business with Microsoft For security partners, Security Store opens a powerful new channel to reach customers, monetize differentiated solutions, and grow with Microsoft. We will showcase select solutions across relevant Microsoft Security experiences, starting with Security Copilot, so your offerings appear in the right context for the right audience. You can monetize both SaaS solutions and AI agents through built-in commerce capabilities, while tapping into Microsoft’s go-to-market incentives. For agent builders, it’s even simpler—we handle the entire commerce lifecycle, including billing and entitlement, so you don’t have to build any infrastructure. You focus on embedding your security expertise into the agent, and we take care of the rest to deliver a seamless purchase experience for customers. Security Store is built on top of Microsoft Marketplace, which means partners publish their solution or agent through the Microsoft Partner Center - the central hub for managing all marketplace offers. From there, create or update your offer with details about how your solution integrates with Microsoft Security so customers can easily discover it in Security Store. Next, upload your deployable package to the Security Store registry, which is encrypted for protection. Then define your license model, terms, and pricing so customers know exactly what to expect. Before your offer goes live, it goes through certification checks that include malware and virus scans, schema validation, and solution validation. These steps help give customers confidence that your solutions meet Microsoft’s integration standards. Get started today By creating a storefront optimized for security professionals, we are making it simple to find, buy, and deploy solutions and AI agents that work together. Microsoft Security Store helps you put the right AI‑powered tools in place so your team can focus on what matters most—defending against attackers with speed and confidence. Get started today by visiting Microsoft Security Store. If you’re a partner looking to grow your business with Microsoft, start by visiting Microsoft Security Store - Partner with Microsoft to become a partner. Partners can list their solution or agent if their solution has a qualifying integration with Microsoft Security products, such as a Sentinel connector or Security Copilot agent, or another qualifying MISA solution integration. You can learn more about qualifying integrations and the listing process in our documentation here.Purview YouTube Show and Podcast
I am a Microsoft MVP who co-hosts All Things M365 Compliance with Ryan John Murphy from Microsoft. The show focuses on Microsoft 365 compliance, data security, and governance. Our episodes cover: Microsoft Purview features and updates Practical guidance for improving compliance posture Real-world scenarios and expert discussions Recent episodes include: Mastering Records Management in Microsoft Purview: A Practical Guide for AI-Ready Governance Teams Private Channel Messages: Compliance Action Required by 20 Sept 2025 Microsoft Purview DLP: Best Practices for Successful Implementation Shadow AI, Culture Change, and Compliance: Securing the Future with Rafah Knight 📺 Watch on YouTube: All Things M365 Compliance - YouTube 🎧 Listen on your favourite podcast platform: All Things M365 Compliance | Podcast on Spotify If you’re responsible for compliance, governance, or security in Microsoft 365, this is for you. 👉 Subscribe to stay up to date – and let us know in the comments what topics you’d like us to cover in future episodes!Sensitivity Auto-labelling via Document Property
Why is this needed? Sensitivity labels are generally relevant within an organisation only. If a file is labelled within one environment and then moved to another environment, sensitivity label content markings may be visible, but by default, the applied sensitivity label will not be understood. This can lead to scenarios where information that has been generated externally is not adequately protected. My favourite analogy for these scenarios is to consider the parallels between receiving sensitive information and unpacking groceries. When unpacking groceries, you might sit your grocery bag on a counter or on the floor next to the pantry. You’ll likely then unpack each item, take a look at it and then decide where to place it. Without looking at an item to determine its correct location, you might place it in the wrong location. Porridge might be safe from the kids on the bottom shelf. If you place items that need to be protected, such as chocolate, on the bottom shelf, it’s not likely to last very long. So, I affectionately refer to information that hasn’t been evaluated as ‘porridge’, as until it has been checked, it will end up on the bottom shelf of the pantry where it is quite accessible. Label-based security controls, such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies using conditions of ‘content contains sensitivity label’ will not apply to these items. To ensure the security of any contained sensitive information, we should look for potential clues to its sensitivity and then utilize these clues to ensure that the contained information is adequately protected - We take a closer look at the ‘porridge’, determine whether it’s an item that needs protection and if so, move it to a higher shelf in the pantry so that it’s out of reach for the kids. Effective use of Purview revolves around the use of ‘know your data’ strategies. We should be using as many methods as possible to try to determine the sensitivity of items. This can include the use of Sensitive Information Types (SITs) containing keyword or pattern-based classifiers, trainable classifiers, Exact Data Match, Document fingerprinting, etc. Matching items via SITs present in the items content can be problematic due to false positives. Keywords like ‘Sensitive’ or ‘Protected’ may be mentioned out of context, such as when referring to a classification or an environment. When classifications have been stamped via a property, it allows us to match via context rather than content. We don’t need to guess at an item’s sensitivity if another system has already established what the item’s classification is. These methods are much less prone to false positives. Why isn’t everyone doing this? Document properties are often not considered in Purview deployments. SharePoint metadata management seems to be a dying artform and most compliance or security resources completing Purview configurations don’t have this skill set. There’s also a lack of understanding of the relevance of checking for item properties. Microsoft haven’t helped as the documentation in this space is somewhat lacking and needs to be unpicked via some aligning DLP guidance (Create a DLP policy to protect documents with FCI or other properties). Many of these configurations will also be tied to regional requirements. Document properties being used by systems where I’m from, in Australia, will likely be very different to those used in other parts of the world. In the following sections, we’ll take a look at applicable use cases and walk through how to enable these configurations. Scenarios for use Labelling via document property isn’t for everyone. If your organisation is new to classification or you don’t have external partners that you collaborate with at higher sensitivity levels, then this likely isn’t for you. For those that collaborate heavily and have a shared classification framework, as is often seen across government, this is a must! This approach will also be highly relevant to multi-tenant organisations or conglomerates where information is regularly shared between environments. The following scenarios are examples of where this configuration will be relevant: 1. Migrating from 3 rd party classification tools If an item has been previously stamped by a 3 rd party classification tool, then evaluating its applied document properties will provide a clear picture of its security classification. These properties can then be used in service-based auto-labelling policies to effectively transition items from 3 rd party tools to Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels. As labels are applied to items, they will be brought into scope of label-based controls. 2. Detecting data spill Data spill is a term that is used to define situations where information that is of a higher than permitted security classification land in an environment. Consider a Microsoft 365 tenant that is approved for the storage of Official information but Top Secret files are uploaded to it. Document properties that align with higher than permitted classifications provide us with an almost guaranteed method of identifying spilled items. Pairing this document property with an auto-labelling policy allows for the application of encryption to lock unauthorized users out of the items. Tools like Content Explorer and eDiscovery can then be used to easily perform cleanup activities. If using document properties and auto-labelling for this purpose, keep in mind that you’ll need to create sensitivity labels for higher than permitted classifications in order to catch spilled items. These labels won’t impact usability as you won’t publish them to users. You will, however, need to publish them to a single user or break glass account so that they’re not ignored by auto-labelling. 3. Blocking access by AI tools If your organization was concerned about items with certain properties applied being accessed by generative AI tools, such as Copilot, you could use Auto-labelling to apply a sensitivity label that restricts EXTRACT permissions. You can find some information on this at Microsoft 365 Copilot data protection architecture | Microsoft Learn. This should be relevant for spilled data, but might also be useful in situations where there are certain records that have been marked via properties and which should not be Copilot accessible. 4. External Microsoft Purview Configurations Sensitivity labels are relevant internally only. A label, in its raw form, is essentially a piece of metadata with an ID (or GUID) that we stamp on pieces of information. These GUIDs are understood by your tenant only. If an item marked with a GUID shows up in another Microsoft 365 tenant, the GUID won’t correspond with any of that tenant’s labels or label-based controls. The art in Microsoft Purview lies in interpreting the sensitivity of items based on content markings and other identifiers, so that data security can be maintained. Document properties applied by Purview, such as ClassificationContentMarkingHeaderText are not relevant to a specific tenant, which makes them portable. We can use these properties to help maintain classifications as items move between environments. 5. Utilizing metadata applied by Records Management solutions Some EDRMS, Records or Content Management solutions will apply properties to items. If an item has been previously managed and then stamped with properties, potentially including a security classification, via one of these systems, we could use this information to inform sensitivity label application. 6. 3 rd party classification tools used externally Even if your organisation hasn’t been using 3rd party classification tools, you should consider that partner organisations, such as other Government departments, might be. Evaluating the properties applied by external organisations to items that you receive will allow you to extend protections to these items. If classification tools like Janus or Titus are used in your geography/industry, then you may want to consider checking for their properties. Regarding the use of auto-classification tools Some organisations, particularly those in Government, will have organisational policies that prevent the use of automatic classification capabilities. These policies are intended to ensure that each item is assessed by an actual person for risk of disclosure rather than via an automated service that could be prone to error. However, when auto-labelling is used to interpret and honour existing classifications, we are lowering rather than raising the risk profile. If the item’s existing classification (applied via property) is ignored, the item will be treated as porridge and is likely to be at risk. If auto-labelling is able to identify a high-risk item and apply the relevant label, it will then be within scope of Purview’s data security controls, including label-based DLP, groups and sites data out of place alerting, and potentially even item encryption. The outcome is that, through the use of auto-labelling, we are able to significantly reduce risk of inappropriate or unintended disclosure. Configuration Process Setting up document property-based auto-labelling is fairly straightforward. We need to setup a managed property and then utilize it an auto-labelling policy. Below, I've split this process into 6 steps: Step 1 – Prepare your files In order to make use of document properties, an item with the properties applied will first need to be indexed by SharePoint. SharePoint will record the properties as ‘crawled properties’, which we’ll then need to convert into ‘managed properties’ to make them useful. If you already have items with the relevant properties stored in SharePoint, then they are likely already indexed. If not, you’ll need to upload or create an item or items with the properties applied. For testing, you’ll want to create a file with each property/value combination so that you can confirm that your auto-labelling policies are all working correctly. This could require quite a few files depending on the number of properties you’re looking for. To kick off your crawled property generation though, you could create or upload a single file with the correct properties applied. For example: In the above, I’ve created properties for ClassificationContentMarkingHeaderText and ClassificationContentMarkingFooterText, which you’ll often see applied by Purview when an item has a sensitivity label content marking applied to it. I’ve also included properties to help identify items classified via JanusSeal, Titus and Objective. Step 2 – Index the files After creating or uploading your file, we then need SharePoint to index it. This should happen fairly quickly depending on the size of your environment. I'd expect to wait sometime between 10 minutes and 24 hrs. If you're not in a hurry, then I'd recommend just checking back the next day. You'll know when this has been completed when you head into SharePoint Admin > Search > Managed Search Schema > Crawled Properties and can find your newly indexed properties: Step 3 – Configure managed properties Next, the properties need to be configured as managed properties. To do this, go to SharePoint Admin > More features > Search > Managed Search Schema > Managed Properties. Create a new managed property and give it a name. Note that there are some character restrictions in naming, but you should be able to get it close to your document property name. Set the property’s type to text, select queryable and retrievable. Under ‘mappings to crawled properties’, choose add mapping, search for and select the property indexed from the file property. Note that the crawled property will have the same name as your document property, so there’s no need to browse through all of them: Repeat this so that you have a managed property for each document property that you want to look for. Step 4 – Configure Auto-labelling policies Next up, create some auto-labelling policies. You’ll need one for each label that you want to apply, not one per property as you can check multiple properties within the one auto-labelling policy. - From within Purview, head to Information Protection > Policies > Auto-labelling policies. - Create a new policy using the custom policy template. - Give your policy an appropriate name (e.g. Label PROTECTED via property). - Select the label that you want to apply (e.g. PROTECTED). - Select SharePoint based services (SharePoint and OneDrive). - Name your auto-labelling rules appropriately (e.g. SPO – Contains PROTECTED property) - Enter your conditions as a long string with property and value separated via a colon and multiple entries separated with a comma. For example: ClassificationContentMarkingHeaderText:PROTECTED,ClassificationContentMarkingFooterText:PROTECTED,Objective-Classification:PROTECTED,PMDisplay:PROTECTED,TitusSEC:PROTECTED Note that the properties that you are referencing are the Managed Property rather than the document property. This will be relevant if your managed property ended up having a different name due to character restrictions. After pasting in your string into the UI, the resultant rule should look something like this: When done, you can either leave your policy in simulation mode or save it and then turn it on from the auto-labelling policies screen. Just be aware of any potential impacts, such as accidently locking users out by automatically deploying a label with encryption configuration. You can reduce any potential impact by targeting your auto-labelling policy at a site or set of sites initially and then expanding its scope after testing. Step 5 - Test Testing your configuration will be as easy as uploading or creating a set of files with the relevant document properties in place. Once uploaded, you’ll need to give SharePoint some time to index the items and then the auto-labelling policy some time to apply sensitivity labels to them. To confirm label application, you can head to the document library where your test files are located and enable the sensitivity column. Files that have been auto-labelled will have their label listed: You could also check for auto-labelling activity in Purview via Activity explorer: Step 6 – Expand into DLP If you’ve spent the time setting up managed properties, then you really should consider capitalizing on them in your DLP configurations. DLP policy conditions can be configured in the same manner that we configured Auto-labelling in Step 3 above. The document property also gives us an anchor for DLP conditions that is independent of an item’s sensitivity label. You may wish to consider the following: DLP policies blocking external sharing of items with certain properties applied. This might be handy for situations where auto-labelling hasn’t yet labelled an item. DLP policies blocking the external sharing of items where the applied sensitivity label doesn’t match the applied document property. This could provide an indication of risky label downgrade. You could extend such policies into Insider Risk Management (IRM) by creating IRM policies that are aligned with the above DLP policies. This will allow for document properties to be considered in user risk calculation, which can inform controls like Adaptive Protection. Here's an example of a policy from the DLP rule summary screen that shows conditions of item contains a label or one of our configured document properties: Thanks for reading and I hope this article has been of use. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to reach out.Microsoft Purview: The Ultimate AI Data Security Solution
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 Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI 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. Real-Time Risk Detection 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. Search the audit log 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.
Alert on DLP Policy Change
Is it possible to configure an alert from Purview when a DLP policy is created, amended or removed? I am trying to build a process to satisfy NIST CM-6(2): Respond to Unauthorized Changes that identifies when a policy chnage happens and to cross reference to an authorised change record. I can find the events Updated, Created or Changed a DLP Poloicy in audit search but can Purview be configured to generate an alert when these events happen?Secure and govern AI apps and agents with Microsoft Purview
The Microsoft Purview family is here to help you secure and govern data across third party IaaS and Saas, multi-platform data environment, while helping you meet compliance requirements you may be subject to. Purview brings simplicity with a comprehensive set of solutions built on a platform of shared capabilities, that helps keep your most important asset, data, safe. With the introduction of AI technology, Purview also expanded its data coverage to include discovering, protecting, and governing the interactions of AI apps and agents, such as Microsoft Copilots like Microsoft 365 Copilot and Security Copilot, Enterprise built AI apps like Chat GPT enterprise, and other consumer AI apps like DeepSeek, accessed through the browser. To help you view, investigate interactions with all those AI apps, and to create and manage policies to secure and govern them in one centralized place, we have launched Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI. You can learn more about DSPM for AI here with short video walkthroughs: Learn how Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI provides data security and compliance protections for Copilots and other generative AI apps | Microsoft Learn Purview capabilities for AI apps and agents To understand our current set of capabilities within Purview to discover, protect, and govern various AI apps and agents, please refer to our Learn doc here: Microsoft Purview data security and compliance protections for Microsoft 365 Copilot and other generative AI apps | Microsoft Learn Here is a quick reference guide for the capabilities available today: Note that currently, DLP for Copilot and adhering to sensitivity label are currently designed to protect content in Microsoft 365. Thus, Security Copilot and Coplot in Fabric, along with Copilot studio custom agents that do not use Microsoft 365 as a content source, do not have these features available. Please see list of AI sites supported by Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI here Conclusion Microsoft Purview can help you discover, protect, and govern the prompts and responses from AI applications in Microsoft Copilot experiences, Enterprise AI apps, and other AI apps through its data security and data compliance solutions, while allowing you to view, investigate, and manage interactions in one centralized place in DSPM for AI. Follow up reading Check out the deployment guides for DSPM for AI How to deploy DSPM for AI - https://aka.ms/DSPMforAI/deploy How to use DSPM for AI data risk assessment to address oversharing - https://aka.ms/dspmforai/oversharing Address oversharing concerns with Microsoft 365 blueprint - aka.ms/Copilot/Oversharing Explore the Purview SDK Microsoft Purview SDK Public Preview | Microsoft Community Hub (blog) Microsoft Purview documentation - purview-sdk | Microsoft Learn Build secure and compliant AI applications with Microsoft Purview (video) References for DSPM for AI Microsoft Purview data security and compliance protections for Microsoft 365 Copilot and other generative AI apps | Microsoft Learn Considerations for deploying Microsoft Purview AI Hub and data security and compliance protections for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot | Microsoft Learn Block Users From Sharing Sensitive Information to Unmanaged AI Apps Via Edge on Managed Devices (preview) | Microsoft Learn as part of Scenario 7 of Create and deploy a data loss prevention policy | Microsoft Learn Commonly used properties in Copilot audit logs - Audit logs for Copilot and AI activities | Microsoft Learn Supported AI sites by Microsoft Purview for data security and compliance protections | Microsoft Learn Where Copilot usage data is stored and how you can audit it - Microsoft 365 Copilot data protection and auditing architecture | Microsoft Learn Downloadable whitepaper: Data Security for AI Adoption | Microsoft Explore the roadmap for DSPM for AI Public roadmap for DSPM for AI - Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365PMPurEmpowering Secure AI Innovation: Data Security and Compliance for AI Agents
As organizations embrace the transformative power of generative AI, agentic AI is quickly becoming a core part of enterprise innovation. Whether organizations are just beginning their AI journey or scaling advanced solutions, one thing is clear: agents are poised to transform every function and workflow across organizations. IDC predicts that over 1 billion new business process agents will be created in the next four years 1 . This surge in AI adoption is empowering employees across roles – from low-code makers to pro-code developers – to build and use AI in new ways. Business leaders are eager to support this momentum, but they also recognize the need to innovate responsibly with AI. Microsoft Purview’s evolution When Microsoft 365 Copilot launched in November 2022, it sparked a wave of excitement and an immediate question: how do we secure and govern the data powering these AI experiences? Microsoft Purview quickly evolved to meet this need, extending its data security and compliance capabilities to the Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem. It delivered discoverability, protection, and governance value that helped customers discover data risks such as data oversharing, protect sensitive data to prevent data loss and insider risks, and govern AI usage to meet regulations and policies. Now, as customers move beyond pre-built agents like Copilot to develop their own AI agents and applications, Microsoft Purview has evolved to extend the same data protections built for Microsoft 365 Copilot to AI agents. Today, those protections span the entire development spectrum—from no-code and low-code tools like Copilot Studio to pro-code environments such as Azure AI Foundry. Microsoft Purview helps address challenges across the development spectrum Makers – typically business users or citizen developers who build solutions using low-code or no-code tools – shouldn’t need to become security experts to build AI responsibly. Yet, without proper safeguards, these agents can inadvertently expose sensitive data or violate compliance policies. That is why with Microsoft Purview, security and IT teams can feel confident about the agents being built in their organizations. When makers build agents through the Agent Builder or directly in Copilot Studio, security admins can set up Microsoft Purview’s data security and compliance controls that work behind the scenes to support makers in building secure and compliant agents. These controls automatically enforce policies, monitor data access, and ensure compliance without requiring the maker to become a security expert without requiring makers to take additional actions. In fact, a recent Microsoft study found that 71% of developer decision-makers acknowledge that these constraints result in security trade-offs and development delays 2 . Pro-code developers are under increasing pressure to deliver fast, flexible, and seamlessly integrated solutions, yet data security often becomes a deployment blocker or an afterthought. Building enterprise-grade data security and compliance capabilities from scratch is not only time-consuming but also requires deep domain expertise. This is where Microsoft Purview steps in. As an industry leader in data security and compliance, Purview does the heavy lifting, so developers don’t have to. Now in preview, Purview SDK can be used by developers to embed robust, enterprise-ready data protections directly into their AI applications, instead of building complex security frameworks on their own. The Purview SDK is a comprehensive set of REST APIs, documentation, and code samples, allowing developers to easily incorporate Microsoft Purview’s capabilities into their workflows—regardless of their integrated development environment (IDE). This empowers them to move fast without compromising on security or compliance and at the same time, Microsoft Purview helps security teams remain in control. : By embedding Purview APIs into the IDE, developers help enable their AI apps to be secured and governed at runtime Startups, ISVs, and partners can leverage the Purview SDK to seamlessly integrate Purview’s industry-leading features into their AI agents and applications. This enables their offerings to become Purview-aware, empowering customers to more easily secure and govern data within their AI environments. For example, Christian Veillette, Chief Technology Officer at Arthur Health, a Quisitive customer, states “The synergistic integration of MazikCare, the Quisitive Intelligence Platform, and the data compliance power of Purview SDK, including its DSPM for AI, forms a foundational pillar for trustworthy and safe AI-driven healthcare transformations. This powerful combination ensures continuous oversight and instant enforcement of compliance policies, giving IT leadership full assurance in the output of every AI model and upholding the highest safety standards. By centralizing policy enforcement, security concerns are significantly eased, empowering leadership to confidently steer their organizations through the AI transformation journey.” Microsoft partner, Infotechtion, has also leveraged the new Purview SDK to embed Purview value into their GenAI initiatives. Vivek Bhatt, Infotechtion’s Chief Technology Officer says, “Embedding Purview SDK into Infotechtion's AI governance solution improved trust and security by aligning Gen-AI interactions with Microsoft Purview's enterprise policies.” Microsoft Purview also natively integrates with Azure AI Foundry, enabling seamless, built-in security and compliance for AI workloads without requiring additional development effort. With this integration, signals from Azure AI Foundry are automatically surfaced in Microsoft Purview’s Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, Insider Risk Management, and compliance solutions. This means security teams can monitor AI usage, detect data risks, and enforce compliance policies across AI agents and applications—whether they’re built in-house or with Azure AI Foundry models. This reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to delivering secure-by-default AI innovation—empowering organizations to scale responsibly with confidence. : Data security admins can now find data security and compliance insights across Microsoft Copilots, agents built with Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents in Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI. Explore more partner case studies from Ernst & Young and Infosys to see how they’re leveraging Purview SDK. Learn more about Purview SDK and Microsoft Purview for Azure AI Foundry. Unified visibility and control Whether supporting pro-code developers or low-code makers, Microsoft Purview enables organizations to secure and govern AI across organizations. With Purview, security teams can discover data security risks, protect sensitive data against data leakage and insider risks, and govern AI interactions. Discover data security risks With Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, data security teams can discover detailed data risk insights in AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, agents built in Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents. Data security admins can now find data security and compliance insights across Microsoft Copilots, agents built with Agent Builder and Copilot Studio, and custom AI apps and agents all in Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI. Protect sensitive data against data leaks and insider risks In DSPM for AI, data security admins can also get recommended insights to improve their organization’s security posture like minimizing risks of data oversharing. For example, an admin might get a recommendation to set up a data loss prevention (DLP) policy that prevents agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot from using certain labeled documents as grounding data to generate summaries or responses. By setting up this policy, organizations can prevent confidential legal documents—with specific language that could lead to improper guidance—from being summarized. It also ensures that “Internal only” documents aren’t used to create content that might be shared outside the organization. Extend data loss prevention (DLP) policies to agents in Microsoft 365 to protect sensitive data. Agents often pull data from sources like SharePoint and Dataverse, and Microsoft Purview helps protect that data every step of the way. It honors sensitivity labels, enforces access permissions, and applies label inheritance so that AI-generated content carries the same protections as its source. With auto-labeling in Dataverse, sensitive data is classified as soon as it’s ingested—reducing manual effort and maintaining consistent protection. When responses draw from multiple sources with different labels, the most restrictive label is applied to uphold compliance and minimize risk. : Sensitivity labels will be automatically applied to data in Dataverse. : AI-generated responses will inherit and honor the source data’s sensitivity labels. In addition to data and permission controls that help address data oversharing or leakage, security teams also need ways to detect users' risky activities in AI apps and agents that could potentially lead to data security incidents. With risky AI usage indicators, policy template, and analytics report in Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management, security teams with appropriate permissions can detect risky activities. For example, there could be a departing employee receiving an unusual number of AI responses across Copilots and agents containing sensitive data, deviating from their past activity patterns. Security teams can then effectively detect and respond to these potential incidents to minimize the negative impact. For example, they can configure Adaptive Protection to automatically block a high-risk user from accessing sensitive data. An Insider Risk Management alert from a Risky AI usage policy shows a user with anomalous activities. Govern AI Interactions to detect non-compliant usage Microsoft Purview provides a comprehensive set of tools to govern AI usage and detect non-compliant user activities. AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents, are recorded in Audit logs. eDiscovery enables legal and compliance teams with appropriate permissions to collect and review AI-generated content for internal investigations or litigation. Data Lifecycle Management enables teams to set policies to retain or dispose of AI interactions, while Communication Compliance helps detect risky or inappropriate use of AI, such as harmful content or other violations against code-of-conduct policies. Together, these capabilities give organizations the visibility and control they need to innovate responsibly with AI. AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents are recorded in Audit logs. AI interactions across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents can be collected and reviewed in eDiscovery. Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance can detect non-compliant content in AI prompts across Microsoft Copilots, AI apps and agents. Securing the Future of AI Innovation — Explore Additional Resources As organizations accelerate their adoption of agentic AI, the need for built-in security and compliance has never been more critical. Microsoft Purview empowers both makers and developers to innovate with confidence—ensuring that every AI interaction is secure, compliant, and aligned with enterprise standards. By embedding protection across the entire development lifecycle, Purview helps organizations unlock the full potential of AI while maintaining the trust, transparency, and control that responsible innovation demands. To dive deeper into how Microsoft Purview supports secure AI development, explore our additional resources, documentation, and integration guides: Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Learn more about Microsoft Purview SDK Learn more about Purview pricing Get started with Azure AI Foundry Get started with Microsoft Purview 1 IDC, 1 Billion New Logical Applications: More Background, Gary Chen, Jim Mercer, April 2024 https://blogs.idc.com/2025/04/04/the-agentic-evolution-of-enterprise-applications/ 2 Microsoft, AI App Security Quantitative Study, April 2025Microsoft Purview Powering Data Security and Compliance for Security Copilot
Microsoft Purview provides Security and Compliance teams with extensive visibility into admin actions within Security Copilot. It offers tools for enriched users and data insights to identify, review, and manage Security Copilot interaction data in DSPM for AI. Data security and compliance administrators can also utilize Purview’s capabilities for data lifecycle management and information protection, advanced retention, eDiscovery, and more. These features support detailed investigations into logs to demonstrate compliance within the Copilot tenant. Prerequisites Please refer to the prerequisites for Security Copilot and DSPM for AI in the Microsoft Learn Docs. Key Capabilities and Features Heightened Context and Clarity As organizations adopt AI, implementing data controls and a Zero Trust approach is essential to mitigate risks like data oversharing, leakage, and non-compliant usage. Microsoft Purview, combined with Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI, empowers security and compliance teams to manage these risks across Security Copilot interactions. With this integration, organizations can: Discover data risks by identifying sensitive information in user prompts and responses. Microsoft Purview surfaces these insights in the DSPM for AI dashboard and recommends actions to reduce exposure. Identify risky AI usage using Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management to investigate behaviors such as inadvertent sharing of sensitive data or to detect suspicious activity within Security Copilot usage. These capabilities provide heightened visibility into how AI is used across the organization, helping teams proactively address potential risks before they escalate. Compliance and Governance Building on this visibility, organizations can take action using Microsoft Purview’s integrated compliance and governance solutions. Here are some examples of how teams are leveraging these capabilities to govern Security Copilot interactions: Audit provides a detailed log of user and admin activity within Security Copilot, enabling organizations to track access, monitor usage patterns, and support forensic investigations. eDiscovery enables legal and investigative teams to identify, collect, and review Security Copilot interactions as part of case workflows, supporting defensible investigations. Communication Compliance helps detect potential policy violations or risky behavior in administrator interactions, enabling proactive monitoring and remediation. Data Lifecycle Management allows teams to automate the retention, deletion, and classification of Security Copilot data—reducing storage costs and minimizing risk from outdated or unnecessary information. Together, these tools provide a comprehensive governance framework that supports secure, compliant, and responsible AI adoption across the enterprise. Getting Started Enable Purview Audit for Security Copilot Sign into your Copilot tenant at https://securitycopilot.microsoft.com/, and with the Security Administrator permissions, navigate to the Security Copilot owner settings and ensure Audit logging is enabled. Microsoft Purview To start using DSPM for AI and the Microsoft Purview capabilities, please complete the following steps to get set up and then feel free to experiment yourself. Navigate to Purview (Purview.Microsoft.com) and ensure you have adequate permissions to access the different Purview solutions as described here. DSPM for AI Select the DSPM for AI “Solution” option on the left-most navigation. Go to the policies or recommendations tab turn on the following: a. “DSPM for AI – Capture interactions for Copilot Experiences”: Captures prompts and responses for data security posture and regulatory compliance from Security Copilot and other Copilot experiences. b. “Detect Risky AI Usage”: Helps to calculate user risk by detecting risky prompts and responses in Copilot experiences. c. “Detect unethical behavior in AI apps”: Detects sensitive info and inappropriate use of AI in prompts and responses in Copilot experiences. To begin reviewing Security Copilot usage within your organization and identifying interactions that contain sensitive information, select Reports from the left navigation panel. a. The "Sensitive interactions per AI app" report shows the most common sensitive information types used in Security Copilot interactions and their frequency. For instance, this tenant has a significant amount of IT and IP Address information within these interactions. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all sensitive information used in Security Copilot interactions is utilized for legitimate workplace purposes and does not involve any malicious or non-compliant use of Security Copilot. b. “Top unethical AI interactions” will show an overview of any potentially unsafe or inappropriate interactions with AI apps. In this case, Security Copilot only has seven potentially unsafe interactions that included unauthorized disclosure and regulatory collusion. c. “Insider risk severity per AI app” shows the number of high risk, medium risk, low risk and no risk users that are interacting with Security Copilot. In this tenant, there are about 1.9K Security Copilot users, but very few of them have an insider risk concern. d. To check the interaction details of this potentially risky activity, head over to Activity Explorer for more information. 5. In Activity Explorer, you should filter the App to Security Copilot. You will also have the option to filter based on the user risk level and sensitive information type. To identify the highest risk behaviors, filter for users with a medium to high risk level or those associated with the most sensitive information types. a. Once you have filtered, you can start looking through the activity details for more information like the user details, the sensitive information types, the prompt and response data, and more. b. Based on the details shown, you may decide to investigate the activity and the user further. To do so, we have data security investigation and governance tools. Data Security Investigations and Governance If you find Security Copilot actions in DSPM for AI Activity Explorer to be potentially inappropriate or malicious, you can look for further information in Insider Risk Management (IRM), through an eDiscovery case, Communication Compliance (CC), or Data Lifecycle Management (DLM). Insider Risk Management By enabling the quick policy in DSPM for AI to monitor risky Copilot usage, alerts will start appearing in IRM. Customize this policy based on your organization's risk tolerance by adjusting triggering events, thresholds, and indicators for detected activity. Examine the alerts associated with the "DSPM for AI – Detect risky AI usage" policy, potentially sorting them by severity from high to low. For these alerts, you will find a User Activity scatter plot that provides insights into the activities preceding and following the user's engagement with a risky prompt in Security Copilot. This assists the Data Security administrator in understanding the necessary triage actions for this user/alert. After thoroughly investigating these details and determining whether the activity was malicious or an inadvertent insider risk, appropriate actions can be taken, including issuing a user warning, resolving the case, sharing the case with an email recipient, or escalating the case to eDiscovery for further investigation. eDiscovery To identify, review and manage your Security Copilot logs to support your investigations, use the eDiscovery tool. Here are the steps to take in eDiscovery: a. Create an eDiscovery Case b. Create a new search c. In Search, go to condition builder and select Add conditions -> KeyQL d. Enter the query as: - KQL Equal (ItemClass=IPM.SkypeTeams.Message.Copilot.Security.SecurityCopilot) e. Run the query f. Once completed, add the search to a review set (Button at the top) g. In the review set, view details of the Security Copilot conversation Communication Compliance In Communication Compliance, like IRM, you can investigate details around the Security Copilot interactions. Specifically, in CC, you can determine if these interactions contained non-compliant usage of Security Copilot or inappropriate text. After identifying the sentiment of the Security Copilot communication, you can take action by resolving the alert, sending a warning notice to the user, escalating the alert to a reviewer, or escalating the alert for investigation, which will create a new eDiscovery case. Data Lifecycle Management For regulatory compliance or investigation purposes, navigate to Data Lifecycle Management to create a new retention policy for Security Copilot activities. a. Provide a friendly name for the retention policy and select Next b. Skip Policy Scope section for this validation c. Select “Static” type of retention policy and select Next d. Choose “Microsoft Copilot Experiences” to apply retention policy to Security Copilot interactions Billing Model Microsoft Purview audit logging of Security Copilot activity remains included at no additional cost as part of Microsoft 365 E5 licensing. However, Microsoft Purview now offers a combination of entitlement-based (per-user-per-month) and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) pricing models. The PAYG model applies to a broader set of Purview capabilities—including Insider Risk Management, Communication Compliance, eDiscovery, and other data security and governance solutions—based on usage volume or complexity. This flexible pricing structure ensures that organizations only pay for what they use as data flows through AI models, networks, and applications. For further details, please refer to this Microsoft Security Community Blog: New Purview pricing options for protecting AI apps and agents | Microsoft Community Hub Looking Ahead By following these steps, organizations can leverage the full potential of Microsoft Purview to enhance the security and compliance of their Security Copilot interactions. This integration not only provides peace of mind but also empowers organizations to manage their data more effectively. Please reach out to us if you have any questions or additional requirements. Additional Resources Use Microsoft Purview to manage data security & compliance for Microsoft Security Copilot | Microsoft Learn How to deploy Microsoft Purview DSPM for AI to secure your AI apps Learn how Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI provides data security and compliance protections for Copilots and other generative AI apps | Microsoft Learn Considerations for deploying Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) for AI | Microsoft Learn Learn about Microsoft Purview billing models | Microsoft Learn
