MS-102 Manage compliance by using Microsoft Purview Practice Question
A compliance officer needs to prevent users from sending emails that contain social security numbers to external recipients. When a user attempts to send such an email from Outlook, the email should be blocked and a policy tip should be displayed explaining why the email was blocked. Which Microsoft Purview solution should the officer configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
Microsoft often tests the distinction between DLP (which can block and notify in real-time) and sensitivity labels (which apply protection but do not block sending based on content detection), leading candidates to confuse classification with enforcement.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy
A Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy in Microsoft Purview is designed to detect sensitive information, such as social security numbers, in emails and enforce actions like blocking the message and displaying a policy tip. This meets the compliance officer's requirement to prevent external sending of sensitive data while providing user notification.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy
Why this is correct
DLP policies in Exchange Online are the correct mechanism because they inspect email content in transit against sensitive information types (e.g., credit card numbers, social security numbers) and can trigger a real-time block action, such as rejecting or quarantining the message before it reaches the recipient. DLP also surfaces policy tips in Outlook to notify users that their message violates a policy, giving them a chance to modify or resend it. This proactive, content-aware enforcement is exactly what the compliance officer needs.
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Sensitivity labels
Why it's wrong here
Sensitivity labels are designed to classify, encrypt, and watermark content, but they do not scan the body or attachments of an outgoing email for specific data patterns; they rely on user selection, manual application, or automatic classification rules that run after the message is composed. A label can restrict access to the email after it is sent, but it cannot interrupt the send action or reject the message when disallowed data is detected. Therefore, sensitivity labels cannot fulfill the requirement to prevent users from sending emails containing sensitive information in real time.
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Communication compliance
Why it's wrong here
Communication compliance is a supervision solution that helps organizations detect inappropriate or potentially risky communications by applying trainable classifiers and policies to email and Teams messages; it is designed for after-the-fact review, alerting, and investigation by designated reviewers. Even when a message is flagged, it still reaches the intended recipient because communication compliance does not enforce transport-level blocks or reject actions. Hence, it is not suited to preventing an email from being sent at the moment of transmission.
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eDiscovery
Why it's wrong here
eDiscovery is an investigation tool used to search, preserve, and export content across Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive for legal or regulatory purposes, typically during litigation or compliance investigations. It operates only on stored records and can place holds on mailboxes to prevent deletion, but it has no ability to inspect messages in the outbound pipeline or stop a send operation. For a positive prevention control, eDiscovery is far outside the scope of DLP's proactive interception.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Microsoft Purview Data Map
Key term
Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is an email, calendar, and contact management application that is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, used by businesses and individuals to organize communications and schedules.
Key term
Compliance
Compliance is the process of ensuring that an organization follows laws, regulations, standards, and internal policies that apply to its operations and data handling.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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