MS-900 Practice Question: Describe security, compliance, privacy, and trust in Microsoft 365
A service owner is comparing Microsoft 365 capabilities and needs to detect exact customer records rather than only generic data patterns. Microsoft security, identity, or compliance capability should it use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse generic data classification (e.g., built-in sensitive info types like Social Security numbers) with the need for exact record matching, leading them to overlook EDM as the precise solution for custom, database-driven detection.
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
✓
Exact Data Match sensitive information type
Exact Data Match (EDM) sensitive information types allow a service owner to define custom sensitive information types based on exact database records, such as customer names or account numbers, rather than relying on generic pattern matching like regular expressions. This capability is part of Microsoft Purview compliance and enables precise detection of specific customer data in Microsoft 365 environments.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Microsoft Stream
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Stream is a video hosting and sharing platform in Microsoft 365 that stores and streams content like presentations, training recordings, and town halls. It does not perform any scanning or analysis of structured data, so it cannot detect sensitive information by matching against a custom database of records. Although Stream supports access controls and eDiscovery of transcripts, that is far different from exact data matching. Therefore, Stream does not meet the requirement.
- ✗
Microsoft Planner
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Planner is a collaborative task management tool that helps teams organize work into boards with tasks, due dates, and progress tracking. It does not contain any data classification or sensitive information matching capabilities, and it cannot ingest a structured database to identify exact values in content. Planner's security features are limited to permissions and access control, not data pattern detection or compliance scanning. Thus, Planner cannot fulfill the need for an Exact Data Match sensitive information type.
- ✓
Exact Data Match sensitive information type
Why this is correct
Exact Data Match (EDM) sensitive information types are custom-defined types in Microsoft Purview that let you detect highly structured sensitive data using a database of exact values. EDM hashes the values in your schema-based database and compares them to hashed tokens in scanned content, enabling precise detection with minimal false positives. This is essential when built-in sensitive information types rely on patterns or checksums but cannot guarantee an exact match. By uploading a structured data set, you can reliably identify sensitive records, which meets the requirement.
- ✗
Microsoft Forms
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Forms is a lightweight tool for creating surveys, quizzes, and polls, with results stored in Excel or SharePoint. It does not scan documents or messages for sensitive data and has no ability to load, hash, or compare a structured database of values for detection purposes. While Forms integrates with Microsoft 365 governance features for data handling, those are about compliance of the form responses themselves, not about matching content against known sensitive records. Hence, Forms is not an Exact Data Match sensitive information type.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This MS-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the MS-900 exam.