SC-900 Practice Question: Describe the capabilities of Microsoft compliance solutions
A financial services company uses Microsoft Purview and must comply with a regulation that requires communication surveillance for market abuse. They need to capture all electronic communications (email, Teams chats) of traders and scan for specific keywords and trading patterns. Which Microsoft Purview solution is specifically designed for this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Communication Compliance with Insider Risk Management, as both deal with user behavior, but Communication Compliance is specifically for capturing and scanning communications for regulatory surveillance, while Insider Risk Management focuses on broader risk indicators like data theft or policy violations.
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
✓
Communication Compliance
Communication Compliance is the Microsoft Purview solution specifically designed to capture and analyze electronic communications (email, Teams chats) for regulatory compliance, such as detecting market abuse. It allows organizations to define policies that scan for specific keywords and trading patterns, automatically flagging messages that violate compliance rules. This directly addresses the requirement for communication surveillance in financial services under regulations like MiFID II or Dodd-Frank.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Communication Compliance
Why this is correct
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is specifically engineered to proactively detect and remediate regulatory compliance risks, such as market abuse, insider trading, and harassment, within an organization's electronic communications. It leverages machine learning and policy-based scanning across platforms like Microsoft Teams, Exchange, and Yammer to identify potential violations. Financial services companies rely on this capability to meet stringent industry regulations by reviewing flagged messages and taking appropriate action, ensuring adherence to standards like FINRA or SEC rules.
- ✗
Data Lifecycle Management
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management focuses on governing the entire lifecycle of an organization's data, from creation to archival and eventual deletion, based on retention labels and policies. Its primary function is to ensure data is retained for regulatory or business requirements and then defensibly disposed of, rather than actively monitoring content for compliance violations. This solution is about managing *when* data exists and is removed, not *what* specific content within communications might indicate market abuse.
- ✗
eDiscovery (Standard)
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Standard) is a reactive tool designed to identify, preserve, collect, and review electronically stored information (ESI) in response to legal or investigative requests. It enables organizations to search for specific content across various data sources for litigation support or internal investigations, typically *after* an incident has occurred. Unlike proactive compliance tools, eDiscovery does not continuously monitor communications for policy violations or market abuse indicators, but rather facilitates targeted data collection for legal holds.
- ✗
Insider Risk Management
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management is engineered to detect, investigate, and act on malicious or inadvertent activities by internal users that could lead to data theft, intellectual property leakage, or other security incidents. It analyzes user behavior, data access patterns, and content interactions to identify high-risk activities, such as exfiltration of sensitive data. While it may process communication data, its core purpose is to mitigate insider threats and data loss, not to proactively scan for specific regulatory communication breaches like market manipulation.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Compliance Concepts
Key term
General Data Protection Regulation
A European Union law that gives individuals control over their personal data and sets strict rules for how organizations collect, store, and process that data.
Key term
Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview is a unified data governance and compliance service that helps organizations discover, manage, and protect their data across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SC-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 SC-900 exam.