SC-900 Practice Question: Describe the capabilities of Microsoft compliance solutions
A company is involved in litigation and needs to preserve all Exchange Online mailboxes and SharePoint sites related to the case. The legal team also requires the ability to search, review, and export relevant content. Which Microsoft Purview solution should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse eDiscovery (Premium) with Audit (Premium) because both involve searching, but Audit only searches activity logs, not the actual content of mailboxes and sites, and cannot place legal hold or export content.
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
✓
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium)
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium) is the correct solution because it provides end-to-end workflow for preserving, searching, reviewing, and exporting content from Exchange Online mailboxes and SharePoint sites. It supports legal hold placement on custodians and data sources, advanced search with keyword and proximity queries, review sets with analytics, and export in a format suitable for litigation. This directly matches the requirement to preserve all relevant mailboxes and sites while enabling the legal team to search, review, and export content.
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 Purview eDiscovery (Premium)
Why this is correct
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery (Premium) is the comprehensive solution designed for managing legal, regulatory, and internal investigations. It provides an end-to-end workflow that includes placing legal holds on content, such as all Exchange Online mailboxes, to prevent alteration or deletion. This capability ensures that all relevant data is preserved, collected, reviewed, and exported in a defensible manner for litigation purposes, directly addressing the need to preserve content.
- ✗
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview Communication Compliance is specifically engineered to help organizations detect, investigate, and act on inappropriate messages within their Microsoft 365 environment. While it monitors communications for policy violations like harassment or insider trading, it does not offer the functionality to place legal holds on content or manage the preservation and export workflow required for litigation. Its primary role is proactive policy enforcement and risk management, not reactive legal preservation.
- ✗
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) is primarily concerned with managing the lifecycle of data through retention and deletion policies across Microsoft 365. It ensures data is kept for a specified period and then disposed of according to organizational or regulatory requirements. While DLM can retain data, its retention policies are not designed for the specific, targeted, and often indefinite preservation required by a legal hold for litigation, nor does it provide the eDiscovery workflow for collection and review.
- ✗
Microsoft Purview Audit (Premium)
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft Purview Audit (Premium) offers enhanced logging capabilities, providing detailed records of user and admin activities across Microsoft 365 services. This service is invaluable for forensic investigations, security monitoring, and compliance audits by tracking who did what, when, and where. However, Audit (Premium) is solely focused on activity logging and does not provide any features for placing legal holds on content, searching content, or managing the review and export process necessary for litigation preservation.
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Microsoft Entra ID
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.
Key term
Exchange Online
Exchange Online is Microsoft's cloud-based email, calendar, and contact hosting service that is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, allowing organizations to manage corporate messaging without maintaining their own mail servers.
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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.