SC-900 Practice Question: Describe the capabilities of Microsoft compliance solutions
A company is involved in a lawsuit. The legal team needs to preserve all emails, documents, and Teams messages from five key employees (custodians) that are related to a specific project. The data must be collected securely and provided for legal review without modifying the original data. Which Microsoft Purview solution should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse Data Lifecycle Management or Records Management with eDiscovery, but those solutions manage retention and deletion policies rather than providing the custodial hold, search, and export capabilities required for legal preservation and review.
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
✓
eDiscovery (Premium)
eDiscovery (Premium) is the correct solution because it is specifically designed for legal investigations, allowing organizations to identify, preserve, collect, and export relevant data (emails, documents, Teams messages) from custodians without altering the original data. It supports legal hold, advanced search, and secure export for legal review, meeting the lawsuit requirements.
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 Lifecycle Management
Why it's wrong here
Data Lifecycle Management primarily focuses on automating the retention and deletion of data across an organization based on predefined policies and schedules. While it can prevent premature deletion, it lacks the specific, targeted capabilities for placing legal holds on specific custodians or content, collecting data from diverse sources for a particular case, or providing a structured review workflow essential for litigation discovery.
- ✓
eDiscovery (Premium)
Why this is correct
eDiscovery (Premium) is the correct solution as it provides a comprehensive, end-to-end workflow specifically designed for legal discovery requirements within Microsoft 365. It enables legal teams to identify, preserve, collect, process, review, and export data from various sources like Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, and Teams, all while maintaining the integrity of the original data and managing legal holds efficiently for specific custodians.
- ✗
Records Management
Why it's wrong here
Records Management is designed to help organizations meet regulatory, legal, and business-critical record-keeping requirements by classifying items as records to prevent their modification or deletion. While it ensures long-term preservation of designated records, it does not offer the dynamic, case-specific data collection, processing, and review tools necessary for responding to a legal discovery request or managing a litigation hold across all potentially relevant data.
- ✗
Communication Compliance
Why it's wrong here
Communication Compliance is a proactive tool used to detect and remediate inappropriate or policy-violating communications within an organization, leveraging machine learning to identify specific content types. Its primary function is internal risk management and policy enforcement, not the reactive preservation and comprehensive collection of all potentially relevant data for external legal review or litigation purposes.
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Related to this question
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Microsoft Entra ID
Key term
eDiscovery
eDiscovery is the process of identifying, collecting, and producing electronic information for legal cases or investigations.
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.